Cowboy to the Core Read online

  “That isn’t fair,” she said.

  “What isn’t?”

  “I’m naked,” she said. “And you’re not.”

  It surprised her that she was so completely fine with it, too. She wasn’t embarrassed to be naked. How could she be? Gabe appreciated it so much.

  “I can fix that,” he said, rising up on his knees, his hands going to his own belt.

  Okay, right in that moment she felt a little bit self-conscious. Because she was spread out in front of him, and he was looking down right at the most intimate part of her.

  But as had been the case with everything else, he seemed to like what he was looking at.

  He pushed his own jeans down his lean hips, and Jamie’s throat dried.

  Okay. She’d seen a whole lot of male bodies in her life.

  Men wandering around her house half-naked, at all hours, for all reasons. But she had never seen an aroused, naked man before.

  And this wasn’t just a generic, aroused, naked man. This one was interested in her.

  There were no barriers between them.

  Well, there. There were some virginal nerves that she had been hoping to avoid.

  She took a breath. There was nothing to be concerned about. People did this all the time. Women pushed babies out of there.

  Of course, historically, they made that seem like it didn’t feel too good, so she had some concerns about how it was supposed to be pleasurable, but it was possible. She knew that.

  She could handle discomfort. As long as she wasn’t an abject failure.

  But she didn’t have to worry about it, because Gabe didn’t seem to be done. He leaned forward, bracing his palms on either side of her body, pressing a kiss between her breasts, down her stomach.

  He paused then, turning her to the side, brushing his fingertips over that big, angry bruise that bled over her skin. “Damn, baby, that looks like it hurts.”

  “It’s...it’s fine,” she said, her voice shaking.

  The way his fingers moved over her body now wasn’t clinical or medical at all. There was fire in his touch.

  He lowered his head and licked her hip. Her bruise.

  She jumped. “I can kiss it better,” he said, his voice rough as he pressed his lips to the edge of the bruise, then went gently around the perimeter. It was so soft. Such a tease.

  She gripped the bedspread, trying to tamp down the restlessness in her body. She had no idea what to do with this. With this torture.

  This beautiful torture.

  And when he was through with her hip, he went down farther.

  “Gabe...”

  Theoretical knowledge of sex had not prepared her for this. For what he intended to do. This moment.

  This wasn’t Tab A into Slot B. This was extracurricular.

  But Gabe was intent, and far be it from her to interrupt the expert.

  And oh...he was an expert.

  He kissed the inside of her thigh, then moved to her center, his tongue unerring as it slipped right over her sweet spot.

  She reached down, gripped his hair and held on as he teased her. As he tormented her.

  She felt like in the past few hours she had learned a very key thing. Men had magic tongues.

  She had thought tongues were for talking, for helping you chew, for sticking out at your annoying brothers.

  Apparently, there were a whole lot more things you could do with the tongue.

  And Gabe was very good at all of them.

  She shifted, and then he pressed a finger against the entrance of her body. She winced as he pushed it inside her. The invasion was unfamiliar, but not unpleasant. She began to relax, and by the time he added a second finger, she was arching toward him, basically begging for more.

  He pumped his fingers in and out while he continued to tease her with his tongue, and then he closed his lips over her and sucked, pleasure breaking over her like a wave.

  One she hadn’t seen coming.

  She cried out, clenching her legs, digging her knees into the side of his head, pulling his hair, as her orgasm rocked her.

  When she caught her breath, when she came back to earth, Gabe was looking up at her, those blue eyes filled with smug, masculine triumph.

  And Jamie felt...

  Well, she felt profoundly naked.

  But she didn’t have a moment to ponder that, because Gabe was kissing his way back up her body and reaching over into his nightstand, grabbing hold of a condom and tearing it open.

  She watched, unable to tear her gaze away as he pressed the latex against his length and rolled it down over himself with great efficiency.

  Speaking of all the experience that he had, that she absolutely did not.

  But then he was kissing her again, and she had a hard time thinking when he kissed her. His hands were all over her body, holding her hips, as the blunt head of him pressed against her. As he slid into her slowly.

  Filled her.

  She gritted her teeth, waiting for sharp pain, because she’d heard that there was pain.

  There wasn’t really. It just felt weird. A little bit tight and unlike anything she’d felt before.

  But then he flexed his hips, and that brought him up against that wonderful place again, and pleasure sparked through her like glitter. And with him deep inside her like that, it went further. Felt more all-encompassing.

  This wasn’t Tab A into Slot B, either.

  Not in the way she’d imagined it.

  It was elemental, but it wasn’t simple. It was physical, but that wasn’t all.

  It didn’t just affect her body.

  And all the knowledge of rodeo cowboys in all the world couldn’t make it something that touched her body and not her heart.

  He withdrew, and then pushed back in, not breaking the kiss as he did. As he established a rhythm that brought her closer and closer to another release.

  But then, then, he seemed to lose his own control, his mouth growing ravenous, kissing her mouth, her neck, down farther, capturing a breast again as he bucked against her with no finesse at all.

  And that made her lose her mind. She rolled her hips against his, pushing back, enthralled by this thing they were creating between them. Man and woman.

  A deep, unending pleasure that couldn’t have come from anything else.

  Something she couldn’t have found alone.

  Maybe not even with another man.

  Something that she and Gabe uniquely made together, with their particular combination of need.

  His advance to her retreat.

  His hardness to her softness.

  She never appreciated her own softness before. It had seemed like a failure in many ways. Because she wanted to be hard, because life had asked it of her.

  But not now. Right now she gloried in it. Because it had given her the gift of Gabe.

  He lowered his head, his forehead pressed against hers as he growled, thrusting into her one last time, his big body shaking, shivering, driving her over the edge to another release, her orgasm blooming inside her and spreading out through her body, pleasure radiating from her center on out, down to her fingertips.

  And when she looked up again, she saw his eyes. And then he kissed her. Slow and tender. Still buried deep inside her.

  And Jamie Dodge did something she hadn’t done in longer than she could remember.

  She burst into tears.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  GABE WASN’T SURE what he was supposed to do now.

  Jamie wasn’t an easy lay. And she wasn’t someone he could go on autopilot with. He’d been different with her. Different than he could ever remember being. She ignited something in him. She called him on his crap. She’d asked for the real him.

  Now she was crying, so he had to wonder if it was because he’d done some
thing wrong. But Jamie wasn’t talking. She was just crying.

  So he just held on to her, because he figured, if a woman burst into tears in your arms, the only thing to do was to keep on holding her.

  He’d never had a woman cry after sex with him before. And if he was going to take a guess on which woman might be the most likely to do it, his guess wouldn’t have been Jamie. No. It would not have been.

  He said nothing. Instead, he held her while she shook and cried, completely silently, tears tracking down her cheeks in large, wet streaks. The intensity of her silence, the way she bit her lip, made him seriously question which one of them was more horrified.

  He had a feeling it was her.

  So he held her, stroking her hair back from her face, moving the strands that had fallen from her ponytail during the act.

  “Are you okay?” he murmured finally.

  She nodded. Still not making a sound.

  “Do you always...cry?”

  Sex was a release, after all. It was entirely reasonable to think that some women just cried afterward. Maybe even some men did.

  Not him. But he could understand it.

  The sex had been so good between the two of them, he could understand weeping with gratitude over it. But he’d barely had a minute to enjoy it, given that she had burst into tears, and now he was terrified.

  Throw him on the back of an angry, bucking horse and he was right at home. Give him a soft, naked woman, weeping after an orgasm, and he had no clue what to do.

  Yeah, he was pretty damn terrified.

  She shook her head. Great. So it was just him that made her cry. That made him feel like a real winner.

  And somewhere in that tangle of feelings, his stomach hollowed out. Because now he wondered if she had really wanted to do this. If somehow, he had been too hasty. If he’d been selfish.

  His dad had said that about himself more than once. That he turned off his conscience sometimes when a beautiful woman threw a look in his direction. That he was so focused on getting what was good, he didn’t think about what was right.

  After Trisha, Gabe had intentionally made sure that there was no one in his life he was beholden to. He’d never been in a relationship since. And that meant he was free to take up what was on offer without thinking about it too deeply. He never went to bed with women who weren’t excited to go to bed with him. And he’d never betrayed a woman back home.

  He hadn’t had emotions tangled around him after sex since high school.

  Since Trisha and all that rush of hormones he’d thought was love.

  And it certainly hadn’t felt this complicated to be with someone since that day he’d found out she might be pregnant.

  Why Jamie’s tears made him feel quite that off balance, he didn’t know.

  “Do you want to—” he winced “—talk about it...?”

  “No!” The word was broken, desperate.

  He shook his head and rolled out of bed, heading to the bathroom and disposing of the condom before coming back into the room.

  “Do you want me to get you anything?” he asked.

  She shook her head resolutely. Stubborn as ever, even with a fat tear gleaming on her cheek.

  And Gabe decided he was going to ignore her.

  He hunted around and looked for his boxers, heading out into the kitchen and fishing around for a mug. He heated some milk up on the stovetop. Then took a package of wheat bread out of the cupboard and untwisted the top, taking out a piece and putting it in the toaster. When the milk warmed, he poured it into a mug and added a hot chocolate packet.

  Right as he finished stirring, the toast popped up. Gabe slathered it with a generous amount of butter that had come straight from Laughing Irish ranch in Copper Ridge, right next door.

  It was the kind of thing his mom had always made him when he didn’t feel well, and for some reason, he thought crying after sex might fall under the header of not feeling well.

  He walked back into the room and saw Jamie, out of bed, pulling her sports bra over her head, her white cotton panties already in place.

  She froze.

  Her face was red and blotchy, her eyes watery, miserable.

  “Get back in bed,” he said, gesturing toward the mattress.

  “I should go,” she said firmly.

  “You are not leaving while you’re crying. Get in bed, have some hot chocolate and toast.” He set both items down on the nightstand and made a more insistent gesture.

  “You can’t...force-feed me snacks.”

  “I can. And I will.”

  He didn’t suppose pointing authoritatively at the bed was forcing her to have snacks at all, but he decided not to comment either way.

  “Take those panties off,” he added.

  She frowned, and did no such thing, getting back under the covers and pulling them up midwaist, tucking them resolutely around her hips.

  “Are we going to have a talk or what?”

  Jamie bent her knees beneath the covers, the blanket tenting over her lap. She picked up the toast and bit into it fiercely, her expression sullen.

  “So you’re going to be difficult today?” he asked.

  “I’m difficult every day,” she said grumpily.

  “Jamie, I asked you if you were sure. You’re not acting like a woman who was sure at all. And I need to know... You wanted this. You came to me.”

  “Yes,” she said, her voice sounding scratchy. “It’s not like I knew I was going to cry. I would rather put tacks on my saddle for a barrel racing run than cry in front of anyone. I don’t cry.”

  “Well, no offense, but you could’ve fooled me. You look like you cry pretty good.”

  “I don’t know what my problem is,” she said, wiping at her nose.

  She set her toast down and brushed crumbs from her hands, then from her lap. There was a crumb on her cheek, but he decided not to say anything.

  She picked up the hot chocolate mug, curling her fingers around it and tapping them against the ceramic. Then she took a long, slow sip.

  “My mom used to make me this when I had a cold,” he said. “No real science to it or anything. My mom doesn’t cook. So...canned chicken noodle soup, packaged hot chocolate and toast was like luxury. It always made me feel better.”

  Jamie looked up at him, the expression in her eyes confused. She blinked slowly. “Nobody brought me anything when I was sick.”

  She looked back at the hot chocolate and took another slow sip.

  “What?”

  “Oh, my dad was always really busy. He worked the ranch every day. My brothers were usually in school. I used to go hunt around and get myself saltines and bring them back to bed. I didn’t get sick much. It was not fun.”

  “Being sick isn’t fun,” he pointed out.

  Except, he knew what she meant.

  Having a cold was never fun, but he had been one to eke a sniffle into a whole day lying in his room, because he knew it meant his mom would be back and forth with goodies and cool, caring hands. That he would feel safe and nurtured, and have Popsicles and TV shows and all kinds of attention, which, growing up in a house with three rowdy boys, was incentive enough.

  In general, Tammy Dalton was of the opinion that her boys ought to be self-sufficient. But when they were sick, she softened right up. It was all Campbell’s and Otter Pops.

  She had been there for him when he’d needed it. And he’d always felt he needed to be there for her, too. It was the way of things. His mom had protected him, taken care of him when he’d been small and vulnerable.

  And now that he had the broader shoulders, he did the same.

  It was a choice he’d made. To act the way he felt a man should.

  Real men protected the ones they were supposed to love.

  “If you were really sick...” he began.

/>   “It’s not like my dad didn’t check in on me,” Jamie said, her expression stormy. “He’s a good dad. And you know, he’s never been the warmest or softest man, but he cares. And you can see it in how he works the ranch, works with the horses. It showed me what mattered, and he shared it with me. He made me who I am. I didn’t need toast.”

  Gabe thought about his own dad, and how he’d treated Gabe’s desire to get involved with the ranch. The way he’d taken the horses from him.

  “He gave me everything I asked for,” Jamie continued.

  “You never asked him to take care of you,” Gabe said.

  “Nope,” Jamie responded, setting her hot chocolate down and trading it for the toast again.

  “Well, I don’t know how to tell you this, Jamie, but my mom didn’t need to be asked.”

  A sheen of tears welled up in Jamie’s eyes again, and guilt lanced Gabe. He shouldn’t have said any of that. He was just feeling sharp because she’d reminded him of the differences in their fathers.

  Fathers were a weird thing. Hank wasn’t taciturn or distant. He was gregarious and laughed loudly. He hugged his sons often.

  He’d cheated on his wife for years, and often went on the road for weeks at a time.

  He was willing to take pretty drastic action to get his way when he had to.

  Then tell a boy holding back humiliating tears he wouldn’t let himself cry, his fifteen-year-old shoulders shaking, that he’d be better off without the thing he loved most.

  And he’d said it all with a smile. Because ultimately, Hank had thought he was right. And nothing could shake his certainty in himself. He’d been certain Gabe would see it his way.

  But Gabe never had.

  “Maybe you don’t have to ask moms to do that kind of thing. But my mom was dead, Gabe. I didn’t have one. I don’t have one. And everyone else in my family had to make do with that. So did I. I don’t waste time crying about it. I didn’t even know her. You can’t mourn what you never had.”

  Gabe shook his head. “I don’t think that’s true, Jamie. I think you can mourn things you never had.”