Fearless Read online

  “No, ma’am,” he interrupted, his voice stern enough that I knew he wasn’t screwing with me. “I wouldn’t do that. I just figured maybe I’d call you once in a while.”

  I arched an eyebrow at the last part, putting my real number in his phone. He totally said call, not text. Hope he meant it. Phone sex was fun and a necessary evil when I traveled so much for the circuit. Plus, I bet his accent sounded even better when he was talking dirty. “Once in a while, huh?”

  “Well, I didn’t wanna presume anything.”

  “Sounds to me like you’ve got a bad habit of cutting your legs out from under you.” I held out his phone at arm’s length and took a quick selfie, saving it to the new contact. It wasn’t great, thanks to the lack of light, but it was clearly me—not photoshopped or airbrushed, padded or provocatively posed with Colton’s hands smeared all over me. “Here you are.”

  Billy took his phone, smiling at the photo before he locked the screen, and put it back in his pocket. “Thank you. That was real kind.”

  I snorted and leaned against the RV once more, indefensibly full of butterflies for being an adult on an elementary date and allowing myself to get completely swept up in it regardless. “You’re too much, Billy King.”

  “I promise you, I’m not.”

  “No, you are.” I meant what I was about to say, but I threw him a wink to ease the blow. “You’re almost too kind to believe, and I’m starting to wonder if all I’m hearing are sugar-sweet lies.”

  Billy laughed, giving me half an eye roll. “Oh, so I’m too nice?”

  “Yup.”

  He shifted his weight, his eyes darting low and to the left again. “I haven’t heard that one before.”

  And the bullshit radar goes ping! I tilted my head, grinning as I made a mental note of his most obvious tell. “You dirty rotten liar.”

  Billy cracked up, holding up his hands. “Okay, so maybe I’ve heard it, but it doesn’t mean I agree.”

  I chuckled along with him, amazed how the white lies tumbled from his lips like prayers from a preacher. “Uh-huh.”

  Billy laughed harder, his eyes catching mine while an unnamable force looped around us and tied a bow until we weren’t really laughing anymore, but we couldn’t seem to stop smiling at each other, either.

  My whole heart was thumping strong in my chest while everything in me begged to kiss him. But I couldn’t bring myself to make the first move—I wanted Billy to go for it. To step up and take the risk and feel all the elation of me rewarding it with full-on acceptance because for once, what a guy wanted was exactly what I wanted, too.

  He let out a deep sigh that was almost more of a groan, sinking my hopes. “You’re not making this easy on me at all, are you?”

  “Making what easy?”

  He looked away, unable to hide his smile. “Nothing.”

  It was too much fun; I couldn’t resist. The way he was, the way he made me feel. “You want to kiss me, Billy?”

  He grinned at the ground. Probably, I was pushing too hard, too fast, but I didn’t really know any other way to go. Not when I wanted him to kiss me that damn bad.

  When he lifted his head, there was no fear in his blue eyes. Just a pure kind of acceptance that he wasn’t going to be happy until he got what he wanted. “Yes, ma’am. I do.”

  My heartbeat took off as Billy stepped closer, his hat hiding both of us from the February moon. The rich scent of him was too tempting: I pulled it deep into my lungs, drowning in the masculinity rippling off him. But he still wasn’t touching me, no matter how much I wanted him to.

  “Would that be all right?” he whispered.

  I don’t remember nodding or breathing, just beaming at him and praying my self-restraint could hold on a little bit longer. “I’ll answer that in a minute.”

  Billy smiled, and then I finally got everything I’d been craving. He brushed his fingertips over my cheek with a touch softer than the wishing petals of a dandelion, hooking a knuckle under my chin and tilting my lips up to his. My eyelashes fluttered closed, my pulse thundering through my veins as I waited and waited, desperate for the first crash of his mouth against mine.

  All I felt was space between us, growing longer and wider until it just wasn’t anymore—the first brush of his lips so soft, I wasn’t even sure that I’d felt him. But Billy was there, his kiss as slow as his drawl, careful and gentle, and little more than a sip of an ocean I was eager to disappear into.

  I took his jaw between my palms, prickly with stubble but sculptured and strong. Drawing him down to me, I quickly melted into the shocking plumpness of what I’d considered to be thin lips but now felt rich and deep, and a whole new shade of delicious. Then he moaned, his hands squeezing my waist and pressing me up into him. It was like embracing iron, rippled and smooth, the bite of his buckle scraping my belly, and my hips pressing hungrily toward the long, thick swell growing behind his zipper.

  He took a needy gasp for air, and I hugged him closer, slipping my tongue into his mouth. A growl churned from low in his throat as the kiss turned dirtier, the strike of his tongue and bite of his lips getting wonderfully sharp. But not sharp enough for what I wanted when my body was catching fire everywhere he touched me: his wide palm secure on my lower back, his other hand buried in my hair and massaging my scalp.

  He felt so good, too good. And he hadn’t grabbed my ass once.

  “You know”—I leaned back, my hand on his chest and Billy breathing hard, blinking at me with his hands suspended in place—“you don’t kiss like a bull rider.”

  His brow furrowed, the slightest spark of suspicion in his eyes. “How many bull riders you kissing?”

  Nice.

  “Hopefully none.”

  He half rolled his eyes, but he was smiling again as he settled his hands on my waist, his thumbs petting the space leading to my hips. All trace of jealousy totally and completely gone, thank God. “All right, what do you got against bull riders?”

  I did my best to calm my libido—which wasn’t helped by tapping his rock-solid chest with a single finger. But I wanted to set the record straight before we stumbled into a problem. I was never going back to that life, not when I had waited nine hours for Travis to wake up and not when I had been more terrified than I knew a person could be when Jace was airlifted. “You put your bull above everything else. And I’m telling you right now, Billy King, no eight-second bull ride is ever going to come before me.”

  Billy didn’t groan, didn’t flinch, didn’t blink. He just nodded. “Okay.”

  “I’m serious.”

  Serious as Bonnie Landry’s black funeral dress and the poem she brokenly read over Beau’s glistening coffin.

  “Yeah?” Billy drawled, but his smile was clearly teasing as his hands slid from my waist to lock somewhere over my lower back. He pulled me closer until I was nearly gasping from the tease of his erection against my hip, straining his zipper and parching my mouth. His eyebrow arched in the picture of confidence, then he leaned down close enough to kiss me again, whispering against my lips, “Good thing I’m not a bull rider no more…”

  Good thing indeed.

  I dissolved fully into Billy’s lips, lost in the gentle press of his palm coming up to cradle my cheek. The sweet scrape of cowboy callouses had me shivering and reckless, Billy slowly starting to kiss me more desperately until he had me tucked hard against him, and I was ready to let him have me right there in the freaking open.

  Why hadn’t I stopped us from going into the dance or left it early in favor of a dark tack room nearby? And now I had to leave—Australia was calling, along with the curves of the Phillip Island track.

  When I pulled back from him, I was filled with regret, riddled with longing, and already hating so much that I didn’t know when I’d get to see him again. “I gotta go,” I whispered.

  Billy nodded, his voice thick and more t
han a little breathless. “Me too. To Malaysia.”

  I cracked up laughing—the randomness of his response way beyond anything I’d had a guy try to pull on me before. “Right. To Malaysia.”

  “I’m serious,” he said with a chuckle. “I gotta go do my testing in Sepang before we race in Qatar.”

  Okay, that actually made sense.

  “And I know it isn’t right to ask a woman to wait on a man, but since you’re a busy woman, I figured maybe it’d be okay, just this once.”

  My stomach tightened as Billy bit his lip, already nervous over whatever he was nervous to ask. He had to have a catch somewhere, and it was getting harder to remember that when his hands petting my waist felt like pure heaven.

  “I’m about to be gone for a while,” he said, “but I’d really, really like to see you once I get back to Memphis. If you’re back, too.”

  A devilish thought hit my mind, images of midnight surf and my white bikini in a pile on a bungalow floor already tantalizing me, and I couldn’t keep it from slipping out of my lips. “Well, I happen to be heading to Phillip Island for my own testing and race in Australia. Wanna meet me in Jakarta when you’re done in Qatar? I know a great little beach resort, super private.”

  Billy laughed. “No, ma’am. That I’m gonna have to pass on.”

  “What? How come? Indonesia is, like, an entire world better than anywhere else on this planet.”

  He squinted up from under thick brown eyelashes. “Because I don’t know where the good places to take you are? At home, I know which creeks don’t get overrun with tourists and what walking paths are okay for your horse’s feet without fouling up their shoes. And I don’t have my horse in Jakarta, so I can’t take you riding at sunset to a cicada choir.”

  Everything in me melted even more, and I didn’t even care that he was making me wait for our next date just for his pride. The look in his eyes swore he’d make it worth it.

  I slid my hands up his ruggedly solid chest, loving every thump of his heart under my palms and the smile in his eyes growing bright when I stretched up on my toes, eager to kiss him again. “All right, then.”

  “Thank you,” he breathed.

  “Billy, shut up and just kiss me.”

  He chuckled, bumping my nose with his and holding me a little tighter. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Goddamn, could that man use his tongue in incredible ways: never rushing or bullying, just going so slow, so deliberate and soft and thick, it was almost too intense.

  Couldn’t wait to see what else he could do with it…

  Oh God, I’m never going to be able to stop.

  I stole a last kiss from Billy’s addictive lips before I slipped out from under his arm, turning for the door while I still had the ability. “Bye.”

  “Oh, now, see, I don’t like that word,” he said playfully.

  I pivoted back, tilting my head and unable to wipe the grin off my face. Whenever I was gonna see him again, it wouldn’t come quick enough. “Talk to you soon?”

  He grinned, already walking backward toward his truck and touching a finger to his hat. “Thanks for the dance.”

  There wasn’t a word big enough for how much trouble my heart was in.

  My poor vibrator, too.

  Chapter 5

  Billy King—Present Day

  “You wanna dance?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  Taryn waits as I get down from the bar stool, the shadow of a smirk curling her lips when I lead her to the dance floor. I’m not sure what that look’s about, but I’m sure she’ll let me know when she’s good and ready. In the meantime, I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth.

  I’m only gonna get so many chances to convince her that leaving me is even worse than what I did in the first place, and I’m not about to waste this one. Even if we are at Up-Chuck Buck’s, choking on smoke and the stench of sour whiskey.

  She turns toward me once we’re in the middle of all the couples, like we’ve done so many times—my palm slipping under her hair as she hooks onto my shoulder, our clasped hands held low over my back instead of hers, because she’s always been more comfortable that way.

  I lace my fingers through Taryn’s, and something in me softens at the cool band of her Aunt Sylvie’s ruby ring. Taryn never takes it off, and it’s almost cruel how much I’ve missed the little stuff like that. But it also makes me wonder what she’s told her cousin April about us. The same cousin whose wedding I missed because of the damn “incident.”

  “I, um…” I start. But with one sharp look from Taryn, my apologies die flat on my tongue, swelling thick in my mouth with the weight of all of them.

  Everything is just so wrong. The lights are too low, neon signs tinting her hair unnatural colors. And there are so many people, the temperature’s a good ten degrees hotter than it should be. I also can’t seem to move us without some stranger brushing up against her in some way. I hate that. She’s not exactly a fan of it, either.

  I keep my steps small, my ankle already protesting and my eyes on the people around us instead of Taryn. But no one’s looked at her like they know her, except for Mason—twirling around some girl I’ve never seen before and giving me a thumbs-up like I’m not dancing on death row. The music’s also some new singer I don’t recognize, like a Clint Black wannabe mixed with Imagine Dragons, but it’s still country, so I guess that’s fine. Doesn’t really change the fact that I can’t even enjoy holding her again, I’m so on edge from everything.

  “This all we gonna do?” Taryn asks after a minute. “Shuffle around? I thought we were gonna dance.”

  Nothing about her words or her voice is as sweet as she tried to make it sound, and just like at the bar, she doesn’t even sound like her. I nearly sigh out loud, wishing there was an easier way for us to get through this.

  She wants to march me out front and yell at me? Fine. I’ve got a couple of things I want to say, too. Like she’s gotta know that in some way, she’s taking all this too damn far. But she also knows I never turn down an opportunity to dance with her, and I’m not steering off course when she’s clearly directing my every move. “All right.”

  I check around and shift us over to make sure we’ve got plenty of space, and Taryn’s grinning like she’s going in for her kill. Scares the shit out of me and has always made me glad we don’t race against each other.

  It’s two beats for the chorus to start, and then we’re off, Taryn spinning out under my arm, twirling back and ducking as I twist around her. It’s killing my ankle to do this and giving me way too many flashbacks of how I was feeling before my knee surgery—the one I put off for almost too long, causing it to take even longer to recover from. But this is worth it for a catch of her hand here, a tug on her hip there, and all while she’s flying around me as others whoop and holler at her golden hair crackling the air like summertime heat lightning.

  Every move with her is so easy, but I…I can’t seem to remember when we learned all the steps. I know it wasn’t like this in the beginning. Everything about the way we dance now, it’s all so damn complicated.

  Taryn twirls into me, her back to my chest and my arm across her hips, and thank God for that, because my ankle is killing me, and I’m wincing with every step. But I can’t quit, not when I’m this close to winning her back.

  She takes my hand and tries to twirl out under it, but I catch her and hold her instead of letting her go. “What’s wrong, Billy?” she asks, a little out of breath as she drapes an arm around my neck and goes back to our starting speed.

  I shove the truth as far from my brain as I can muster, looking deep into her eyes and thinking over all our greatest hits: our first dance, first kiss, the first time I told her I loved her. Not my ankle, grinding and sore, crumbling apart under me. Right now, that truth would end everything. “Nothing. Just wanted to slow down for a second. See your face. I missed you.�
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  “Uh-huh. And nothing’s wrong with your foot, either.” She smiles like she does when she finally breaks a tough colt, and instantly, I know I’m busted.

  Her voice echoes in my head from not ten minutes ago: “Walk away, huh?”

  No doubt about it, she brought me out here just to prove she knows I’m hurting. And apparently doing a crappy job of hiding it from her. She’s always doing this shit to me. Like she’s never stretched the truth once in her whole life.

  I go to spin her out, but she plants her feet and stays locked into me, and she’s not going anywhere. “Nice try. But I saw you limping when you were coming up to the training pen, and you were hobbling your way over to the bar when you got here and thought I wasn’t looking. But it isn’t the same side as your surgery, so why the hell are you acting like you need a pair of crutches?”

  I let a breath out through my nose, adjusting my grip on her, since she seems to be settled in for the long haul. Then I say the first excuse that comes to mind. “I got a blister.”

  “Liar.”

  I peer down at her, my patience all but gone when I’m already jet-lagged from racing home from freaking Spain. “Damn, woman. Let me alone, will you?”

  She yanks me closer, her tone sharp and eyes blazing. “You want to rethink that question before I take you up on it?”

  I grit my jaw and look away, Taryn all but leading us as we dance now. The people she was talking to when I first got here are staring—Maggie and…John? Maggie and Jake? Could be Jingle Bell for all I care. I fake a smile their way.

  “What’s wrong with your foot, Billy?”

  “It isn’t my foot, all right?” I grit out. “It’s my ankle. And it’s fine.”

  “Oh, it’s fine—”

  “Yeah, it’s fine!”

  Taryn stops us dead in the middle of the busy dance floor, glaring me into the ground. Then she hooks her arm through mine, marching me off toward the exit.

  Fuck. I’m ready to pass out with every step, and I tug my hat lower as she waves off the bouncer, pulling me out into the parking lot.