The Cattleman (Sons of Texas Book 2) (26 page)

When the joining had nowhere to go but to his own damnation, he lifted his mouth from hers and looked into her eyes. “Jesus, there’s just something about you,” he said thickly. She looked back at him, their faces only inches apart. “So you’re not a photographer and you’re not a political animal,” he said hoarsely. “Then what are you?”

Her breath touched his lips.
Her mysterious eyes continued to look into his. “Are you sure you can’t stay a little while?”

That question he didn’t need to hear. Temptation was already threatening to drag him into a deep well. “I can’t,” he choked out, grabbing onto his wits.

“Is it—is it because you’re with someone?”

“I am. Yes, ma’am. I mean, you’re a beautiful woman. Any man would—Look, my conscience would hurt if…”

“Are you one of those honorable types?” The sarcasm sounded alien in her soft voice.

“I try to be. Yes, ma’am.”

She gave a tiny laugh rife with cynicism. “I wouldn’t tell anyone, you know.”

His pulse was pounding in his temples. His dick was swelling in his pants. He had to get out of here. He drew a deep breath
and set her away. “Uh, listen, you can’t live on peanut butter. I’ll ask Johnnie Sue to make supper out of something besides beef. We try to be accommodating to guests. You’re welcome to come over to the ranch house for supper. We’ve never had a guest who didn’t eat with us.”

She nodded. “Thank you.” She reached behind herself, pulled the string tie on the neck of her top and it fell loose. Her nipples had to be firm and distended because the top hung there, held up by nothing else.
His heart raced. She was only inches away….

“I need to shower and clean up
,” she said. “I’m all hot and sweaty.” She turned and started for the bathroom, untying the back strings and stripping off the top as she went.

He stood there speechless and staring at her bare back and
half of the tramp stamp that showed above the waistband of her shorts until she disappeared down the hallway. “Okay, then,” he called to her. “Just come over to the house when you’re ready.”

He walked out of the guesthouse with a full-fledged hard-on and locked the front door behind him
self. His heart was hammering inside his rib cage. He was shaking like a cold dog.
Jeee-sus Christ!
What was it about that woman?

He climbed into the Jeep. He couldn’t show up in the ranch house with a boner obvious in the front of his pants. He cranked the engine and drove the two miles to the front gate slowly, corralling his libido and sweating profusely.
The outside temperature was hot enough to fry a gila monster and his own temperature ran a close second.
Jesus!
Had he ever seen a time in his life when he walked away from a good-looking willing woman?

All day, he had been close to making a fool of himself with Zochi. Something weird was going on between them. Whatever it was, it was so powerful it was almost beyond his control. But following up on it would be wrong on more levels than he could count. Mandy was his woman, loyal to the bone. And he was her man. He owed her the same fidelity
as she gave him. Zochi was forbidden fruit.

By the time he reached the gate, the pressure in his shorts had begun to subside. He set flights of fantasy aside and turned around, slowly started back toward the ranch house.
He couldn’t be more tired if he had done physical work all day. Tension and the day-long heat had sapped him. He had sweat so much his jeans were almost as damp as his T-shirt. His socks felt wet inside his boots. Even if he had been willing to pursue his urges and take what had been offered back in the guesthouse, as exhausted as he was, he doubted he could have performed.

Back in the cool ranch house, he stopped by the kitchen to drop off the lunch cooler and the water jug and found Johnnie Sue starting the evening meal. The kitchen was big and open with a high ceiling, a tile floor and shiny stainless steel surfaces. It just looked like it would be cool in the summer and cold in the winter. Johnnie Sue had set up a stand fan in the corner and he stood in front of it, basking in the breeze that felt almost cold against his damp clothing.

“Hot out there today,” she said. “Hundred five. Humidity’s high, too.”

“Sure as hell felt it, too.” He walked over to the cupboard and dragged out a glass, ran himself a
drink of water from the tap and swallowed a long, cool drink. “Listen, Zochi’s coming over for supper. Can you fix something that isn’t beef or pork?”

Johnnie Sue planted a fist on a skinny hip and gave him a
sullen look. “Peanut butter? Rice pudding? Post Toasties?”

Most of the time, Pic and his dad overlooked Johnnie Sue’s edgy personality, but after he had roasted all day and grappled with his primal urges, his patience had worn too thin for anybody’s smart mouth. “Just cool it with the sarcasm, Johnnie Sue,” he said firmly. “This woman’s our guest and whether you like it or not, we treat her like company.” He set his glass of water on the counter with a
clunk
. “So now, I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. Come up with something the woman wants to eat. I don’t think there’s a shortage of groceries around here.”

“Yes, sir. You got it, boss.” Johnnie Sue gave him a mock salute and stalked out through the doorway on the opposite end of the kitchen.

Pic rolled his eyes and left the kitchen, headed for his suite, proud of himself for asserting his authority with the housekeeper. She had been taking too much for granted.

In the privacy of his shower, as he washed away the day’s sweat, the image of Zochi McLaren’s ample breasts glistening with perspiration came to him and
her almost removing her top while he stood there and stared and that tiny little piece of fabric hanging on her nipples and just a whisper away from baring her chest.

He closed his eyes, picturing her large bare breasts, remembering her womanly scent, her sexy voice, her mopping her breasts with a wet napkin and her nipples peaking right in front of his eyes.
And her kiss that had set his blood on fire. The whole package beckoned like a siren’s call. All he could think about was that female mystery between her thighs, darkly fragrant and drenched with her desire for him.

His dick began to thicken again and he had to acknowledge the truth. He wanted her.
Wanted every inch of that soft mammary flesh, wanted the tiny swollen core of her sex he would find hidden behind her wet pink folds. He wanted all of it subject to his mouth and tongue. He wanted the wet heat his hard penis would find inside her womanly body, wanted to feel her vaginal muscles drawing him into her, all the way to her womb, wanted to lose his load deeply inside her and mark her.

Her argumentative stance on everything, her mind-set that conflicted with his
or her apparent self-centered attitude were
not
what put him on edge around her. Lord knew she wasn’t the first difficult person he had ever met. The thing that had him tied in knots was that unrequited primal yearning, as if he were some damn animal that had no control of his behavior.

Still, he was confused. He had disliked her all day, thought he still did. Yet, the last half hour of her company, her tiny voice and her tears, had returned his awareness of her vulnerability. She reeked of insecurities and had a wounded, helpless quality about her. She needed protection, needed it from him. And she wanted him, apparently as much as he wanted her. In summary, he was so homed in on both her and her body, he barely noticed what he was doing.

He left the shower, dried and walked to his dresser in the bedroom, still sporting half a hard-on. Being on the shady side of the house, his room was shadowed and quiet and cool. One of Johnnie Sue’s maids must have been working today. The air smelled of the soft floral scent that usually was present after they cleaned and changed his sheets. After the day he’d had, he found all of that relaxing. He didn’t mar the dim ambience by turning on a light.

He had no sooner pulled on clean boxers than his phone bleated. Recognizing Mandy’s ringtone, he stopped and gave the phone a look. A wave of guilt passed through him, as if Mandy knew his thoughts about Zochi.

He waited a few beats, clearing his mind and calling up a mental image of Mandy before keying into the call. “Hi, sugar.”

“Hi,” she said. “What’re you doing?”

Her voice held a smile. Perhaps she had not read his thoughts after all and he breathed a sigh of relief. He sank to the straight-backed chair at the end of the dresser, propped his elbow on the dresser and pressed the phone to his ear. “Just got out of the shower. Getting ready for supper.”

“Oh, yeah?” she said on a soft chuckle. “Too bad I wasn’t there. We could’ve made it interesting.”

From Mandy’s appearance, no one would ever guess how uninhibited she was when it came to sex. An image of her on her knees in front of him grew in his mind. He grinned, leaned back, extended one leg and slid his right hand inside his shorts. “You are one horny woman. What am I gonna do with you?”

“Hmm, I have some ideas.”

“Oh, yeah?...Me, too.” Already primed, he barely had to stroke his penis and it was hard again. Closing his eyes, he wrapped his hand around it, gently caressed it. “Ask me what I’m doing right now?”

“Dare I?” she asked softly.

“Hmm. I’ve got a handful of hot meat and it’s getting hotter and harder by the second.”

She chuckled, a low intimate laugh. “Aren’t you the silver-tongued devil.”

He, too, gave a soft heh-heh-heh. “You scoff. If I had you here, woman, I’d show you silver-tongued. As I recall yesterday morning, you not only thought my tongue was silver, you thought my cock was golden. You even kissed it.”

She giggled. “And I’d do it again, too, if I were there.”

“What are you doing, darlin’?”

“Until this phone call, I was relaxing. I swam a lot of laps today.”

Now he had a rock-hard erection harrying him for relief and the image of Mandy in a bathing suit floated into his thoughts. No gal looked better in a bathing suit than she did. “Were you wearing that teeny-weeny bikini, the one I took off you with my teeth that time on the river?”

Sunning together on a big slab of limestone beside the river, she had dared him and he had stripped her bare with his teeth. She gave a husky titter. “No, silly. I’d get arrested if I wore that to the school pool.”

“I’ve still got a picture in my head of you spread-eagle on that big rock that day. I still remember how it felt, nuzzling between your legs.” He closed his eyes, pulling at himself. He could come with only a little more stimulation. But he couldn’t until she did. He would never leave her hanging. A tiny grunt involuntarily escaped his mouth. “I remember pushing your thighs apart and…Lord, you tasted good that day.”

“Pic,” she said softly. “Are
you—are we having phone sex?”

“God, I’m hard, baby. Hard as a crowbar. I need to come. Bad. Where are you?”

“Um, in my living room.”

“All by yourself? What’re you wearing?”

“Shorts. And a sports bra.”

“Take all that off, darlin’. Go get that hot jelly stuff and come with me.” In Walmart of all places, she had bought something slick and hot that
they sometimes used to take sex between them to another level.

A pause. Then, “Hold on a minute.” Seconds passed before she came back on the phone. “I had to close the blinds.”

“Is it dark in your living room?”

“Kind of dim.” A pause. Then, “Have you got your clothes on?”

“Just my shorts. Did you take your clothes off? Did you get that hot stuff?”

“Oh, Pic,” she whined. “I wish you were here.”

He knew her. She had stripped. He closed his eyes and pictured her round breasts, the sexy delta of thick dark hair at her groin. “Aww, baby. Just pretend I am. Just lay back on the couch. Put your heels up on the edge of the cushion and let your knees open real wide, like you do sometimes when I eat you….

“Pic, are you....?”

“I’m playing with myself, yeah. Pumping nice and slow, just like when I’m inside you….It’s just you and me, baby. Are your knees spread open?

“Uh-huh.”

“Are you playing with yourself?”

He let the image take over his mind. Besides thoroughly exploring her sex with his fingers
and mouth, he had feasted with his eyes, loved that without inhibition, she let him watch her masterbate. “Hmm. I can see you in my head, baby….Your pretty pink petals, all glistening and wet. I can even see your dark little opening. It’s all creamy, just waiting for my cock to slide inside….Rub yourself with your fingers, baby. Are you wet and creamy?”

“Yes
ss,” she hissed.

He chuckled softly. “Can you see me? How I’m jacking my cock and panting like an ol’ dog?” Holding himself back and suppressing a groan, he swallowed, the action making a click in his ear. “Are you rubbing yourself, baby?”

“Uh-uh.” Her voice had become low and husky.

“Did you put some of that hot stuff on your sweet little clit?”

“God, Pic, it’s on fire,” she said breathily. “I don’t think I can stand it.”

His own voice lowered as his mind took him to how
hot and tight she felt when he was inside her. “Are you clenching inside and ready?”