CHAPTER FOUR
ALLIE PACED ACROSS her living room and wondered if Ryder had been kidnapped. Of course, the chances of something like that happening in Wrangler’s Creek were slim to none. And she certainly didn’t wish for that to happen. Still, it would be one explanation for why he hadn’t knocked on her door.
One hour and forty-five minutes.
That was how long it’d been since Ryder had thrown down the sexual gauntlet. Then, Allie had hurried home, showered and gotten ready for what she’d hoped would be one unforgettable evening. She’d even lined up an argument or two in case Ryder was having doubts and showed up to call things off. Even though Ryder had been the one to throw that gauntlet, it was possible—highly possible, even—that he not only had doubts, but that he also wouldn’t show.
With that thought clamping around her heart like a gorilla’s fist, Allie sank down onto the sofa, put her face in her hands and willed herself not to cry. Tears never helped anything, and besides, she’d known it’d been a huge risk letting Ryder know just how attracted she was to him.
A risk that could ruin their friendship.
When she was with him, and the lust was zinging back and forth, it was much easier to convince herself that sex wouldn’t ruin anything. That it would make it better. Yes, better. She had to admit now that lust could talk her into just about anything when it came to Ryder, and the ankle hickey was proof of that.
The hickey had faded, and the heat generated from the flirting and kissing in the tack room was just a memory. A very vivid memory, but still it wasn’t happening now, and it might never happen again.
The gorilla fist squeezed even harder.
Allie blinked back those blasted tears that kept threatening, waited several more minutes, and then she got to feet, ready to throw in the towel. There were four pints of rocky-road ice cream in the freezer, but she’d start with the spray can of cheese. It wouldn’t taste especially good, but before the Crab Posse had been of legal age to drown their sorrows at the Longhorn Bar, it had become their go-to vice.
Easy Cheesy cures all.
Sometimes, the cure had gotten really messy when it had become an all-out spray-cheese war with Curt, Bree, Ryder and her. That had often resulted in better moods but the necessity for showers and shampoo.
She popped the top of the bacon-and-cheddar-cheese goo and squirted a gob in her mouth—just as there was a knock on her door.
“Ryder,” she said on a gasp of breath. Well, she said it as well as she could say anything, considering the massive cheese-product obstacle that was now in her mouth.
With the can still in her hand, Allie ran through the living room, forcing herself to slow down just so she wouldn’t look overly eager. But she had to ditch the hope of looking less eager because she couldn’t hold back from throwing open the door.
It was Ryder, all right. And he had his own can of spray cheese.
“I was kidnapped,” Ryder blurted out. He stepped around her and inside.
Allie waited for the punchline, but it didn’t come, and Ryder certainly didn’t look as if anything funny had recently happened to him.
“Bree,” he continued a moment later. “As I was changing my clothes, she came rushing into the bedroom, threw a pillowcase over my head and said she was kidnapping me.”
Allie managed to swallow the cheese. “Why?”
“Because my idiot twin thought I was swimming in a self-pity pit over Curt’s moving, and Bree believed the best way to get me out of that pit was to conk me on the head and drag me to the Longhorn for that blasted drink.”
“She hit you?”
Ryder leaned down, pushed away some of his thick golden-brown hair and showed her the bump. “Bree did that with this.” He held up the can of nacho cheese. “She said it was an accident, that she hadn’t meant to give me a concussion, but for shit’s sake, it hurt. Still does. So, anyway, that’s why I’m late.”
As excuses went, that one was a doozy, and despite the injury and Ryder’s sour mood, it instantly lifted Allie’s spirits. He’d come. And that meant...well, she wasn’t sure exactly what that meant yet, but he was here, and that was a start.
He tipped his head to the cheese can gripped in her hand. “Did Bree pay you a visit, too?”
“No.” But she probably should have said yes since Ryder instantly knew the can meant she’d been battling the blues. Because of him being late. No way would she eat the stuff because it was actually good.
“Sorry,” he mumbled.
Now she tipped her head to his cheese can. “Did you bring that in with you so I could drown my sorrows?”
He shook his head but then shrugged. “I thought maybe we’d need it if I got past being stupid and put a stop to what we both are probably thinking about stopping.”
It took Allie a moment to work her way through that wordy explanation, but it sounded like good news. Good news to her anyway. “You didn’t get past being stupid,” she spelled out, but wished it sounded better than what she’d meant. “I’m glad.”
He shrugged again, his eyes meeting hers. “I just want to make sure we’ve both thought this all the way through.” But he immediately added a string of curse words to that when his phone dinged with a text. From across the room, Allie’s dinged, too, which meant this was likely a group message. “So help me, if that’s Bree I’m going to throttle her... It’s Curt,” he said when he set aside the cheese can and looked at his phone.
“‘Back from my honeymoon.’” Ryder read Curt’s message aloud. “‘Happier than a bull with two peckers. Got a text, though, from Bree about an hour ago.’” Ryder continued to read. “‘She sounded all down or something, but she just texted back to say she was hooking up with Roman Granger. Now I think she’s as happy as a bull with three peckers.’”
Allie could understand Bree feeling that way. Roman was a hot bad boy, and the free-spirited Bree was always up for the kind of trouble Roman would be looking to dish out. It lessened Allie’s feelings of guilt because of the “all down or something” observation Curt had made about Bree. But Roman wasn’t going to be a permanent fix.
Nothing was.
“Things will never be the same,” Allie said, repeating what had come up at the wedding. Judging from the puzzled look on his face, Ryder seemed to have a deeper understanding of that now. At least she hoped that was why that look was there, and not because of his head injury.
It was time for her to make the argument she’d worked on before he’d arrived, so she placed her cheese can on the table next to his, and she took him by the hand to lead him to the sofa. With the puzzled look still in place, he sat, and she hurried to get him the bottle of beer that she had waiting for him in the fridge. Because of the hangover from Hades from the week before, Allie stuck with water.
His puzzled look turned to one of suspicion when she sat beside him and picked up her laptop that she’d purposely left on the coffee table. “I want to show you a dirty picture,” she said.
He blinked. “Porn?”
“Not exactly.” But she had gotten his attention just as she’d planned. Allie clicked on the photo she’d loaded and angled the screen so that it was right in Ryder’s face.
“Holy hell.” He didn’t exactly scramble away from it, but it was close. He moved back as far as he could go and still be on the couch.
That had been Allie’s reaction, too, when she’d first found it. “It’s a good example of the point I’m trying to prove.”
He stared at her at if she’d lost it. “It’s a photo of a really old couple having sex.” Ryder glanced at it again. “Is that the guy’s butt or just super wrinkly boxers?”
“His butt,” she verified, but she’d been confused at first, as well. Equally confused why the couple—who were ninety if they were a day—had thought it a good idea to post something like that.
“And the point you’re trying to prove,” Ryder said, “is what?”
“You can’t unsee that, right?”
His agreement was fast and firm.
“Well, I can’t unsee what I saw in the hayloft,” Allie continued. “You were naked, and I saw every inch of you. Every. Inch,” she emphasized. “That means I’ll always have that memory with me wherever we go from here.”
He stayed quiet a moment. “I have some of those memories of you, too.”
Good. She hoped the ones he had were as visually appealing as hers were of him.
Allie looked him straight in the eyes. “Ryder, we can’t be just friends. Not anymore.”
There. It was all spelled out, and except for the bunched-up face Ryder kept making when he would glance at the old couple, she thought it would soon sink in.
“So, you’re saying we’re screwed either way we go?” he asked.
Allie would have said yes, a fast and firm one, but she didn’t get a chance. That was because Ryder took hold of her, pulled her to him and kissed her.
Despite the failed kidnapping attempt, the disturbing senior-sex photo and the strong possibility that he was ruining things with his best friend, Ryder was surprisingly okay with this kiss.
Of course, it was a good kiss, one that dissolved any shred of common sense, so he had to admit that it could be the main reason for the okay feeling. That and he knew it wasn’t going to stop at just a kiss.
Nope.
Allie and he had started this a week ago, and they were going to finish it whether it was the right thing to do or not. It certainly seemed right, and judging from that sweet sound of pleasure she made, Allie was in his corner on this.
And speaking of corners, that was where they landed—the corner of the sofa with her arms wrapped around him, pulling him closer and closer until it wasn’t possible to get any closer. Well, it was, but it was going to take them getting rid of their clothes to accomplish that.
Allie didn’t seem to have a problem with that, either. While the kiss raged on, she squeezed her hand between them to the front of his shirt and started playing with his buttons. It wasn’t just the flirty touching that she’d done earlier in the barn; this was actual touching, and it got even better when she undid enough buttons to get her hand in his shirt.
Now her fingers dallied around on his chest. It was nice, very nice, but it got a whole lot better when Ryder returned the favor and turned the dallying tables on her. He slipped his hand beneath her top and into her bra.
Oh, man.
This second-base foreplay already felt like it was only seconds away from hauling her off to bed, but if this did indeed turn out to be a mistake, Ryder intended to make the most of it. He broke the kiss so he could sample what was on the other side of the flimsy lace bra she was wearing.
Allie made more sounds of pleasure and need, which, of course, only fired him up even more. It also upped the urgency inside him, but Allie went for broke in the urgency department when she pressed her hand to the front of his jeans.
Yes, this was definitely going to lead to sex.
That was the last coherent thought Ryder had for a couple of seconds because while Allie kept touching him, she also kissed his neck. And she used her tongue. Talk about hitting his prime hot spot, and she could generate enough heat to melt a glacier with that mouth.
Ryder knew he had to do something, and that was when he went for another round of table turning—literally. He hooked his arm around her neck, shifting her out of the sofa corner. He wasn’t quite sure how it happened, but they ended up on the coffee table.
The things that had been on the table clattered to the floor, but they both ignored it because the new position and kisses inspired them to get naked. It went a lot faster than the strip poker had. He had her top off in seconds. Ditto for her bra. He would have gone after her skirt, but her breasts distracted him. He was mindless when it came to that sort of thing, and he had to kiss and taste some more before he could move on.
Moving on, though, was worth the effort because once he had the skirt off, he saw her panties. They weren’t the same ones she’d had on in the hayloft, but he knew these would be just as memorable.
So was what was beneath.
He got proof positive of that when he shimmied off her panties. He kissed his way back up her body as she cursed him and tugged at him. Ryder thought she was either trying to make this end way too fast or she was aiming to get his clothes off. Since he didn’t want things to go in the too-fast direction, he helped her. Not easily. Because he soon learned that Allie intended to continue those torturing neck kisses while he got out of his jeans and put on a condom.
When Ryder finally pushed into her, he made darn sure he was looking straight into her eyes. That way he could see if there was any hesitation.
There wasn’t.
There was only the glow of pleasure, complete with lust-glazed eyes and a gusting breath. It was perfect.
Just as Allie was.
He’d always known that, of course, but this was perfect on steroids.
“Finish it,” she whispered, her voice both sweet and hot at the same time. “Easy Cheesy can’t cure this, but you can.”
Yes, he could. He finished it while one of their favorite mantras pulsed through his head.
Nothing can go wrong with that.