Page 16 of Revelry (Cowgirls Do It Better #2)

Tate

The woman was a menace.

I could hardly tear my eyes away from her low cut, short red cocktail dress and don’t even get me started on the garter hugging her thick thigh that I wanted to pull off with my teeth, maybe graze her flesh while I’m at it and put my mark on her.

Betty Boop eat your heart out. That’s clearly who Gertrude was supposed to be with her glossed red lips and dark eye makeup which made her wide eyes look bigger than normal.

She’d even put a little beauty mark by her lip that I wanted to slide my tongue over.

Her black curls were pinned up to make them appear shorter than they were with a few tendrils slicked to her forehead in that classic Betty style.

I wouldn’t be able to complete our fun agenda because she was going to give me a heart attack.

The blood still hadn’t dissipated from the area it had rushed to after seeing her little panties covering her ass earlier.

It had taken everything in me not to flip up her dress and see just what the rest of those panties looked like.

I didn’t understand my sudden ferocious need for her. I hadn’t had that before for anyone.

“Come on, let’s go talk to Daisy!” Gertrude tugged my hand, her palm sliding softly into mine and I marveled at how tiny hers was in my grasp.

When Daisy saw us, she and Gertrude both squealed and then hugged each other. Then Daisy shocked me by flinging herself at me and squeezing me tight. I wasn’t expecting it and didn’t have time to return the hug before she was pulling away.

“You’ve done an amazing job with the place, it’s perfection! I love all the tiny details!” Gertrude enthused, her eyes bright.

“Thank you, it’s been so fun to do and nice to finally have some work,” Daisy replied. I frowned at her, remembering seeing her at Duke’s ranch in the maid’s outfit. Her eyes met mine before they flicked away again and I remembered her asking me not to tell anyone she was there.

I glanced around the bar. Gertrude was right, it looked amazing. The staging of the party was impressive, but my brain couldn’t get over the fact that this wasn’t what the bar normally looked like and kept wanting me to rearrange the décor to something I recognized.

I put my hand on the small of her back, her heat searing my palm, and dipped my head. “What do you want to drink?”

She glanced up at me from under her thick lashes and my dick pulsed in my jeans. “Root beer is fine, thanks.”

A soft smile tipped her lips and my eyes locked onto it before I tore myself away and went to the bar.

When I’d asked Gertrude for fun, I had meant the playful, strictly friendly variety.

But now all my brain, and other areas, was thinking about was the kind of adult fun we could have together.

The idea of all her enthusiasm writhing under me as I pounded into her had me losing my breath.

It had been a long time since I’d gotten laid, but that image alone of us in bed together was somehow better than every sexual encounter I’d had before.

“Whiskey and a root beer,” I rasped to the woman behind the bar dressed as a ghost. I shook my head, trying to rid myself of the Gertrude-related urges and images. If I was going to sleep with someone it wouldn’t, couldn’t be her. She was my neighbor, and it would get messy and complicated.

When I usually needed to scratch an itch, I liked strangers who didn’t expect anything and I sure as shit knew Gertrude was the type of woman to expect something. She had just gotten divorced for Christ’s sake, she was definitely off the freaking table.

I glanced to the left and saw Jack behind the bar, also dressed as a cowboy. I steeled myself as I strolled down the bar, tucking some of the webbing under that was sticking out as I went.

“Hey, man,” I said, not knowing where to go from there and hoping Jack would take the lead.

He looked up and smiled. “Hey Tate! Didn’t figure you for being a Halloween guy.” He gestured to us both. “We’re matching!”

“Yeah.” I smoothed a hand over my plaid shirt. “This was Gertrude’s idea.” She’d asked me to trust her and that was something I didn’t find easy to do but so far, she hadn’t steered me wrong.

“I’ll just bet it was.” He rubbed a hand over his jaw, smirking. “Are you here as a…” he trailed off, holding up two fingers and tapping them together.

“Oh, no, just friends.” But I stumbled over the word. I had made a friend . It wasn’t something I’d planned on but here we are.

“Cool. Well I’ve got another hour to go on-shift and then I can come and hang out. Leo and Maddy are here already, and Kat will be by in a little while too.”

I nodded. “It’ll be nice to see everyone.” And I shocked myself by kinda meaning it. I was interested to see if Leo would also come dressed as a cowboy given his rodeo career or if he would choose something else.

Jack waved goodbye and went back to serving. I grabbed our drinks and headed back to Gertrude who was over by the pumpkin carving station.

“Tate, let’s carve pumpkins!” she shouted over the music, bouncing on her feet. Her breasts struggled against the low corset of her dress and I fought like hell to keep my eyes on her face, but they did drift a little lower than that for a second.

I’m human.

And horny apparently.

“I’m not sure I know how.”

Her mouth dropped open. “Wait, tell me you’ve carved a pumpkin before?”

I shook my head and she grabbed my hand and tugged me behind the station to one of the empty seats.

“Right, so it’s not rocket science but essentially cut the top off, scoop out the insides and then carve a shape or character of your choice.

Let’s make it interesting, winner of silliest carving buys the next round of drinks? ”

I sighed, giving in. “Deal.”

She clapped her hands happily then reached for the two aprons hanging up. “You might want this, it gets messy.”

My stomach muscles contracted. I didn’t cope well with messy and I hadn’t considered that.

When it came to animals, my passion for helping them seemed to quiet the noise in my head when it came to mess.

And I always wore gloves. But there weren’t any gloves here.

I glanced at the other activities and they were all mess-based.

Bobbing for eyeballs and the trick or treat station looked to be wet and gooey. My anxiety started flaring.

“On second thoughts, shall we do something else? Didn’t you say there was a Monster Mash Off – perhaps we should practice?” Only my fear of mess would make me suggest a fucking dance routine.

Gertrude frowned at me, a little crease forming between her brows and I hated that once again my OCD was impacting others. I hated that she was excited about this and now I was ruining it.

“Why don’t you wanna carve a pumpkin?” she pouted.

My mouth flapped open but no sound came out.

I looked away, how did I answer that? There was no answer that didn’t make it seem like I had serious issues.

I glanced down at the apron, squeezing it in my fist and after a moment, she covered my hand.

I flicked my eyes to hers and found them soft with empathy.

“I’ll tell you what, I’ll hollow them both out so you don’t have to get those sexy chaps all messy. It’s my favorite part anyway so you’re actually doing me a favor.”

Her smile was so bright, so innocent that I couldn’t help but agree.

“Thanks,” I murmured quietly. She clearly had an idea of what the issue was, and embarrassment flushed my cheeks that she had to rescue me.

I tied my apron on and while she hollowed out a pumpkin, I drank my whiskey and fetched us another drink each, thinking about the fact that she said my chaps were sexy.

“All done!” she announced, pushing my nice, clean pumpkin over to me. She’d even wiped all around the edges to remove any goo.

She was too damn sweet under all that sass.

“Thanks Gertrude, really.”

“No sweat!” she shouted as the band struck up with Bad Romance, the ra-ra ra-a-a-a echoing around the bar and making anything else impossible to hear.

I watched as she got to work on her pumpkin, the apron strings dangling behind her, tickling the backs of her thighs.

Her tongue poking out as she got to a particularly tricky bit.

My lips lifted in a small smile and like she knew what was happening, her stare snapped to mine and my lips resumed their regularly scheduled frowning.

“Hurry up. I may be behind, but I’ll catch up quick!” she yelled, then did a slight wiggle to the music. She was such a ray of sunshine, brightening up the room, like her own little aura was lighting up our lives.

I turned back to my pumpkin, wracking my brain for something silly and coming up empty. Silly wasn’t in my nature. So I just decided to start carving and see what happened.

Damn, it was fun.

I was so invested, darting glances over to Gertrude to see what she was doing. Every time she caught me, she put her arms out, blocking her design and pushing my competitive edge higher.

“Done?” she called a while later.

I nodded, putting my little knife down. “Reveal on three?” I asked.

“One…two…three!”

I spun mine towards her and looked over to see hers and immediately burst out laughing.

She’d done some wacky caricature with wonky teeth and crazy eyebrows and used a chunk of pumpkin shell to fashion a tongue hanging out.

The pumpkin seed innards spilled out of the toothy mouth like it was puke.

It was kinda gross but also looked hilarious.

I continued laughing and then looked to Gertrude, ready to congratulate her on her creativity but she was staring at me open-mouthed. My laughter subsided, self-consciousness taking over.

“What?”

She blinked and shrugged one shoulder. “Nothing, I’m glad you enjoyed my efforts. But oh my God, Tate! Look at yours!”

I glanced down at the spider in its web that I’d carved into my pumpkin. “I didn’t really know what to do. It’s not silly.”