Page 23 of Colt (The Bull Riders #2)

I do like her.

All this time I’ve cast her as the younger sister figure, it was convenient for me to do it.

It made sure that nothing got messy. And it was always ripe for messiness.

No matter how much I might pretend otherwise.

Because I noticed when she became a woman.

I noticed that she was beautiful. In a way that I knew wasn’t right for me to be noticing my stepsister.

I didn’t live at home anymore, she was over eighteen, it’s not like there was anything…

Nothing dodgy about it in that way. But definitely not right.

Too late to be thinking about all that now, I suppose. It’s weird, though, how this doesn’t feel wrong. It feels good. My body feels good for the first time in a hell of a long while.

I watch her make the coffee, because I’m enjoying watching her movements in a different way.

Taking in what she does, the way that her hair catches the sunlight, how it falls over her shoulders.

The way her elegant fingers maneuver around all the things in the kitchen.

The way her hips sway when she walks. I’ve seen all these things before, but this is the first time I’ve ever let myself notice them in this way.

This time when we sit together at the table it doesn’t feel fraught. It feels easy. Though, there is a threat of underlying tension between us, but now I know what it is. Sexual tension. Has it been that way for a long time? Is that what drives the tense moments between us? Entirely possible.

And now we can just have sex instead of fighting.

I love that for us.

She finishes her cup of coffee, and sets it down at the center of the table. “I’m going to go get dressed. I’ll be back in like fifteen minutes, and then we can go.”

I don’t want her to leave. I can’t say that I’ve ever had that experience before after sex with a woman. Usually I’m amped for some alone time. Not now. A combination of the fact that I’m not enjoying being alone with my demons right now, and her, I suspect.

The minutes go by slowly, and when she comes back again I practically leap toward the front door.

I feel like a dog that’s been in his kennel for too long. Yeah, we went to my parents’ house, but that’s not the same.

“Your mom must’ve told everyone to stay away,” she muses as we get into my truck.

“You think?”

“Oh yeah,” she says, starting the ignition. “Otherwise you’d be inundated with women holding casseroles offering to hand out condolence blow jobs.”

I nearly choked on my own breath as we pull out on the street. “Excuse me?”

“Oh, come on. You know it’s true.”

“I don’t know that it’s true.”

“Everyone’s going to want to be part of your healing, Colt.”

There is a slight crispness to her tone, and I wonder what she did to make yourself mad at me when she went over to change.

“What have you been thinking about?”

“Nothing.”

“You have been. You’ve been thinking about me getting Get Well Soon Blow Jobs, which, as it happens, is kind of an upgrade from a mylar balloon. But a strange route to take.”

She gives me a deadly glare from the corner of her eye.

“I don’t want anyone else,” I say.

She turns toward me quickly, then turns back so that she’s facing the road. “You think that because… You feel insecure.”

“I feel insecure . I feel insecure. I feel insecure? I put an emphasis on a different word every time I repeated. “First of all, you’ve seen my dick.”

She surprises me by bursting out laughing. “Yes. I have.”

“So I’m not entirely sure where you think my insecurity is supposed to come from.”

“You’re just… You’re injured.”

“How many times did you come?”

“Colt,” she says. “I’m serious.”

“Listen, this is what we aren’t going to do, Allison, we are not going to minimize this.

Okay? Yes, we have to keep it a secret, yes, it’s for a limited time.

We both know that’s the only way that it can happen, we both know that’s the only thing.

The only way that it can be. But I… Hell, I thought you were beautiful for years. ”

“You have not,” she says.

“I have. I fucking have. I just suppressed it. And you know, when I move all the time, it’s easy for me to pretend that there’s nothing there.

I don’t feel anything. It’s easy for me to pretend that we haven’t got a thing between us, okay?

But the reality is, we do. And we’ve proven that.

Solidly. This morning was… It was amazing.

It was better for me, too. Different for me. Okay?”

I feel raw from admission, but it is true. And hell yeah, the circumstances might be part of it, but they aren’t the whole thing.

“Why didn’t you tell me that you wanted me before?”

“Why didn’t I tell you before this morning, or why didn’t I tell you this morning?”

“Well. This morning. Or yesterday, when you almost kissed me out in the backyard. It hurt my feelings and… You could’ve just said this then.”

“I could have. But I was still trying to figure it all out. And by the time I stormed into the house last night, I wasn’t thinking about anything.

I wasn’t trying to figure anything out anymore, I was just having a fit because I felt shitty, and I didn’t know what else to do.

But yeah, I have felt attraction to you before.

You make it easy to steer clear of you, though, because you steer clear of me. ”

“Because I’m attracted to you,” she says, sounding just as frustrated as I do. “I don’t want it, I didn’t ask for it, but I just… I am. I have been. It sucks, and I hate it. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome?” I shake my head. “I just don’t want you to run with this idea that I could just as easily take a casserole and an orgasm from Jenny down the block, okay?”

“Who’s Jenny?”

“She’s hypothetical. Okay? The point is, I haven’t felt desire for anyone else.

I haven’t even felt like getting myself off, okay?

You said that I was going to seduce a nurse in the hospital, but I didn’t even have an inkling toward that.

It’s you. It’s not sex or just the amount of time that it’s been, it’s you.

My proximity to you. I don’t know how to explain it, I don’t know how to make it okay, I don’t know what to do with it exactly.

But that’s where we are. And I don’t want to hurt you.

But I really, really don’t want you to think you’re interchangeable.

You’re not.” It’s the most heartfelt speech I’ve ever made to a woman.

But I need her to know that. Because yeah, part of this is that I’m feeling more like myself.

Part of it is that this wouldn’t have happened if not for the accident, but it’s complicated.

It has to do with proximity, me slowing down, it has to do with all this stuff that isn’t her being second best, or whatever she thinks this is.

“I believe you,” she says.

That means more to me than I can articulate. I didn’t realize I needed her to believe me. That I needed to feel like I wasn’t just my dad. Like I’m not just using her for my own pleasure.

“It’s just you and me for the next bit, okay?”

“Okay,” she says.

She looks at me just quickly again, and I see a slight smile on her face.

I’m rarely the reason Allison smiles. So I’ll take it.

“Do you have any favorite foods that you want to get?”

I actually eat pretty clean when I am in season on the rodeo. It would be nice to just drink a lot of beer and barbecue, but I take really good care of myself. Which is kind of hilarious now.

“Is it weird that I want vegetables. And also cake?”

“No,” she says. “Nothing is weird. I mean, because everything is weird, to be clear.”

“That’s the truth.”

Yeah. Everything was weird. So it’s best to just take a free fall into it, I guess.

When we arrive in Tolowa, she chooses one of the biggest grocery stores there. It has a lot of specialty foods, a lot of healthy, organic things, but also a big bakery, and some international goodies. It’s overpriced, and I’m thrilled, because I plan on indulging myself.

“I’ll make a salad tonight,” I say.

She wrinkles her nose. “You’ll make it?”

“Yeah. It’s getting easier for me to walk on the crutches. Nothing hurts quite as bad as it did a week ago. Let alone three weeks ago. I think I’ll be totally fine making part of dinner.”

“Well, I’ll take it.”

We end up deciding on some fresh pasta and lots of vegetables along with an Alfredo sauce. There’s great sourdough bread in the bakery, and also a cake that looks like it came straight from heaven. I want a little bit of normalcy, and a little bit of indulgence. That seems about right to me.

She’s pushing the cart, which I don’t love, but there really wouldn’t be an easy way for me to manage crutches and the cart.

I could probably figure it out if I absolutely had to, but it’s easier to let her take the wheel.

By the end, we got a little bit overkill, snacks, sweets, dressings, sauces, overfilling the cart.

But there’s something easy about spending this time with her.

Something cheerful about it. Maybe it’s just being up and out of the house.

Somewhere other than my parents’ house. Maybe that’s what it is.

Or maybe it’s being with her.

She has insulated bags in the back of the car, with ice packs, and we fill those up before heading to lunch.

“Anywhere else you want to stop?”

“No.”

“You don’t want to get some new Wranglers cut up?”

“I’d like to not need any more than I have. Unless I do end up having to start that exhibitionist only fans.”

“Are you really worried about that?”

“Do I think I’m really going to have to start an OnlyFans?”

“No. I mean, are you really worried that you’re not going to be able to go back to the rodeo?”

I finish putting the last bag into the trunk. Then I get into the passenger seat. Her question is rattling around uncomfortably inside me, and I don’t know how to answer it. She gets in the car, moments after I do, starting the ignition. “Sorry. I guess you probably can’t answer that right now.”