Abbie And The Cowboy Read online

  “Mmm, you smell like eau de charcoal,” Dylan murmured in between smacking kisses to her neck.

  “I love a man who speaks French,” she murmured in reply before it hit her. She did love Dylan.

  Shaken by the self-discovery, she stepped away from his teasing embrace to say, “Now what?”

  Her question could just as well have applied to herself—what was she going to do now that she knew she’d fallen in love with Dylan? There was no fighting it; it was too late for that. Maybe the time had come to accept it, to hug the knowledge like a cherished heirloom.

  “Now what?” Dylan repeated. “First off, I clean up down at the river and then we eat out here. Let the cabin air out some.”

  So, instead of sitting at the table with the wildflowers she’d picked, they sat around a camp fire, munching on cold chicken and drinking hot coffee while swapping tall tales of the old West.

  “You mean to tell me you never heard of the Goodnight-Loving Trail?” Dylan asked in amazement, sliding an arm around her shoulders, ostensibly to keep the blanket they were sharing in place. “Why, I find that hard to believe.”

  “I believe you’re making the entire thing up,” she countered.

  “Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving wouldn’t thank you for saying that. They forged the Goodnight-Loving Trail from Texas to Kansas.”

  Abigail got to thinking about Dylan forging a goodnight-loving trail from her temple to her thigh.

  “Goodnight is credited with inventing the chuck wagon. I would have thought you’d know that, what with your interest in the old West and all.”

  She probably did know that, but the problem was that her interest at the moment was almost one hundred percent focused on Dylan—on the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed, on the way she could feel each of his fingers as they gently held the rounded curve of her shoulder. Dylan was emanating as much warmth as the fire, if not more!

  Feeling herself slipping badly, Abigail tried to keep her thoughts on the high road. “Mary Easterly,” she gasped, as if grasping at straws. “Now, she had quite a story. A real, honest-to-goodness cattle queen, only of Nevada not Montana. She didn’t have a large herd, but it was prime. Because she prided herself on quality not quantity.”

  “So do I. Pride myself on quality.” His hand had somehow edged up her shoulder so that he could graze her earlobe with his caressing thumb. “And that’s something you’ve got plenty of, Abbie. Quality. Class.”

  Feeling her backbone melting, Abigail searched desperately around for something to say. “So tell me how a Chicago boy like you ended up out west. I thought most rodeo cowboys grew up on ranches.”

  “I grew up on the back of a horse,” Dylan replied, continuing his strangely reassuring yet sublimely seductive caress of her ear. “On the weekends anyway. I’ve always been good around horses. My dad put me on the back of one when I was three and we visited the Illinois State Fair in Springfield, and I haven’t been off much since then.”

  “There aren’t many horses in the city.”

  “No, but there are some stables out near the Cook County Forest Preserves. By the time I was fifteen, I was working in one of them all summer. The next two summers, I went up to Wisconsin and spent two months on a horse farm up there. Those were racing horses, polo horses, thoroughbreds. High-strung.” His glance said Like you, but he was wise enough not to actually say the words out loud. “I was good with them.”

  “I’m sure you were,” she muttered.

  “But I was better with the horses that couldn’t be rode. The wild ones. Anyway, after I graduated from high school, I came out west, went to rodeo school in southern Idaho and I’ve been out here ever since.”

  “What made you choose rodeo?”

  “I’m good at it. I mean, I was good at it.”

  “You never worried about getting hurt?”

  “In rodeo, it’s not a matter of when you’ll get hurt, just how badly.”

  “Gee, that would sure make me want to try it,” she retorted in exasperation.

  “You say you grew up out here. Rodeoing is a part of life here, you know that. There aren’t many things a man can do and be his own boss and keep his freedom with no one telling him what to do. I rode nearly a hundred horses last year. Some of them rank, some of them not. You know what they say…that riding a saddle bronc is kind of like playing the guitar. It’s mighty easy to do it poorly and mighty hard to do it well.”

  “Did you pick up riding as fast as you did the guitar?”

  Dylan shrugged. “It just sort of always came naturally to me. There’s just no feeling like it, that moment when the chute opens and it’s just me and the horse.”

  “You were there by choice, the horse wasn’t.”

  “Most people don’t have any use for a horse that bucks. Those horses would have been put down if they weren’t used in rodeo.”

  “And what about the arenas filled with fans? Didn’t that have something to do with your love for rodeo?”

  “No. For those eight seconds, all you’re trying to do is stay on that twisting, bucking horse. It rears up and slams you back down again, so hard you think your brains have hit the roof of your head. The horse’s hoofs are punching the dust, threatening to pulverize you into the dirt ten feet below, and nothing else matters. The adrenaline is pumping, and you’re just focusing on staying on.”

  Abigail shuddered. She’d attended a few rodeos, but it wasn’t her favorite way of spending time. She’d always worried too much about one of the contestants or one of the animals getting hurt. “Wasn’t there anything about rodeo that you didn’t like?”

  “The commute. I put nearly a hundred thousand miles on my truck last year. Rodeo is a year-long event. In the winter, the competitions are mostly inside stadiums in places like Denver. In spring and summer, things heat up and rodeos move on outside. Practically every day, one town or another has a rodeo going. I always had good luck in Pocatello, Idaho, at the National Circuit Finals there. And the Calgary Stampede in July…that’s just about as close to rodeo heaven as you can come. Prize money is pretty spectacular, too. Now, some folks prefer Cheyenne, the ‘daddy of ‘em all,’ but not me. And it all leads to the NFR in Las Vegas in December.”

  “Raj and I saw that movie, Eight Seconds, about the bull rider who was killed riding in the Cheyenne rodeo.”

  “That was a freak accident. I can give you the statistics of how few men have been killed…”

  “And I’m willing to bet they don’t keep statistics on how many are injured.”

  “Heck, no. Every rider has gashes, sprains and bruises by Labor Day.”

  “And how many men are permanently injured?”

  Dylan shifted uncomfortably, momentarily halting his soothing touch. “How did we get on this subject anyway?”

  “I was trying to figure out why you’d want to get hurt.”

  “I don’t want to, it’s just part of life. Which reminds me, I hope you know that I would never do anything to hurt you. I know you were kind of scared earlier…”

  “I was not!” she immediately denied.

  “But I’d never hurt you.” He looked directly into her eyes as he spoke the words.

  “I thought being hurt was a part of life,” she countered unsteadily.

  “It’s not the only part of life. Pleasure is another, bigger part of life.” He moved his hand so that the warmth of his palm now cupped her nape. Urging her forward, he whispered against her lips, “I think we should go inside now…for dessert. I’ve got something special for you.”

  She imagined him wearing a wicked smile and nothing else. Mmm, yes, that sure would qualify as something special in her book. She wasn’t imagining strawberries.

  Dylan fed the first one to her chastely enough. It wasn’t her fault the fruit was so ripe and juicy that it dripped from her lips. She laughed self-consciously as she attempted to wipe the juice away with her fingers.

  “Let me,” Dylan said. Only, he didn’t use his fingers for the c
leanup; he used his seductive tongue, lapping at her skin as if she were a huge bowl of cream and he a hungry tomcat.

  But he didn’t kiss her. Instead, he leaned away to get another strawberry. This time, he took a bite out of it first. Then he held the juicy fruit up to her lips, tracing their circumference, coloring her lower lip and outlining her upper lip with the red juice.

  And all the while, he was staring at her mouth as if it were the most fascinating, intoxicating thing he’d ever seen in his entire life.

  Ripples of anticipation shivered up Abigail’s spine. She almost forgot to breathe.

  Sensual tension. She’d written pages and pages about it. But she’d never felt it before, never experienced it so fully that she could almost reach out and touch it in the air. The space between herself and Dylan hummed with it, was thick with it.

  The talk about his life chasing rodeo had only reinforced her fears about the life he’d led in the past, and the fact that she’d fallen in love with him now. She knew where this night was leading. She felt poised on the head of a pin, trying to make the right move to avoid falling on her face.

  “You seem to have planned ahead,” she noted, indicating the quilt on the bed and the fresh pillows. She’d even found a couple of rolls of toilet paper in the outhouse.

  “Yeah, I did, except for the chimney. I brought some things up here this morning.”

  “How long have you been planning this kidnapping?”

  “Hey, I’ll have you know that kidnapping a bride is a time-honored Gypsy tradition.”

  BRIDE? Abigail heard the word all in capital letters, and her hopes took flight. Could she have been wrong about Dylan? She must have been. He’d called her a bride. That meant she must have been wrong about Dylan. After being footloose for so long, he was looking for the same thing she was. Some permanence. Some love. Some stability.

  Her doubts were smothered beneath the tidal wave of relief that her dreams were coming true. All her senses were turned up to their highest pitch, tuned in to the smallest sound. Candlelight flickered on his skin and hers, creating a golden glow that mirrored her emotions. They were serenaded by the sounds of nature: the soft music created by the rushing river behind the cabin, the rustle of the leaves as the night wind moved them with fluid grace. Inside the cabin, there was only a hint of smoke in the air, an aftereffect from Dylan’s earlier attempts at building a fire.

  The fire he was building now was an erotic one. Flames leapt from every point of contact with Dylan—the brush of his denim-clad thigh against her, his open mouth nuzzling against her collarbone, his nimble fingers tugging her red shirt from the waistband of her jeans.

  At first, there was no sense of urgency, but rather of anticipation, of wanting to enjoy every second along the way rather than rushing it. So she paused to taste the curve of his jaw, sampling the salty roughness with her tongue.

  When his roughened fingertips drifted up the valley of her spine, she arched her back in delicious pleasure. Her movement thrust her breasts against his chest.

  Suddenly his caresses took on a new heat. His lips met hers, parting them with sweet insistence. He feasted on her, luring her toward the point of no return. The kiss was a fervent seduction of her senses, a mating of lips and swirling tongues.

  Abigail was burning up, so she welcomed the fact that Dylan removed her shirt. She returned the favor by removing his. The quilt on the bed was rumpled within seconds of them lying on it.

  Her jeans were tossed over the end of the bed, soon to be joined by his. Now the pace intensified. Being horizontal with him was infinitely better than vertical, she decided with a moan of pleasure. Now she was pressed against every inch of his lean body, which was hard in all the right places.

  “Abbie,” he whispered, dispensing a string of kisses from the corner of her eyes to the hollow of her breast. “I’m giving you a choice.” His hands paused on the front of her chemise. “If this goes further, it’s your decision.”

  She combed her hands through his glorious midnight-dark hair, just as she’d so often longed to do, and marveled at the sensation of the vibrant coolness against her fingers.

  “Yes or no,” he said huskily. “It’s in your hands.”

  “It’s not in my hands yet, cowboy,” she drawled with a sultry smile. “But it will be soon.” Rolling him over so that she sat propped on his chest, she slid her hands past his navel before sneaking beneath the waistband of his briefs. Tracing the throbbing velvety length of his arousal, she whispered, “The answer is yes.”

  Groaning and lifting his hips at the dark magic she was practicing on him, Dylan growled out his promise for the ride of her life.

  “I’ll bet you tell all the girls that,” she murmured against his thigh.

  Threading his fingers through her hair, he raised her head so that he could look in her glorious blue eyes. “You’re one of a kind.”

  “Your first time with an older woman?” she teased in an attempt to hide her sudden nervousness.

  “My first time with someone who means this much to me.”

  “How much do I mean to you?”

  “Let me show you.”

  And he did, with every stroke of his tongue over the hidden secrets of her body. As the waves of ecstasy rolled over her, he cupped her feminine mound with the palm of his hand, as if to cherish the moment.

  “Now,” she whispered. “I want you inside of me.”

  After taking care of protection, he levered himself into readiness before coming to her in gratifying increments, prolonging the ultimate delight, rubbing against her with excruciating sureness, easing deeper and deeper.

  “You like it slow?” he whispered. “Like this?”

  “Yes!” She clenched her fingers into his shoulders and gasped his name.

  “Good.”

  “Very good,” she agreed breathlessly. “More.”

  “More of this?” He rocked against her.

  “Yes!”

  “Or this?” He surged against her.

  “Yes!” She lifted her hips to meet his rhythmic thrust.

  “Abbie! Honey, I can’t hold on…we’re gonna gallop to the finish here…”

  “Galloping…is…good,” she gasped. She watched the fire in his dark eyes as passion took hold, of her and him. The pleasure was becoming so intense that she couldn’t think anymore, just feel.

  When Dylan reached down to brush his roughened thumb against the burgeoning nub hidden deep in the thicket of blond curls, she immediately went up in spirals of smoke, rising upward with each blissfully sharp pulse of pure joy—tightening and rippling, tightening and rippling.

  Feeling her tightening around him as she reached her climax made Dylan feel like a million bucks, as if he’d touched a part of heaven. He struggled to maintain control, but there was no holding out against the flare of desire surging through him. Shouting her name, he drove into her for one final time before arching his back and stiffening as he reached his completion.

  Afterward, with her head resting on his shoulder as they lay together in the small bed with the quilt wrapped around their entwined bodies, Abigail propped herself up on one hand to look down at Dylan. “What are you thinking about?” she asked, unable to resist running her fingertip across his bare chest while tracing out an invisible heart with his initials and hers.

  “Branding me, are you?” Dylan inquired, a grin flashing across his face like summer heat lightning.

  “You ever been branded before?”

  “No, but I’ve been stomped on a few times.”

  Her expression turned serious. She’d felt the scar across his right thigh. It scared her to think of how easily he could have been lost to her.

  With that realization came the need to make love with him again, to reaffirm the fact that they were both alive. “How many condoms did you bring with you?”

  His grin turned into a downright wicked smile as he murmured, “Enough.”

  Rolling so that she was perched atop him, she said, “Good.
”

  “Are you going to practice that scene from Flame of the West?” he asked with unconcealed anticipation.

  She nodded, her long blond hair trailing over his skin like curled ribbons of silk. “My heroine, Loretta, was better endowed than I am, though,” she noted with a frown.

  “No way,” Dylan denied, cupping her breasts in his palms, one in each hand. “Look how well they fit,” he noted, gently rubbing the rosy tips with his thumbs. “The first time I met you, I knew I was in trouble. I always knew you’d be handful,” he added wickedly.

  “Mmm, I could say the same about you,” she replied, scooting down his torso to curl her hand around his throbbing maleness. “More than a handful.”

  This time, she was the one who got the latex condom open and sheathed him with it. Then, with her bent knees bracketing his hips, she slowly guided him to her. Once he was ensconced deep within her, he showed her just how to increase the pleasure. The embers of passion quickly flared.

  Suddenly sitting up, Abigail found herself perched in his lap with Dylan facing her instead of lying beneath her.

  Blinking in surprise, her mouth formed a startled O which Dylan took great pleasure in kissing from her lips.

  “You ever ridden the teeter-totter as a kid?” he murmured against her lips.

  She nodded.

  “You just lean forward and back.”

  He watched her face as she concentrated on moving as he’d said and then witnessed her second blink of surprise as she succeeded. “Oh, my!”

  “Mmm,” Dylan agreed, taking his turn leaning back as she moved forward.

  “How long does this last?”

  “Longer than eight seconds, less than eight hours,” he said with a devilish smile.

  “Show me.”

  He did.

  Rosy sunlight heralding the dawn was filtering through the wavy leaded-glass windows when Abigail next opened her eyes. For a second, she had no idea where she was, except that she was in Dylan’s arms. She knew that. Recognized the uniqueness of his touch. They were lying spoon fashion, cuddled together for warmth, since Dylan never had gotten around to clearing out the chimney to build a fire there. Instead, he’d spent the night building fires within her.