Chapter Nine
Joss’s pulse skyrocketed as Troy gave the thumbs-up to the guy operating the switch and the mechanical beast whirred to life. If she had a heart monitor on her now she wouldn’t be surprised to see it belting along at a hundred and eighty.
The first pitch forward and back was quite slow but it picked up speed really fast and all Joss could do was shut her eyes, grip her thighs tighter and hang on. And hope like mad she got thrown off before she orgasmed from the friction being created from the rhythmic rub of the bucking bull between her legs.
It was giddying, like a fairground ride as her pulse washed loudly through her head and her breath sawed in and out in shallow pants. The crowd’s whooping and hollering came at her from a long way away as the wild pulse built between her legs.
If she didn’t have an orgasm she was probably going to have a stroke.
The bull jerked suddenly, her hand was ripped from the rope and she was tossed off in the blink of an eye. One second her ass was firmly seated the next there was nothing but air.
She arced in what seemed like slow motion, her eyes wide open, her brain registering the neon lights, big smiles and wild clapping as garish still-frames.
Her entire body felt alive in those seconds. Pulsing with energy. Tripping the light fantastic.
Joss came to her senses just before she hit the floor. Her self-preservation instincts overriding her pleasure center she tucked herself up into a ball, throwing her hands over her head as she landed on the cushioned comfort of foam mats.
Fortunately not with her skirt over her head.
She lay unmoving for a second or two, getting her bearings, coming back to earth mentally as well as physically.
“Woot! Four seconds!” Troy was there, his crooked nose close as he loomed over her, a big, excited grin firmly in place. “I’m impressed. Maybe next time do it with your eyes open?” He squatted beside her and helped her sit up. “How do you feel?”
Well…she hadn’t broken anything so that was a bonus. And she hadn’t had an orgasm either. Although, who knew what would have happened had she managed to go the full eight seconds.
“Did you like it?”
“I…don’t know,” she admitted as he offered her his hand and pulled her to her feet.
“You want to go again, right?”
Joss shook her head. Hell no. She didn’t trust that faint pulse she could still feel between her legs. “I just need some time to analyze it, is all.”
He laughed. “You science people think too much.”
“Yeah?” She snorted. “You bull riders don’t think enough. I can’t believe you do that shit for a living.”
He nodded, completely unabashed. “Wild, isn’t it?”
That was one word for it.
Joss’s body hummed with electricity. Her skin crackled with it. She was aware of the swish of her fringed skirt against her ankles, the scrape of lace against her nipples, the rub of her thighs.
“You wanna go and watch some stars?” They still had over two hours to kill before picking up Damien from work.
He blinked. She wasn’t sure if he was surprised at the content of her suggestion or that she’d suggested anything at all. “Sure.”
“Good. Let’s get out of here.”
And she headed for the exit, excruciatingly aware of the man behind her.
*
Troy followed Joss’s directions. Her mood was more subdued now but there was still an energy about her that was keeping his dick hard.
He knew that feeling.
That post-ride rush could affect a guy in many ways. He could party all night. He could pump iron til he dropped. Or he could fuck like it was his last day on earth.
He preferred what was behind door three. Joss looked like that was exactly the kind of therapy she needed too. And he was more than happy to be the beneficiary of her excess adrenaline if she was looking for someone to help burn it off.
He owed her one after all.
She took him out of town, directing him down back road after back road, twisting and turning and kicking up clouds of dust on the dirt tracks. On the way into town he’d passed land under crops but this landscape was different again, densely populated with forest. “You sure you’re not lost?” he asked after twenty minutes.
“Positive. Gus has dragged Damien and I out here about a dozen times this last year. Reckons it’s the best spot for stargazing, away from the lights of town.”
Troy looked around at the dense forest looming all around him on the dirt track. “It looks like the kind of place serial killers come to bury their victims.”
She laughed, uncrossing her legs. She’d been doing that the entire trip. Crossing them and uncrossing them. Like she had ants in her pants.
Or maybe the kind of itch that only a man could scratch.
“Not much longer.”
Two minutes later she pointed to another dirt road looming to the left. “Turn here.”
Troy turned and in less than a minute they’d come to a clearing. It was a few football fields long and wide and they were surrounded by trees on all four sides. There’d obviously been something here once for the forest to have been cleared back but it wasn’t here now, just a big empty clearing perfect for all things celestial, the trees blocking any ambient light.
He drove into the middle of the clearing and cut the engine and lights. There was nothing but silence and the deep black of night.
“C’mon,” she said, smiling at him as she pushed her door open. “Let’s put the tailgate down and get in the back.”
Troy opened his mouth to object but she’d already gone. He smiled to himself as he exited the vehicle. “The back’s not exactly clean,” he said as he joined her. He carried a lot of his kit in the tray and it tended to smell permanently like bull.
“I don’t mind a bit of dirt.”
Troy chuckled. That was good to know. It wasn’t the kind of dirty he was hoping for though. “I’ve got a better idea.”
It was dark but the starlight was bright and his eyes adjusted quickly noting the ground was well cleared and even. He grabbed her hand and she didn’t resist—a fact that tugged somewhere in the vicinity of his heart as he trudged to the front of the pickup.
He drummed the fingers of his uninjured arm on the hood. “Hop on up.”
She glanced from his fingers to him, a frown knitting her brows. “Aren’t you worried about damaging your hood?”
“Nah. This thing’s built like a brick shithouse.”
She laughed and it rang clear in the silent night. “You sound very Australian sometimes.”
Troy grinned. “Thank you.”
“Are you sure?” She slid her hands on to the hood, her knuckles whitening slightly as she tested the strength of the metal. “Mmm,” she murmured. “It’s nice and warm.”
“Which is exactly why it’s perfect.” It wasn’t cold exactly but the night had cooled down and there was the lightest of breezes. “Need some help?”
She waved his hand away. “I got it.”
And she did, using his fender to boost her onto the hood, twisting around and sliding all the way back until she was reclined against his windshield. She turned her face toward the heavens and sighed. “This was a good idea.”
Troy’s gaze wandered up her body. From the tips of her toenails, to the outline of her thighs beneath her slippery skirt and higher still to her pale pink cotton shirt with the five tiny buttons that had been driving him nuts all night.
His gaze lingered on the swell of her breasts. Her ponytail was draped over her right breast and the urge to see her hair out and lose around her head beat like a drum through his blood. Reluctantly his eyes moved further north to the long white stretch of her neck as she gazed above her. It looked soft and vulnerable and kissable.
This had been a very good idea.
“Are you joining me or not?” she grouched, lifting her head from the windshield, peering down her body.
Troy didn’t need any more encouragement. He shoved his boot on the fender and hoisted himself up, crawling one-handed toward the windshield, turning when he reached his destination and easing himself in beside her, his arm just brushing hers.
It was a perfect night for stargazing. Clear and crisp, the moon not yet risen to obscure any of the stars with its milky glow. A billion pricks of light twinkled down at them from a vast velvet dome.
Neither of them said anything for long moments. Words seemed insignificant in the face of such overwhelming grandeur. Staring at a night sky sure put his puny life into perspective.
It was a different sky to the ones he was used to back home. Different hemisphere, different stars, different constellations. No mighty southern cross. But no less pretty. No less vast.
“Isn’t it magnificent?” she whispered finally into the hush.
“It sure is.”
“I didn’t realize how few stars I’d seen in my life until I moved here.”
Troy nodded, his gaze fixed above him. “Yeah. It was the first thing I noticed in the Top End. The skies at night blew my mind. I never knew the meaning of small until then, you know?”
“Yeah.” Her voice was hushed as if she didn’t want to break the magic of the night.
And it felt magical. Like they were the only two people in the world. Like Adam and Eve. Like whatever happened between them next had already been foretold.
“So, guru.” He broke the silence, his voice still low. “Teach me about your American stars.”
She laughed and it rang into the night air. “Oh God. I can’t remember most of them. The big dipper’s up there somewhere. Gus is the enthusiast. You’ll have to ask him to bring you out here.”
Yeah…Troy really liked Gus but the idea of being out here with him didn’t have quite the same appeal.
“He even has a whizz bang telescope for seeing them up close.”
The only thing Troy was interested in seeing up close didn’t require a telescope. She was right beside him and he preferred to use touch. And taste.
She sighed and it sounded deeply content in the quiet. “I wonder if we’ll see a shooting star?”
“Maybe.” It felt like anything was possible tonight.
“What would you wish for if we did?”
Troy wasn’t sure shooting star wishes should be used for something as base as getting a woman naked so he didn’t go there. “Getting back to the circuit as quickly as possible.”
She didn’t say anything for a beat or two. “What would happen if you didn’t?”
“That’s not an option.” Troy’s brain refused to even go there.
“But what if you didn’t? For some reason? Humor me.”
He didn’t see anything humorous about that. “My sponsors would be pretty pissed off.”
She glanced at him. “You have sponsors?”
“I have three major sponsors.” A beer brand, a watch brand and an underwear company. “Each contract is worth six figures.”
“Six figures?” Joss raised herself up on her elbows, gaping now.
“Sure.” He shrugged. “Money can be pretty lousy if you’re not winning every stage so sponsorship is important.
She stared at him for a moment or two before lowering herself back to the windshield. “That’s…wow.”
Troy smiled at the note of astonishment in her voice. “It’s another reason why I’m so keen to get back into the extreme tour. The sponsors are giving me some breathing space but it won’t last forever.”
“I see.”
They stared heavenward again, lost in the vastness of space. Troy rolled his head to the side, his gaze falling on her profile. Starlight slanted across her mouth. “What would you wish for if we saw a shooting star?”
She sighed. “To be able to fly.”
“What?” He laughed. Troy had expected something more serious. Like a cure for cancer or maybe bringing her husband back. He hadn’t expected wings.
If he didn’t know better he’d say she was drunk.
“Do you mean growing wings or like a superpower where you can will yourself to fly?”
She appeared to consider the question deeply. “A superpower I think. Wings would get in the way. Plus they’d freak out my patients. Unless I could magically tuck them away somehow and they were all sparkly.” Her voice was dreamy as she stared straight up. “That’d be cool.”
Troy laughed again. This was a totally insane conversation. He’d thought her sexy as hell watching her ride that bull, tonight. Her lips parted, her eyes closed, a strange mix of fear and something else he hadn’t been able to put his finger on. But dreamy Joss, lying under a star-laden sky was a whole other level of sexy.
She waggled her head against the windshield as if to rid herself of the fanciful notion. “God, that sounded mad even to my own ears. Ignore me. I still feel really wired.”
“It’s the adrenaline.”
“No way.” She waggled her head again, her denial soft in the night. “I understand adrenaline and this isn’t it.”
Troy supposed she did. As a doctor she probably knew more about it than he did. She probably understood all the physics and body chemistry behind it.
But adrenaline was something to be ridden, not analyzed.
“Ninety-nine percent of my work is boring mundane stuff,” she continued, her gaze fixed skyward. “Colds and flus and fevers. Sprains, strains, broken bones. Gastro outbreaks. And then there’s one percent, which is all go go go. All life and death with no time to think. You have to respond, to act. Everything you do is critical. Every decision you make is vital. You could power Chicago on the amount of adrenaline running through my system.”
Troy watched her mouth move, fascinated by its curves as she talked about an entirely different adrenaline to the one she was currently experiencing. Fight-or-flight adrenaline wasn’t the same. He’d been exposed to that plenty in his earlier years. Running from cops, getting into fights, hiding in a cupboard when his father was having one of his drug-induced psychotic episodes.
The adrenaline that had her in its grip was the kind that gave you a high not usually found in legal ways.
“When it’s all done it leaves me shaky and strung out. I usually want to barf. But this…” She rolled her head to the side to look at him, their gazes, hooded in the night, locked. “I feel like I could fly right now with or without the shooting star.”
Troy nodded. “Great, isn’t it? That’s why I ride bulls.”
“Oh no.” She shuddered. “I don’t ever want to feel like this again. I don’t feel in control. If I wasn’t so spacey I’d be terrified.”
He chuckled at her honesty. “You learn how to manage it.”
“Oh yeah? So what do you bull riders do with it all at the end of the night?”
Troy shrugged. “A lot of guys party hard.”
“Do you?”
“Sometimes.” The truth was Troy preferred a party for two.
“And what do you do the other times?”
Troy was reluctant to answer on the grounds he might incriminate himself. He’d never been apologetic about his sex life to anyone. He’d slept with a lot of women. They’d all been more than willing to have a wild one-night stand with the Wonder from Down Under and he’d been very grateful for their attentions.
He always used condoms, gave a good as he got and he didn’t kiss and tell.
But looking into Joss’s eyes under the vast night sky he wished he wasn’t bringing that kind of baggage with him. That he was just some regular Joe with a regular past. Not sexual hijinks. Not abuse and addiction and delinquency.
I’m not worried.
That’s what she’d told him earlier tonight and the belief behind those words had slugged him hard. He wasn’t sure why the hell he’d opened up to her. He never talked about that shit. Until tonight. And her faith in him had been humbling.
He couldn’t change his past. For good and ill it had made him the man he was.
But, for the first time ever, he wished he was…better.
“Ohhhh.” A light dawned in her eyes that had nothing to do with the stars and her gaze dropped to his mouth. “So you…”
Troy’s breath hitched as her sentence trailed off. “Yes.”
She didn’t move for a few seconds, just kept staring at his mouth. He was a little worried that she’d actually stopped breathing until the hand that had been lying by her side between them, slowly breached the small gap separating them. Her fingers, cool from the night air, tentatively touched his lips and his eyes drifted shut for a beat or two.
It was the merest of touches—a butterfly wing—but she might as well have shoved her hand down his jeans for the chain reaction that happened in his body.
His dick was achingly hard.
Her fingers slid away and he opened his eyes to find her still staring at him, her fingers resting against the top button of his shirt. His heart thumped so hard, Troy was surprised the bloody thing hadn’t popped open.
Hell, he was surprised the entire car wasn’t shaking.
Slowly, her hand gathered the fabric of his shirt until she was clutching a handful of it at the base of his throat.
It may have been significantly north of his balls but it felt like she was clutching them instead.
“This is bad,” she whispered.
Troy wasn’t going to pretend he didn’t know what she meant because he agreed. Even at such short acquaintance he knew that Joss wasn’t his typical one-night-stand woman. She had a kid and roots and community. She didn’t do this.
She was complicated.
But bad had never felt this damn good.
“I can’t remember ever wanting to kiss someone this much,” she whispered.
The husky edge to her voice stroked down his spine like the drag of a fingernail. “Then kiss me.”
She drew in a shaky breath. “I’m not going to have sex with you.”
“Okay.” Troy’s voice was as husky as hers. He ached to be buried balls deep inside her but he would take whatever crumbs she was willing to throw him.
Already he knew that.
Already he was in way over his head.