7. Lily

7

Lily

It was the first real ... flirting, if that’s even what it was, that I’d done in two years and I’d gotten lost in it. I was angry at him for thinking— assuming— I’d want to fuck him.

Even if I did.

Very, very badly.

But that wasn’t the point. I was mad at him and, at the same time...the way those big hands pressed into the tabletop, his forearms like a couple of tree trunks as he leaned forward; the sight of that big, muscled chest peeking out through the collar of his shirt....

It did something to me. Made me go a little weak on the inside and even spikier on the outside. As if I needed to keep knocking him back so that he couldn’t get close enough to see what he was doing to me. Or, maybe, because I wanted him to get mad enough to just damn well muscle through the spikes and get... inside me.

Did I really just think that?!

And then he suggested we find out and the reality of my situation rushed up to meet me. What the hell was I doing? I’d had less than half a beer, but I was flushed and panting, the blood pounding in my ears. I felt drunk...drunk on him.

Go home. Go home and get into a hot bath and probably jill off to the thought of him bending me over in some stable somewhere, my ass in the air and—

Stop thinking like that! I prayed that it wasn’t showing on my face. Hopefully, I looked cool and calm. You develop a pretty good poker face, when you’re dealing with arms dealers and drug cartels.

I pushed my chair back and stood up. Immediately, Bull’s hand slapped down on top of mine, covering my much smaller one completely. He stood up, too. When I looked up, he was staring into my eyes. Daring me to stay.

Suddenly, a girl was beside us. She was all movement and energy: look at me! Her long, ash-blonde hair never seemed to stay still. Just as it settled, she’d toss her head or twist and it would start swishing and gleaming all over again. She kept shifting her weight from foot to foot, too, as if she couldn’t bear to be still, and that made her firm little breasts bounce under her strappy top, the tops of them peeking out above the sequins like two perfectly-tanned oranges. “Just leaving?” she asked me.

“Yes,” I said.

“No,” said Bull.

The girl stared at me, then hooked a slender arm around Bull’s neck. She grabbed his cowboy hat and put it on her own head. “I was just wondering,” she told me in a voice that was syrup laced with arsenic, “because I was planning on riding the Bull.”

I just stared at her. I’d known they fawned over him...but really?

She gave a little snort of laughter at my expression and looked over my shoulder. I turned to see the mechanical bull. Oh. But when I turned back, the gleam in her eye told me that both meanings were very much intended.

Well, fine. This was a good thing. I was about to leave anyway. Right?

“Bull was going to give me a few tips,” she drawled, snaking her hand across his chest and sliding it under his pec. “Weren’t you?”

Bull was still staring at me, ignoring her. But the feel of those expert, delicate hands caressing his chest was definitely having an effect. I saw him shift slightly. His cock is probably getting hard. And then suddenly I was thinking of his cock again.

What if that bulge wasn’t padded?

The girl looked at me, arching a perfect eyebrow as if to say, “Well?”

She’s welcome to him. She can ride that thing and whoop and giggle and then he can rut her like an animal and they’ll both love it. That’s what my brain was thinking. But my stomach had tightened right up as if—

As if I didn’t want some other girl to have him.

I shook my head as if to clear it. That’s nuts. I opened my mouth to speak—

And found myself looking into Bull’s clear blue eyes again. He was willing me, willing me to tell her no.

But I knew the rules. No boyfriends. No connections. No one my uncle could use to hurt me.

“The Bull’s all yours,” I told her.

She grinned a toothy smile of victory and grabbed Bull by the hand, dragging him off to the mechanical bull. There. I’d totally solved that problem.

She climbed up onto the bull. Like me, she was wearing jeans, but in her case the denim was so tight it looked as though someone had spray-painted her legs blue and then glued on a couple of rivets. Her friends—the crowd of girls I’d run into before—came over to watch, crowding me out.

The girl said “Five,” to a gum-chewing cowboy behind a control panel and the thing started up—slowly, at first. As I’d predicted, there was whooping. And twisting. And arching her back and—goddamnit, she was just showing off for him, thrusting out her boobs. Then she took off the hat and waved it in the air just to demonstrate that she only needed one hand to hang on.

Bull stood off to one side. “Follow it with your hips,” he told her. “You gotta know where it’s going to go next.” He glanced over at me. “Don’t let it get away from you.”

The girl was really putting on a show, lifting her ass off the saddle and grinding it in mid air. Sometimes, she’d glance at me. Sometimes, she’d check that Bull was still watching her and, if he’d looked towards me, she’d give an extra-loud whoop.

I leaned against the bar. I didn’t want to give the girls the satisfaction of walking out, so I had to wait until the ride was over. I started fooling with the stuff on the bar—napkins, toothpicks, coasters—to make it look as if I was distracted and didn’t care at all. I wanted everyone to be completely clear that the girl with the ash-blonde hair could take Bull by the hand and lead him out to the parking lot or to a motel or wherever the hell they wanted and ride him just like she was riding that bull, for all I cared.

I mean, he was just a cocky, arrogant idiot and I’d only had a drink with him because he saved my life, so why would it bother me anyway? Right? Right.

The bull came to a stop and the girl swung her leg over the beast and slid down, letting the momentum carry her right into Bull. She threw her arms out and opened her legs so that he had no choice but to catch her. Then she wrapped her limbs around him, grinding her groin against him. As he turned around, she gave me a victorious grin over his shoulder.

And suddenly, I was walking towards the bull.