Chapter Five
Cody had no idea what the hell he was doing.
He’d kept hold of Skylar’s wrist and he’d escorted her out of the restaurant, then helped her into his truck like they were on a sweet little date. When he didn’t date and wasn’t sweet, because why pretend he was interested in anything other than one thing—which he could find a whole lot quicker in a bar? No sweetness required. And now he was driving out of Billings proper as the last of the July light seemed to singe the edges of the Rimrocks with this woman beside him and he had no idea why he hadn’t simply nodded politely and then walked away when her father had introduced them.
But that wasn’t any kind of explanation.
There was a too-pretty woman sitting in the cab of his truck, with that unreadable, crooked smile aimed out the window as he followed the Yellowstone River out of town. Cody had already had her and he didn’t do second helpings. It wasn’t worth the hassle. He should have been delighted to hear that she didn’t want anything else from him. He should have taken her at her word.
But instead, he’d taken her with him.
Now she was close enough that he could smell her and it was driving him a little crazy. Maybe that was the explanation. It wasn’t the spun-sugar scent of her skin that he remembered despite himself, and could still taste, but something else. Maybe a perfume. Maybe whatever soap she used. Either way it was a hint of cedar and something warm, the way sunlight would smell if it could.
And now he was a goddamned poet. What the hell was the matter with him?
Cody needed to turn his truck around and get her away from him before he did something even stupider than this. But he didn’t. He didn’t even slow down.
“I thought the tour stayed in a hotel,” Skylar said. She didn’t sound accusing or even particularly worried. She was still staring out the window as if she’d never seen this part of Billings before, and she sounded completely relaxed about the fact that he was driving her away from the city. And all the people. And any kind of safety.
There was no reason that should irritate him. But it did. His voice was clipped and a little too pissed when he answered her.
“The tour does. I don’t.”
He felt her gaze on him for a moment, but then it was gone again and he hated the fact that he could feel anything. Much less that. Her. When he glanced over, she had her fingers laced together in the depression her dress made between her thighs, and he had no idea why that seemed to fall through him like water cascading over rock. As if he’d remember it forever, Skylar Grey in his truck with the last little bit of summer light making her glow, with her hands in her lap and that lopsided smile on her face.
It was like he was in a trance.
Cody shook it off, and tried to figure out what it was about her smile that bugged him so much. Maybe it was because it wasn’t quite a smile. Not really. It was just that maddening tilt of her lips in the corners that made her look entirely too satisfied. Too pleased with herself.
As if she knew something he didn’t.
“Maybe you should be a little more concerned that I abducted you from the middle of the city and am driving you out to parts unknown,” he heard himself say, like a psycho.
She didn’t quite laugh, but the sound she made was close enough that he found himself suddenly obsessed with hearing that rusty, surprised, real laughter he’d heard the other night, out there in the woods. He could almost feel the scrape of it again, moving over him like her hands on his skin.
“I wouldn’t suggest you do me any harm.” This time when she looked his way, she kept that blue gaze of hers on him long enough for him to catch it. “Everybody in that restaurant saw me leave with Cody Galen, veteran star of the American Extreme Bull Riders Tour. I’m sure they’re gossiping about it right now. If I don’t turn up safe and sound after such a public abduction, you’ll spend the weekend explaining yourself to the authorities. I imagine I’m safer with you tonight than I would be with my own father.”
He should have found her irritating. He clearly wanted to find her irritating.
But instead, Cody was the one to laugh. “Not quite that safe, darlin’.”
He could feel the temperature change in the truck. He knew the look he threw at her as he took the road that led out of town was charged. Electric. Filled with all that dark need that had been clawing at him since he’d realized who Billy Grey was taking him across the restaurant to meet.
It had seemed inevitable that it would be her, standing there with her back to the party. And he knew he could have headed the entire interaction off at the pass if he’d wanted. He could have avoided the potential awkwardness and continued doing what passed for his glad-handing routine all around. There’d been no reason to let Billy introduce him to his daughter.
This felt inevitable too. A back road leading out into the middle of nowhere. A pretty girl and all that hunger heating up the space between them. Cody couldn’t seem to help himself.
“Why don’t you want to stay with the rest of the tour?” she asked after a while. After the lights of Billings had dimmed a bit, and they were driving out on a country road deep into the thick embrace of a Montana summer night.
That wasn’t the kind of question he usually answered.
Cody didn’t want to think about what it was about her that was so different. He didn’t want to think. If he hadn’t wanted more from her than what he’d already gotten on that picnic table, he would have handled this situation back there in that restaurant. In a bathroom or closet with a lock. Out in an alley, if necessary. He wasn’t picky. And he was pretty confident that even if she was, generally speaking, he probably could have convinced her otherwise.
He’d always been a greedy bastard. He’d wanted more than that. And apparently more than that came with the kinds of questions he usually refused to entertain.
Of course, Skylar wasn’t the tour promoter, forever on his case about the interviews Cody should be doing and the narrative he should be selling to cater to the fans—who apparently found cowboys risking their lives on the backs of animals that could kill them in an instant insufficiently dramatic. She wasn’t one of the cloying, drunk women he gravitated toward because it was easy, who giggled instead of asking questions, and knew better than to ask him for more than he gave.
From the sleek way she styled her hair to the dresses she wore, neat and tailored to her body without in any way overtly emphasizing her form, Skylar had good, decent woman written all over her. With a touch of something sophisticated besides. And having met her father, Cody figured that came directly from her.
It was the way she held herself, even sitting there in the cab of his truck. She kept her back straight, her hands folded in her lap. She didn’t slouch or hunker down in the seat. She didn’t prop her feet up on the dashboard. She wasn’t a cowgirl, she wasn’t a skank, she wasn’t even a fan of bull riding as far as he could tell. And yet he couldn’t remember ever wanting another woman more.
“Is that a tricky question?” she asked, reminding him that he’d let her question sit there. She didn’t actually shrug, but it was there in her voice. “You don’t have to tell me if it is.”
And he shouldn’t have felt disarmed. Out of his depth, when there was almost nothing he was better at than taking a woman home with him. There was no reason that tonight should feel different from a hundred other nights out on tour, from Oklahoma to Washington to Florida and back again, all one big blur. There was no reason Skylar should be any different. There was no reason she should stand out, in perfect focus.
But she was. She did. There was no getting past it.
He’d watched her walk away from him in her father’s backyard and he’d thought about little else since. Not something he wanted to admit, but then again, maybe that was why he heard himself talking about things he didn’t talk about. Ever.
“The tour is different when you’re young,” he said gruffly. “You’re on the road all the time. You don’t have much money, because you’re not that good. You have your moments to shine, sure. It’s how you got on the tour in the first place and you have to keep your ranking. But sustaining a high score across a weekend, and then a season—that’s the hard part.”
He barely remembered that kid. All he remembered was the anger. It was all he’d had going for him back then. Anger and his ability to channel it all into eight perfect seconds, just him and a bull in a wild, raw dance.
“Anyone can have one good ride,” he said now. “It’s having a good ride every time you get on the bull, or most of the time, that makes a career.”
“Sounds like the only people who could really understand that would be the people who were doing it right along with you,” she ventured. “But maybe I’m missing something.”
“My first few years, the other riders were my brothers. Family.” He refused to talk about his own family. He couldn’t be that far gone, surely. This was bad enough. “But that was a long time ago.”
He expected her to comment on that, but she didn’t. Because apparently, Skylar didn’t do a damn thing that he expected her to do. Cody kept his eyes on the road and his hands on the wheel, and didn’t let himself think too much about the fact that his mouth kept moving.
“The best friend I made on the tour is in a wheelchair now. He got carried out of an arena in Texas and he’ll never walk again. The others dropped off here and there. A lot of injuries. Surgery after surgery, always thinking the next one might fix what getting stomped on by a pissed-off bull broke. It never does. Or there are babies and wives and a whole lot more concerns about all those concussions, suddenly.” He shrugged. “What no one wants to talk about is that sooner or later, you lose the fire for it. And you can’t do it without the fire, because all you are then is a crazy man with too many stress fractures who might die if he goes back out there one more time.”
He’d never said that out loud before. Cody wasn’t sure he could have articulated it quite like that—not to anyone else. Not anywhere else. And now it was out there and all he wanted was to shove it back inside.
But she didn’t give him a pep talk. She didn’t make sympathetic sounds that he would have found unbearable. She didn’t try to commiserate with him.
“Lose the fire of anything,” she said after a moment, very matter-of-factly, as if they were talking about the kind of thing everybody did, “and of course it feels like a chore.”
Cody rubbed his hand over his chest before he realized what he was doing. He slapped it back on the steering wheel and scowled out into the darkness. “Except the chore in this case is a thousand-pound and then some pissed-off bull who wants to stomp your ass. And will, first chance he gets.”
She laughed at that, that scrape of sound that made him think she didn’t laugh much, and there was no reason it should make him scowl less.
“I grant you that losing the fire that makes you want to be a barista, for example, just leads to you making a substandard latte,” Skylar said. “It’s not the same as jumping on a bull. But then again, what is?”
That was the question that had kept him doing it all these years. The question that made him set his jaw and ignore all the minor, survivable agonies that would take other men down. What got him to tape himself up and do it night after night. He liked the money. He liked to win. He liked that he’d been able to help his half-sisters. But he’d always loved the sport.
“It’s easy to fall out of love with bull riding, Skylar,” he said now. “Because everything hurts, always, and torn ligaments and broken bones are just all in a weekend’s ride. Win or lose, you’re still gonna hurt.”
She shifted beside him, but she didn’t say anything, and he kept going. Like this was some kind of confessional, the dark road outside his truck and the quiet within. That scent of hers: cedar and sun. That thing in his chest that was clawing its way out whether he wanted it to or not.
“You’re always on the road. City after city until you can’t tell the difference between them and don’t even care. One hotel room after another until you forget where you are or that you ever had roots somewhere else. And the truth is that you can do everything right. You can train and test yourself, eat right and practice, get your head right and still get a bull who isn’t in the mood to do his part. That leaves you busted up and pissed off and hundreds of miles from home for nothing. That’s the life.” He sighed. “I’m sick of the life.”
“I hope that’s not a cry for help.” But her voice was light. Soft and teasing. And with that other thread in it that pricked at him, as if he should understand it. Recognize it, when he didn’t. Or didn’t want to. “I don’t want to see you doing a little suicide by Bushwacker tomorrow night.”
He was talking about things he didn’t talk about. This whole night had been him behaving in a way he didn’t behave. And still, his lips twitched at that. “Bushwacker retired years ago.”
And had never been one of the legendary bulls on the American Extreme Bull Riders Tour, but he didn’t point that out.
“I’m sure he has a successor who’s just as mean.” Skylar let out that rusty little laugh, and he didn’t get how it was more effective than another woman’s hands all over him. He didn’t understand what she was doing to him. “There’s never any shortage of ornery bulls.”
“Maybe not.” He shook his head, because this strange trance that still had him in its grip had to go. “But I do take some pride in being the most ornery bull rider on the tour.”
Another laugh. “Is there a lot of competition for the title?”
“No, ma’am, there is not. Because I dominate in all things, but that especially.” Cody could have kept it light. Funny. He didn’t know why he didn’t. “I keep to myself. I don’t need more friends I’m going to have to visit in hospitals, then have to lie to when I tell them they’ll be fine. No more graves I’m going to have to stand over. No more. This is my last season.”
He hadn’t said that out loud either to anyone but his mother, and not so starkly. He was in his thirties, which made him ancient in bull-riding circles. He got asked all the time what his retirement plans were and how much longer he thought he’d stay and fight, and he always mouthed something noncommittal. Except here. With her.
Of course.
Skylar didn’t say anything, and he couldn’t tell if it was because she didn’t understand the magnitude of what he’d told her or possibly didn’t care. He didn’t think it was that second one, but what did he know? Still, a kind of agitation gnawed at him as he turned off the main road and followed the dirt track that wound its way down to a deserted little field near the river. His headlights picked up his Airstream right where he’d left it, looking sleek and shiny in the dark.
“Oh,” she said softly. “You bring your roots with you on tour. That makes sense.”
Cody would never have put it that way.
“I like to be alone,” he muttered. He pulled up to the trailer and turned the truck off and for a moment they sat there in the dark.
“Change is hard,” Skylar said while his eyes were still adjusting. “No matter what. No matter why. It’s always, always hard. Believe me, I understand.”
“I didn’t intend to get philosophical,” he told her then. “Or whatever this was. I think I was pretty clear that my intention was to get laid. Repeatedly. All night long, in fact, despite the fact I need my sleep.”
This time, she really laughed, and there was nothing rusty about it. It filled up the cab of the truck, and his chest, too.
“Well, thank goodness this long drive out into the middle of nowhere didn’t get awkward or anything,” she said, her voice thick with that laughter. It felt like her hands all over him. “I mean think what could have happened. All those dark promises of a night of passion—a full one this time, to separate it from the other night, which for some reason couldn’t stand on its own. And instead it’s all become metaphor and philosophy and how bull riding is life, really. Except more painful. And here we are, down by a river near a lonely old trailer like a country song.” She shook her head, and more of that scent filled the air between them, making him feel hollowed out with need. “And I know you must know that a country song never ends well, especially for a cowboy.”
Cody laughed at that. Her. He didn’t question it. And he didn’t think about what he was doing. He just reached over and got his hands on her, at last. At last. He hauled her toward him, down the bench seat and then up onto his lap, and then finally—finally—he shut himself up, and put his mouth where it belonged. On hers.
She tasted better than he remembered, and in his memory she was spectacular.
It was all fire. Sugar and flame. She was sweet and she was hot and she didn’t play any games. She wrapped her arms around his neck as she fought to get closer to him. She angled her jaw and took him deeper, as if she was mimicking what she knew was going to happen later. What needed to happen now.
Him deep inside her, forever, if he could swing it.
But here, now, he reveled in the feel of her on his lap. This pretty thing, this unreadable woman, who made a lot more sense to him when she was making those greedy little noises in the back of her throat.
It almost hurt to pull his mouth from hers. But he did it.
“Let me guess,” she whispered against his mouth, and moved a little on his lap in emphasis. “You’re going to tell me some more about that one good ride.”
She was going to kill him. And he was going to like it.
But it wasn’t going to happen in his damn truck.
Cody wrenched open his door and climbed out, pulling her with him. It wasn’t the slickest move he’d ever made, but he didn’t much care when she just let herself fall against him, the soft weight of her as welcome as a touch. Better.
He even found himself holding her hand, taking it in his as he walked toward the trailer. But she only went a few steps, then stopped. She pulled back against his hand and he realized she was tipping her head back to stare up at the night sky.
“You can’t ignore the stars,” she told him when he stopped walking too. “There are people in places all over the world who look up and don’t see anything. The lights of the city they live in, maybe. Their neighbor’s house. But not this.”
Cody couldn’t remember the last time he’d looked at the damn stars. Deliberately, anyway. But that was the trouble with Skylar. She kept getting under his skin. He couldn’t seem to resist her and that was no good. He knew it. She was the kind of trouble he knew he didn’t want.
But he didn’t do anything about it. He didn’t toss her back in his truck and drive her back into town, then wash his hands of her the way he knew he should. Instead, he moved so he could wrap his arms around her, like somebody’s boyfriend, and he tipped his own head back to stare at the stars along with her.
Like he was that guy.
And then he made it worse, because they stood there like that for a long time.
“I lived in Atlanta for years,” she said, softly.
Maybe she was yelling, he couldn’t tell. Bright and wild, the sky was so dirty with stars it was as if someone had spilled them everywhere and forgotten to come pick them up again. The summer night was cluttered with them. So bright it seemed like they were pressing down from above. Hell, maybe she screamed. Cody wasn’t sure he could tell the difference when the night sky was making such a ruckus.
“I never had any intention of coming home to Montana, not to live,” Skylar continued. “If you’d asked me I would have told you a million reasons why I preferred to live in the city. Why it was the better choice for me. It was such a big city, bustling with people and things and restaurants and stores. Everything your heart could desire and more, and I loved it. But it didn’t have this.” She let out a sigh that seemed to come from deep inside of her, and Cody found himself holding her tighter. “I know the sky is everywhere but in Montana, it’s different. It’s closer. Bigger.”
Later, Cody would never know if she was the one who turned around or if he was the one who turned her around to face him, because he couldn’t take any more. But it didn’t matter. Because somehow or other she was turned around and they were facing each other, and then his mouth was on hers again.
Every time he kissed her it felt as if it had been years. Long, crappy years since the last time, and he was finally making it right.
And as bright as the stars were above them, Skylar burned brighter. She was hot and much too wild, and he couldn’t keep his hands to himself. He didn’t really try. He traced his way down the line of her back, then got his hands on her sweet butt. She nipped his lip and he pulled her closer, reveling in the crush of her breasts against the wall of his chest.
Then he was taking her down with him, down into the field where they’d been standing, because he needed to get horizontal with her. Immediately.
He rolled her over so she was sitting astride him, laughing a little bit, and he thought it was the best sound he’d ever heard. She reached down and pulled up her dress, tugging it up and over her head and then throwing it aside. She did the same with her bra and then there she was. Covered in starlight and even more beautiful than he remembered. More beautiful than anyone should be. Cody got his hands in her hair, he got his mouth between her breasts, and then he took his time learning her the way he wanted.
God, the way she tasted. One nipple as velvety as the next, and the noises she made when he sucked each one into his mouth about killed him. He was so hard it hurt.
She tilted her head back as he sucked on her, rocking her hips as if she couldn’t help herself as she rode him a little. But when he released her, she returned her attention to him. She ran her hands down his chest and let out a small sigh that sounded like happiness. She took her time unbuttoning his shirt, pulling open the sides to expose his skin and then bending forward to perform her own little acts of torture down the length of his torso. She pulled the ends of his shirt out of his waistband and then moved toward his buckle, and he didn’t do a single thing to stop her.
And any lingering doubts he might have had about her interest in the buckle itself disappeared, because she couldn’t seem to open it fast enough. No stopping to admire the win it heralded or to request a selfie, as one recent conquest had. Her hands were actually trembling as she pulled down his zipper and pulled him out, and he didn’t think it was trepidation. He thought it was the same insane hunger that stormed through him.
As if they were both just as pummeled by this thing.
She looked up at him, that crooked smile of hers enough to make his cock ache, and then she made it worse. Her hands gripped him as she shifted herself down, knelt between his thighs, and then bent to suck in the head. Just the head, as if she needed a taste to go on.
Then she looked up at him again.
“I want to taste you,” she whispered, in case he’d missed her clear intention.
And Cody was only a man. Not a very good one. And certainly not selfless enough to turn down her mouth. Who was he to deny a lady?
“Don’t let me stop you, darlin’,” he said lazily, and stretched out in the grass as she smiled at him, then sucked him in deep.
He let himself go as she played with him. She tested his length, sucking him in and then licking him when she pulled her head back. She moved her hips back and forth as she worked him, as if the same fire was building in her. And Cody lost himself in the wet heat of her. He sank his fingers into that silky dark hair of hers and met her rhythm. She sucked harder, took him deeper.
And he groaned out her name when he came.
When she crawled her way up to sit over him again, she was smiling.
He wasn’t sure his heart could take this. Cody had never wasted much time worrying about whether a perfect woman existed, but Skylar was proving him wrong, one crooked smile after the next. And he didn’t want to think through the implications of that. At this moment, out here in the dark with only the stars as witness, he didn’t care.
“My turn,” he growled.
He took his time laying her out on the grass beneath him. He pulled another pair of sexy little boy shorts off her hips, tugging them down along the length of her smooth legs and then casting them aside. And as he knelt back to get rid of his shirt and the rest of his clothes, he just looked at her. Lying there with the stars all over her, her arms tossed up over her head. She had her head thrown back as if there was a wind on her face, when the night was still. And that crooked, satisfied smile that made him feel things he didn’t know how to name.
Cody wanted more. He wanted everything.
He settled for getting himself between those sweet thighs of hers. He kissed his way down her body, reacquainting himself with those buttery nipples and the way her belly trembled just slightly when he played with her navel. He shouldered his way between her thighs, pulling her knees up so her legs hung down his back, and she was already gasping for air.
“I haven’t done anything yet,” he teased her, his voice a low rumble.
“I feel pretty sure that you will.”
He proved her right. He set his mouth to that perfect pussy of hers, already so wet and slick and sweet that the taste about made him crazy.
But he was a man who rode giant, largely untamed animals for fun and profit, so he could certainly handle a little crazy.
Cody took his time. He licked his way into her and learned every last contour of that sweet little pussy. He let her move her hips beneath him, crying out her need into the night. He played with her clit until she sobbed. He found every last little sweet spot that made her buck up against him and hiss a little and hold her breath. And when she really got going, call out his name.
She tugged on his head, her fingers clenched deep in his hair, and he loved the little sting of it. He also loved ignoring her. He licked where he wanted. Sometimes he used his fingers.
And every time she came, bucking and crying and rolling all over him, drumming his back with her heels, she did it in his mouth.
And when she was limp and gasping, so breathless she couldn’t form any more words—or at least not any he could understand, he crawled back up the length of that sweet body of hers, covered her with his, rolled on a condom and finally thrust himself deep inside of her.
He’d wanted fast, dirty. He’d thought that was the promise they’d made, insofar as they’d promised each other anything, back in that restaurant. But this wasn’t that.
This wasn’t anything like that.
Cody didn’t know what to call this.
It was slow. Intense. She wrapped her legs around his hips and her arms around his neck, and she met him. She met his every thrust, she took him so deep it made his head spin, and together they became one bright, gleaming thing, like the sky so quiet and full above them.
Too bright. Too full.
Until Cody couldn’t tell which was which.
And this time, when she hurtled over that edge and started to shake apart, he went with her.