Page 23 of Maverick (The Bull Riders #3)

Chapter Ten

Stella

When I wake up, I’m on the couch. I can feel my pajama pants down at my ankles. I’ve got a blanket over the top of me. I sit up in a rush, clutching the blanket to my chest. Maverick.

Last night we… We had sex twice. And then whatever all that was in front of the movie.

I can feel my face getting hot as I reach down to grab my pajama pants and pull them back into place.

I didn’t even bother to get dressed afterward, and he didn’t dress me.

He also left me down here on the couch. He’s nowhere to be found.

It’s early yet, the sky still gray outside.

And I sit there for a moment in the silence.

I can’t decide if I feel calm and peaceful, or if I feel like…

My head is spinning. That much I do know.

We were feral last night. I remember the way he pushed me off the couch, pulled my pants down, and ate me.

I know he stroked himself off while he did it, but I wish that I could’ve done it.

I put my hands over my face and make a short scream.

This is just wild.

And it’s not what I’m here for. I’m not here to lose myself in this. He made it so clear that he can’t be in a relationship, and I sure as hell can’t.

I don’t even know who I am. I feel like my life is broken into pieces. I used to be a dressage champion. Then, for a minute, I was a barrel racing champ. Now I’m nothing, back to trying to find my way. Harmony is getting married and I am…

Exploring sex for the first time.

In every way, I’m in my sister’s shadow. Riding her coattails, and I’m not even taking them to glory. I’m just sort of ridiculous.

That’s all.

I hear footsteps on the stairs, and I look up to see him coming down into the living room. He’s wearing jeans and a tight black T-shirt. His feet are bare. My heart jumps up into my throat. He’s just so fine. Honestly. That man is a health hazard. It’s just unfair.

“Morning,” he says.

“Morning,” I return. I feel small, like a guest shunted off to the couch, and maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe I should feel a little bit more confident, given the enthusiasm with which he ate me out last night. But I don’t.

So there’s that.

“Did you sleep all right?”

“Yeah,” I say.

That is true. I slept great. I wasn’t aware of any embarrassment or discomfort until this morning.

“You seemed… You seem pretty comfortable down here. So I figured I’d leave you to it.”

He doesn’t want to share a bed with me. That hits me like a freight train. I try not to let it hurt me. It shouldn’t hurt me.

“Yeah. Though… I would think that someone of your age would be a little bit more worried about my back hurting.”

He chuckles. “I would think that someone your age would be absolutely fine after a night of sleeping on the couch.”

I stretch. Ostentatiously.

“Yeah. I’m fine. Just totally fine.”

“How nice for you. So, are you ready to get out and do some dressage riding today?”

“Yeah,” I say.

Frankly, I can’t believe the last twenty-four hours happened. That only yesterday morning we drove from the rodeo, then last night descended into some kind of debaucherous madness, and I haven’t even had the chance to ride that horse yet. It’s crazy, honestly.

The wildest day on record, I’m pretty sure. I was a virgin, now I’m not. My lover is a complicated widower. Wow. Good for me. Honestly. Good for me.

I swing my feet over the edge of the couch and stand up. “I could really use some coffee.”

“I’ll get you some.” He looks at me for a long moment. “Maybe you should get dressed.”

I follow his line of sight. Oh right. The shirt is see-through.

“I didn’t think you noticed you could see my nipples through the shirt.”

He barks a laugh. “Yeah. I noticed. I noticed the first time I saw you in it.”

I flush with pleasure. “You did?”

“Yes, Stella. I did. We’ve been through this. Sex is complicated for me. Though, feeling less complicated.”

I don’t know if I should take that as a compliment or not. That I’ve managed to untangle something that was all tangled up before. Or if it just means that it’s the same sort of dramatic nonsense that was always there. Now he’s just coming.

“All right, go get dressed. I’ll make you some coffee.”

I go upstairs, and I fish my breeches out of the bottom of my suitcase.

I haven’t worn them for a minute, but I did pack them, just in case.

I also packed my boots that go with them, my shirt, though not my jacket with tails.

Once, when I was a child, I got points docked for having buttons that were just slightly too close together.

I remember my mother was furious, and the judge said that: we can’t coddle the children.

Just because they’re young doesn’t mean we can be easier on them.

Oh dressage. It’s such an elitist sport. Filled with people who are high on their own self-importance.

I do love it.

You meet some of the greatest, most awful human beings you can imagine. There’s something magical about that. I can’t help but reflect on all those experiences like that as I get my boots on.

As I prepare to head down the stairs.

I tie my hair back into a low bun. The neat style is a reflexive response to this.

My barrel racer persona is so different. Bedazzled jeans and pink chaps. My hair loose and wild beneath a pink cowboy hat.

This neat version of myself is vintage Stella Lane. Very much the girl born to live in that expansive horse property in Sonoma.

She’s like a costume that I can still put on.

She feels wrong. She also feels like home.

That’s complicated.

I take a breath and go down the stairs. Just as he walks out of the kitchen into the living room, holding two mugs of coffee. He looks up at me, and I can see that I’ve successfully shocked him with my transformation.

“I told you I’m a dressage girly,” I say as I move down the stairs, my chin held high.

“Definitely not the style you were riding last night,” he says.

I snort as I take the coffee from his hand.

“No. That was a rough ride.”

He shakes his head.

I walk into the kitchen and lean against the counter, because I don’t know what else to do with myself. I take a long sip of my coffee.

He stands there with me, though he keeps a healthy amount of distance between us. It’s obvious to me that he doesn’t really know what to do with this, and I find that somewhat disconcerting, because he’s the one who’s at least done this kind of thing before. God knows I never have.

I find myself staring at the kitchen. Taking in the little details of him.

The things that make him Maverick, the human man, and not just a fantasy.

That bad boy persona is sexy as hell. And it’s tempting to put it back in that box.

Because it’s comfortable. The man who ate me out on the floor makes for fantastic dream fodder.

The husband who lost his wife makes me feel something else. Something more. That’s something that I find challenging.

I didn’t really want to be challenged.

Again, I don’t really know who I am, so having to ponder who he is becomes a whole other issue entirely.

I caffeinate as quickly as possible because standing there thinking about that is uncomfortable.

“Okay,” I say. “I’m ready to go.”

“Good. He’s a little bit rusty, though I have had people working with him.”

“Is he Grand Prix level?”

“Yes. Though he has mixed success showing at that level.”

“Well, so do I.”

I laugh and then I walk out of the kitchen, and out the front door. It’s a beautiful morning. But I know it’s going to be a really hot day. That’s fine.

I grimace as I make my way down the front stairs and hesitate over which truck to get into.

“I’ll just give you a ride down,” he says.

“At some point, you’re going to have to fix the water in my cottage, or you’re going to end up with a permanent resident.” I can see him considering that.

“I’ll fix it.”

I try not to be wounded by that. There’s no point being wounded by it. He doesn’t want to share a bed with me. I already know that. And there’s no point to us doing that anyway. Burning off sexual energy and having orgasms is one thing. A very fun thing, in point of fact.

But cohabitating is another, and neither of us wants the intimacy of that.

I don’t need to ask to know that.

“So, when did you start riding?” he asks as he whips the truck out of his driveway and heads down the dirt road toward the barn.

“I don’t even remember when I didn’t. My parents had us on horses almost before we could walk. We were learning everything we could from a young age. I won State when I was eleven.”

“In your… Your age group?”

“No. Not in my age group. I won at my level. That included adults. It was Medium, it’s not that impressive.”

“It seems impressive to me,” he says.

“It was enough for a while, you know? Pleasing them. I could be the best at what I was doing, and I got so much out of their praise. But the problem is, it got old after a while. Winning felt a little bit too easy, I started to look for other things to use to please myself, and that’s when I got into dying my hair, piercing my nose.

I wanted to learn other things, and they simply didn’t want me to.

They wanted me to be focused on the things they thought mattered. ”

“And to them, the only thing that mattered was dressage?”

“Exactly. Well, they would’ve allowed me to do jumping.

But it wasn’t their forte, and it wasn’t as easy to get me involved in that.

They had some of the equipment for that, and I did experiment with it.

Without permission, which got me in trouble.

But it’s okay, honestly. I probably deserved it.

Getting in trouble, I mean. Getting on a horse that you don’t know and doing something that you haven’t been trained to do is a bad idea. ”

“Well, I can’t really say much, because I don’t know from having a decent childhood, but it sounds to me like they were a little bit hard on you.”