Page 21 of Rogue Cowboy (Montana’s Rodeo Cowboys #3)

He was quiet while she turned in the horses for the night. He helped. Of course he did. Horses and helping were second nature, but his mind was grappling with the almost frenetic energy wafting off Riley. She seemed amped and yet nervous. Not the vibe he wanted.

He fed Cinnamon a treat of carrots and apples and stroked Riley’s horse as if it would provide him with answers.

Tonight had been…a fantasy—much like the two nights they’d spent playing in LA.

But he craved real. Permanent. He now felt like he was straddling an invisible line—and if he jumped the wrong way, he could lose her or set her back.

And yet hadn’t he come here to push for more?

What was best for Riley?

“Hey, little man; hey, Rascal,” Riley cooed, facing out toward the dim lights and scattered bonfires in the makeshift campground.

“Did you get some dinner? I saved something from you.” Riley took a few steps and crouched, and he tried to ignore how her skirt rode high on her slim thighs—tried and failed to not speculate if her panties matched her bra.

Riley pulled something wrapped in a napkin from her purse. The dog crawled forward, and then as Riley leaned in—perhaps to pet him or try to grab a handful of fur, the dog jumped toward her, knocking her off-balance and seizing the chicken and piece of wurst from her fingers.

“Ugh.” Riley popped to her feet before he could help her up. “Zero points for cunning and even less for grace,” she said ruefully, swatting at her backside.

“That too is my job,” he said, lightly brushing her pert bottom.

“I keep thinking I can catch him,” Riley said. “He’s nearly feral and while he looks healthy, he needs a home.”

Cole paused, his hand still on her bottom. The words struck him, personal with their significance.

“What?” She turned to look at him.

He removed his hand from her ass, though she hadn’t seemed to notice him lingering. She caught his wrist as he moved away.

“I did get a little something for you today, for us,” she said, her voice deeper than usual, a touch husky.

“Tell me.”

“It’s…ah…in my trailer.”

“Okay.” He followed her, feeling even more like the damn stray dog.

Riley unlocked the door, but Cole by habit stepped around her and entered first, making a quick scan, ready for her to protest.

“I’ve decided I like how you do that. It’s weird but sweet.”

“I’m not sweet.”

He felt edgy, poised to snap. Her heat, her scent, her shiny hair, her soft, glowing skin all yanked the chain linking him to his primitive side that craved and hungered. He didn’t want to feel so much. He didn’t want to scare her, but not for the first time did he doubt his control.

He’d thought he’d had discipline during the past agonizingly long nearly six years. He hadn’t touched a woman. But two days with Riley mocked his ‘control.’ Riley had been the one for him the second he’d seen her up on a stage singing her heart out, full of yearning emotion and snapping energy.

“Sit,” Riley said.

Cole sat.

“You are sweet,” she stated.

He wasn’t. If she’d knew half of what he’d done, what he wanted, she’d scream, and he’d have twenty cowboys rushing to her rescue.

She reached into a cabinet and pulled down a copper-colored bag, similar to what he picked up today at the Copper Mountain Chocolate Shop. It amused him that they’d both snuck off and done some shopping for their date and apparently for each other.

“It’s a dessert,” she said. “I thought we could do a taste test.”

Cole was relieved he was sitting—no longer sure his legs could have held him up. Would it be too obvious if he put his hat in his lap?

Riley switched on some soft music—sounded like Zach Bryan’s ‘Something in the Orange.’ He didn’t take his eyes off her. Riley grabbed the handle of the trailer’s door. She paused, swayed a little, and he could see her pulse kick up in her neck.

“Riley, we had fun tonight. The evening can end now.”

“No,” she said. “I don’t want it to. I want…I want my life back. I need to take it back. I’ve already let it go too long.” Her words came fast and sounded like they were being choked out.

“Leave the door open,” he said. “No matter what, I sit here until you tell me to go.”

“What if…what if I don’t want you to go?”

“Then I’ll stay.”

She stared at him, gaze searching then pulled out two cellophane packages, each wrapped with a copper bow.

“Close your eyes,” she whispered.

Cole closed his eyes.

“Can I…can I blindfold you?”

Jesus.

“Yes.”

Riley reached into his pocket and withdrew the bandana every Texas cowboy—hell, probably every ranch hand—kept in his back pocket.

He listened. Heard her breathing and a whisper of sound, and then she leaned into him, and he inhaled her like his last breath. Her arms brushed his as she positioned his hands behind his back and, she tied one bandana around his wrists. She looked at him, her eyes nearly purple in the dim light.

“Okay?”

“Yes.” It was hot as hell.

He felt the brush of her breasts as she leaned in and blindfolded him with a softer, silkier scarf.

“Ummm…maybe we should have a safe word.”

He barely held back a snorted laugh. “You’re supposed to figure that before you start.”

“Oh.”

“Not that I have personal experience,” he said firmly.

“Oh… Good. I think I’m being weird.”

He thought she was charming, and this was both exciting and more than a little confusing, but he’d roll with it.

“I don’t need a safe word.”

“Me neither,” she said.

Her sigh nearly broke his heart.

“Okay.” He heard the determination. “We’re going to practice.”

“What?” He couldn’t imagine what she meant and wondered what had brought this on.

“Intimacy. A shared experience.”

He wished she were blindfolded too so she couldn’t see what a fool he must look because he had no idea what she was up to, but he’d wanted Riley to take control of her life, and if this was it, he’d sit in the passenger seat and keep his opinions to himself.

“I’m going to put something in your mouth, and I’m going to put the same thing in my mouth.

And I want you to let it melt. And as it melts, I want you to tell me something—something the taste reminds you of.

A memory or a sensation. I read about this once and did it in a creativity workshop in LA.

I’m trying to remember something good from that time other than you. Okay?”

Emotion swelled through him, and he doubted his ability to speak, much less call up a memory from a life he rarely reflected on.

“Okay.”

He’d rather have her tell him to kill someone for her as he was pretty useless with words and feelings, but he was a civilian now, and another word with the same prefix was civilized.

“Open,” Riley whispered.

Cole opened his mouth and Riley placed something slightly warm on his tongue, a piece of chocolate, midnight dark, rich, earthy, and as he waited the chocolate began to melt, coat his tongue, and he remembered something that Riley had called a Balboa bar.

He smiled. “Dark chocolate. Rich cocoa. Roasted locally.” He remembered the spiel he’d heard the owner, Sage Carrigan, tell a curious shopper.

“Handmade, secret recipe. Feels like the chocolate boots,” he said triumphantly, pleased he could find words when he so desperately needed them. “It should remind me of the jungle.”

He’d hidden in plenty of them, sweating out liters of liquid over his career.

“Instead I’m thinking of that island that was south of LA, not really an island but we took a little ferry and sat on a dock and looked at some yachts and shared a Balboa bar, and I thought your eyes looked like pansies—so vibrant and vivid and full of life and I thought—”

He broke off the thought.

“You thought what?” Riley asked, her voice a little choked.

“I could see forever.”

Riley didn’t say anything. But he didn’t hear anything either so she probably hadn’t hopped out of the trailer and run.

“Is it my turn?”

“No.”

He liked her bossy tone.

“Next memory.”

“You didn’t share, yet.”

“I’m making the rules.”

“Intimacy takes two.” He didn’t know much about relationships, but he could figure that.

“You can play a game with me tomorrow night after our second date at the steak dinner.”

And his mind short-circuited just as his cock nearly shredded itself against his zipper. Damn he was out of practice.

She leaned into him again. “Open.”

He did, keeping his hands tucked behind him, even though she’d tied the bandana so loosely, he could easily shrug out of it. But he wanted her to feel safe, even if he felt like he was going to explode.

This one was milk chocolate, but there was something else, caramel, and suddenly he was back at Char-Pie’s in Last Stand, but he was little—in some kind of a booster seat and his family was also at the table.

His sister—her long, dark hair in pigtails—held a spoon above him.

He had his mouth wide open, and he stared at the oozing dessert and made baby bird sounds while the chocolate and caramel and ice cream dripped into his mouth, and Carli laughed.

Cole leapt up and jumped out of the trailer, ripping both bandanas off.

He gulped in air and scrubbed his face. Where had that come from?

Was it real? He had so few memories of his family—mostly they were people in the pictures his paw-paw and maw-maw kept lining the hallway and great room at the main house.

He tried never to think about any of them.

As a kid he’d run off when his paw-paw had talked about the son he’d lost—the grandchildren.

Bile rose, scorching him inside and he choked it back down.

“Cole?” Riley wrapped herself around his broad frame, holding on like he was going to break apart. “I got you,” she whispered while he struggled for control. He still felt like the image scarred his corneas and he mentally clawed at it. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

His heart still pounded out of his chest. Where was his damn calm now? His annoying mantra of square breathing he’d laid on her more than once like he had the answer for everything.