9. Lily

9

Lily

How hard can it be ? All I had to do was hang on and—

The bull started to dip and sway under me. I discovered there was a surprising lack of things to hang onto. Everything was smooth and slippery. It was almost as if someone had designed it to throw people off. What kind of fun is that?!

The bull turned, still moving as slowly as a kids’ ride, and I saw the crowd of girls smirking at me. Waiting for me to fall. What the hell am I doing up here, again? The bull suddenly lurched to the other side and I slid. Whoah shit.

When the girl with the ash-blonde hair had ridden it, she’d been all light and airy and sitting up in the saddle, waving Bull’s hat. I was...not like that. I was glued in place, clinging on with both hands to whatever I could find. And, as it started to move faster, things started to sway beneath my blouse. I’d come dressed for a drink, not an aerobics session. It was okay when you were a slim, willowy thing, but when I started being thrown around—I could feel my boobs beginning to bounce and wished I’d buttoned up my blouse a little higher. I heard a round of low chuckles rise from the girls and felt my face go red.

But when I found Bull in the crowd, he was looking at me in a very different way. His eyes were locked on me—not just on my face but drinking in my entire body, watching as I lurched and flailed and tried to hang on. He wasn’t laughing at me. His gaze was burning into me, devouring every inch of me in way that made my groin tighten.

The bull sped up again— that’s got to be the top speed, please let that be the top speed— and I tilted way over to one side, my jeans sliding on the smooth surface—

Suddenly, Bull was beside me. “Use your legs,” I heard him say. “Press your thighs around it. Just like riding a horse.”

I snapped my head around to stare at him, unsure if it was another one of his lines. But he just nodded at me.

“I never rode a horse,” I muttered.

He blinked at me disbelievingly.

I gripped the bull with my thighs. That made everything feel...different. I didn’t slip around so much but, because I was now locked in place, every jerk and turn of the beast was transferred right into my body, whipping me around.

“You gotta ride it,” Bull told me. “Shift your weight around.”

“ She’s got plenty of that,” muttered a red-haired girl to her friends.

Bull spun to face them “Why don’t you SHUT THE FUCK UP, Becky? ”

Becky went pale, her mouth still open. The giggles died on her friends’ lips.

I’d gone even redder than before, humiliation threatening to overwhelm me. There’d been girls like that in New York, too. One of the few things I didn’t miss. But in New York, no one had ever stuck up for me.

I started to shift my weight, following the bull as it moved. My ass started to lift out of the saddle just a little, in a clumsy parody of the girl who’d gone before me. I knew I probably looked ridiculous, with my oversize ass and my boobs bouncing around, but I was starting to get it—

And then, quite suddenly, the bull spun to the side and I was tipping sideways. I just had time to register my legs losing their grip and then I was falling headfirst towards the ground.