Cowboy in Colorado (Fifty States of Love) Read online

  “I—I don’t fucking know,” I answer in a raw whisper, my fingers flying crazily now, my orgasm churning inside me with pent-up volcanic pressure. “The same thing you’re doing to me.”

  “I’ve—” He pauses, crashing into me again, slow and hard and rough. “It’s never—” His eyes close, jaw clacking shut with a loud snap.

  Fuck it—I’ll say what he can’t. “It’s never been like this before.

  “No,” he admits. “Never.”

  “I don’t know what it is, either.”

  He’s shaking, his thrusts ragged and trembly, every muscle taut and hard, straining. Sweat beads on his forehead and drips down his cheek. I can’t hold back the climax, and it’s never even crossed my mind to try before—usually, it’s more a matter of hoping I can come soon enough after my partner that he’s still hard, and if I do get there first, I let myself go because I know he’ll follow pretty quick.

  This, with Will—it’s different. He’s not just a random sexual partner. This happened outside of my control—it happened, and I had no choice but let it, to go with it. It was as if we reached a point where we just had to have sex together, and now we’re mixed up in something beyond either of our control.

  He feels the same way; I can tell by the way he’s finding it harder and harder to hold my gaze. As if he’s afraid to see any more of me like this, so raw and naked and vulnerable—and by naked, I don’t mean nude, unclothed, I mean that my very soul is naked, somehow. Bared to him. And despite how hard he is, how rough and masculine and primal and dominant, he’s as exposed to me as I am to him.

  He hates this vulnerability as much as I do. It’s as foreign and uncomfortable for him as it is for me.

  I wonder fleetingly what it would be like to get him on his back, to tame him enough that he’d let me ride him like the wild stallion he is.

  I shiver at the idea.

  “What?” he demands.

  I grin, a sly secret smile. “Nothing.”

  “Tell me.”

  I shake my head. “No.”

  How can we afford an exchange like this when we’re both so close? He’s barely able to keep thrusting, so intense is his need to come, and I’m heaving, writhing, a fire in my veins and a volcano in my core—an orgasm waiting to be unleashed that will shred me to pieces.

  Yet we manage a conversation?

  It makes no sense.

  “Brooklyn—” He can’t finish his demand, because he’s too busy bearing down, clenching every muscle to hold back, to last until I come.

  He’s determined that I come first, I realize.

  With anyone else, I would toy with that determination. Hold off my climax just to mess with him. But I can’t.

  I just can’t.

  I simply cannot. My orgasm will not be denied.

  I need to hold on to something now, because it’s coming, it’s inevitable, and I need to hold on to something to survive the force of it; I reach for him. I scrabble at his thighs, at his abs, reaching for his shoulders.

  “Come here, please, please,” I whisper, too far gone to be embarrassed at needing him this way.

  He doesn’t deny me—he slams into me one last time, and then he scoops me up and I’m sitting on his thighs and my legs wrap around his waist and if I thought he was deep before, he’s so much more intimately deeper like this, because we’re skin to skin, chest to chest, heat to heat—my breasts crush against the anvil of his chest and the quavering V of my thighs grinds against his stomach and the trembling sheath of my sex clings to the stuttering thrusting of his shaft, and my nose buries in his hair—which smells like wood smoke and horse and male sweat, and it’s so intoxicating I get dizzy from the drug of his scent. His arms wrap around me, an iron band around my shoulders and the other under my ass, lifting me and letting me fall, dictating our pace even like this.

  But now it’s both of us guiding our union. I rise and I fall—I sink down to impale myself on him with a shaky scream and lift up to lose him for a moment, and then he drives up desperately, seeking me, needing to be inside me as much as I need him there, and we meet with a resounding crash, with a scream and a raw male moan, a sound so vulnerable it rips my heart in two, and I’m ripped apart further by the tenderness of his face burying against my throat so my pulse thuds against his fluttering eyelid.

  “Brooklyn—” Has a man ever whispered my name in such a broken way?

  Never.

  And I have never answered in a voice so damp with intensity-racked tears I simply cannot help. “Will—Will—”

  Our eyes meet at the same moment, and I feel him explode even as I begin my own detonation.

  His mouth fuses to mine as our orgasm breaks us apart, throws us together—we cling to each other for dear life and move in perfect synchronization as we come and come and come, and we cannot scream or shout or growl or even whimper…because our kiss is all that keeps us breathing, all that keeps us sane.

  This is not merely a climax.

  This is something else entirely.

  Something much, much more.

  10

  When it’s over, we’re both gasping raggedly, staring at each other in baffled wonderment.

  “What the hell was that?” Will growls.

  I confusedly brush the back of my wrists against my eyes. “I—I don’t know.”

  “I’m not imagining it, then.” He’s braced over me, as I fall helplessly backward in the wild throes of our united climax. “It wasn’t just—It was…”

  “No, whatever it was, it happened. I felt it too.”

  He rests his forehead against mine for a second, and I don’t close my eyes—I’m glad I don’t, because I would’ve missed the moment I lose him. I feel it, I see it. He shutters. Closes down. Blinks three times, and then his shoulders square back and he rolls away from me, off of me, pulls out of me. His sex is limp and hangs down, the tip of the condom heavy with his seed—even like that, he’s huge.

  He stands up and walks away from the bed, and I’m gobsmacked once again by his beauty—broad shoulders and a muscled back and a tight waist form a V leading down to a hard round ass above thick, corded thighs. Pure male perfection. Blond hair messy—sex hair, from my hands raking through it and clutching it as we came together, stands up. In fact, I still have a few strands of his hair in my hand.

  He strips the condom off and tosses it carelessly into the trash can beside the toilet, urinates without embarrassment, reaches into the shower stall, turns on the water, wets and wrings out the washcloth, then uses it to clean himself. He doesn’t look at me.

  His shoulders are tensed, and his brow is furrowed, his eyes distant and closed off.

  “Will?”

  He pauses in the middle of the room, his eyes finally touching mine. Searching mine. I see a fragment of something in his gaze, and then it’s gone and he’s shaking his head, jaw pulsing. He strides nude to the door, throws up the bar and shoves the door open—and goes right out into the pouring rain, into the flashes of lightning and grumbles of thunder.

  I watch him go, disappearing into the wet haze of driving rain—he didn’t even close the door.

  I get out of the bed and close the door but don’t drop the bar into place. I’ll be damned if I’ll chase him. I don’t know what his deal is, but I’m not chasing him out into that storm.

  That’s a lie—I do know exactly what’s wrong. He’s freaked out by what just happened.

  As I am.

  I climb back into the bed, and crawl under the covers. Lying on my side, I watch the flames flicker and lick at the wood in the fire. I’m sore all over, aching in places I didn’t know could be sore—my thighs and butt from all the horse riding, and my sex from the vigor of Will’s thrusts; I’m bruised from the fall off of Molly, and my muscles are just exhausted from such intense exertion—everything, not just the sex or the horse riding.

  Everything hurts. I’m confused by what happened with Will, hurt by the way he shut down and left. Not just hurt, but pissed off;
I’m used to being the one to leave. I’m the one who discards lovers. I walk away. I call my own cab at four in the morning, after I’ve fucked my partner of the night to my fill. I don’t call them, don’t even ask for their number or much less give them mine—not even my business card with a generic office number. They get no more of me than I deign to give.

  This time is different. I gave Will…god…everything. I let him take me. I gave him control, and that’s everything to me. I had no rules growing up, or very few, and so the only structure my life ever had was that which I gave it. It doesn’t take a psychologist to figure out why I have such control issues, why I tend to be so alpha, insisting on control over every aspect of my life.

  I gave Will his way.

  Let him take me how he wanted me, trusted him to give me what I needed.

  And then he just walks out?

  I’m not crying. I don’t cry over men.

  My eyes sting, but that’s—it’s…it’s just from the smoke.

  I close my eyes and let exhaustion take me under. Suddenly I cannot stay awake, and my eyes flutter closed.

  At some point in the night I waken and hear something. I take a moment to remind myself where I am—one eye opens, and I see the fire has become an orange glow of coals. I think I see a big male silhouette in the darkness. Is that a rustle of clothing I hear. I’m too sleepy to care.

  I fall back under the curtain of sleep, pushing away the question of Will, and where he went, where he’s going, what’s going to happen with us.

  Even mostly asleep, that question is monstrous and tangled.

  When I wake up, full daylight streams through the window. It takes a moment to place myself in space and time—and then it all comes rushing back. I’m naked in Will’s bed, alone. My sex is sore, because he fucked me so thoroughly I know I’ll never forget it—and I fear I’ll never be the same.

  And then he left.

  He’s not here. He could be outside, or in the stable, but there’s a chill in my gut that tells me he’s not in either of those places. I think he left.

  I scan the spare interior—no coffee made, no sense that he gave me a second thought.

  There, on the table, a hastily scrawled note, the handwriting sharp, angular, messy:

  Brooklyn,

  Had to check on the horses. Clint will be by later this morning to take you to the Big House.

  —Will

  And that’s it. Nothing of us, of what happened.

  I shove my emotions down, because this is definitely not the time or place to be emotional about things. My clothing is still on the floor where Will threw it last night—pants here, blazer there, blouse across the room, bra in another corner, underwear in a ball near the bed. Everything is still damp.

  I swallow past a hard lump in my throat and go through the unpleasant struggle of putting on cold wet musty clothing.

  I have to remind myself several times to stop being stupid, that I have no need to be upset. It’s not any different than any of my usual liaisons—once and done, no connection, no mess, no looking back. He got to the no looking back part first, that’s all. My chest is tight and my heart is weirdly empty and oddly cold and my gut twists, and my mind won’t stop offering up memories of what we shared last night.

  God, I can’t believe I let him fuck me like that—bent in half and all control ceded over to him, like some weak, pathetic, needy, desperate, clingy, vapid thing.

  But holy shit was it incredible.

  I know I’ll never let anyone take me that way again, that’s for damn sure. Especially not Will, if I ever even see him again. Which I won’t. I’ll make sure of it.

  It’s best that way. For him, for me.

  There’s nothing else in this cabin for me, so I leave, making sure to latch the door behind me. I peek into the stable, and sure enough, Gopher is gone. My heart hammers in my throat, because I’m alone in the farthest and most remote corner of the Bar-A Ranch, on foot, and I have no clue how to get back, and it would take hours on foot even if I did know the way. Despite the sudden violence of the storm last night, the sky is back to being clear and blue and endless, the sun just peeking up over the tree line.

  At least there’s an obvious trail leading down off of this mountain, away from the cabin. I force the steel into my spine, settle my feet into my trusty Louboutin’s, and set off down the path. My makeup is gone, my hair is a knotted, tangled wreck. I still have my earrings, thank god, a graduation gift from my mother. My watch is ruined—the face was shattered by hail last night, and it wasn’t water-resistant so the rain and the subsequent shower would have ruined it anyway.

  It takes me what feels like forty minutes of walking to get off the ridge and out of the woods, the trail leveling off into an endless rolling field. The path ends, vanishing into waving grass. I firm up my chin, clench my jaw, and refuse to cry. I’ve done enough of that, and I refuse to do it again. I may have no idea where to go, but I’ll be damned if I’ll just stand here alone and bawl. I’ll just walk, and hope someone finds me eventually. My brain is telling me if I walk straight away from the ridge behind me, I’ll eventually find a camp, or even the Big House; my brain may be wrong, but it’s all I’ve got at the moment.

  I start walking. It’s well past dawn, the sun blazing a few inches above the horizon off to my left; it’s before noon, at least, but more closely than that I couldn’t even begin to say. Will could probably tell you the exact hour from one glance at the sun, but I don’t have that skill.

  I just walk, one foot after another, and eventually discover my best bet for keeping track of the distance yet to go is to fix my eyes on a clump of grass a few feet ahead and watch it until I pass it, and then focus on another. Thus, my gaze remains on the ground just ahead of me, and I don’t see the rider approaching until he’s close enough that I hear the thud of horse hooves.

  Clint, wearing a faded ball cap, sitting on the same horse he rode yesterday, is leading Molly behind him, her reins trailing from one fist. He doffs his hat, waves it at me. “Howdy, Miss Brooklyn. Beautiful mornin’.” His eyes won’t quite fix on mine, though, and I know he’s all too aware of the situation.

  “Good morning, Clint,” I say, my voice icy and tightly controlled. I take Molly’s reins from him, spend a moment rubbing her nose and saying hello, and then I climb up into the saddle—awkward, clumsily, but much less so than yesterday. I gesture at him. “Lead on, if you will.”

  He rubs the back of his neck. “Boss showed up hours before dawn with a real hair up his ass, told me the two of you had holed up at his cabin.” A pause. “Asked me to come get you. We had a yearling filly come up lame this morning, which is why I’m so late coming out here.”

  “Save your explanations, Clint.” I nudge Molly into a walk. “We’re all adults. No point in pretending you’re not fully aware of the situation.”

  “None of my business,” he says, riding beside me with eyes on his saddle horn, a blush staining his swarthy cheeks above his dark beard. “He was almighty pissy, though. Usually he’s the most even-tempered man I know. Not sure what you all got up to, but it left him meaner than a kicked rattlesnake.”

  “As you said, it’s none of your business,” I say, knowing I’m being overly cold with someone who’s done nothing but help me, but I’m unable to help myself.

  The coldness is my only armor between self-control and a total breakdown.

  Clint rubs his jaw with a knuckle, eyeing me curiously. “I do something to piss you off, Miss Brooklyn?”

  “No, Clint. Will did. But that’s between him and me. You could probably get pretty close to the truth if you think hard enough, though.” I meet his eyes, and that’s a mistake. He’s a plain, honest, hard-working man, good-looking in a rugged way, and he’s earnest, well-meaning, of good heart. Too bad I’m not attracted to men like him—only the bold, swaggering, arrogant ones with big, hard dicks and small, cold hearts. I feel myself softening toward Clint, and I can’t have that. Too risky.

  “Yo
u’ve done nothing but help me, Clint,” I say, opting for blunt honesty, “and I’m thankful. I’m not upset with you, but I don’t have it in me to be pleasant right now, and for that I’m sorry.”

  He nods. “Fair enough.”

  We amble at a slow walk for a while, and I’m impatient to be gone, to get off this horse and off this ranch and back to the life I know. “I need to get back to New York,” I say. “Can we go faster?”

  Clint rolls a shoulder. “Sure. Horses are fresh. Just click your tongue and tell her to trot, with a little nudge of your foot. Go at your own pace.”

  I click my tongue and nudge Molly’s ribs with my foot. “Trot, Molly.” I push my butt forward like Theo instructed, way back yesterday morning, and Molly surges into a smooth trot.

  “Feel okay?” Clint says, easily keeping pace.

  I’m clinging with my knees, and after a while I learn how to use more of my core to keep balanced, finding her rhythm so I don’t have to cling as hard. I nod at him. “Yes, it’s good.”

  “Once you’re comfortable, we could canter them a while. I know Molly likes a canter better than a trot, and it’ll cover more ground.” He gives me a sideways glance. “It’s not as smooth a gait, though, so be ready for a good jolting.”

  “I’ll try it.”

  “Same as trotting. Click your tongue and tell her what you want.”

  I do so, and the surge into a canter is, as he warned, jolting. It takes far more work to find the rhythm and the balance, and I’m nowhere near as steady or sure in my seat, but the thrill is exhilarating and the wind feels good in my face, if not on the cold wet clothing I’m wearing.

  I nearly fall several times, especially when Molly unexpectedly veers of her own accord around a seemingly innocuous patch of grass, but when we’re past it and I regain my seat, I see a pair of reptile eyes watching me from the patch of grass. We ride for a long time at that pace, until Clint slows his horse and I do the same. We’re at a stream running merrily through the grass, and Clint gets down, lets his horse drink, and I follow suit.