Page 5 of Sexting The Tattooed Outlaw (Curvy Boss Babes of Wild Bronco #3)

KAY

The Blue Horse is loud and crowded, two adjectives that make my skin crawl.

There’s a reason that I own a coffee shop and not a bar. Fiction & Foam is cozy and quiet.

The Blue Horse is…well, it’s exactly what I expected. Blaring music, neon lights, and the stench of whiskey and bad cologne permanently soaked into every surface.

I agreed to join my friend Nadia here tonight because I needed a distraction. Nadia was over the moon when I agreed to come with her, used to me declining her invitations to go out and party.

Admittedly, I’ve been ignoring my social life for several years while I worked on starting my small business. While my friends were partying and dating, I spent my early twenties building a business.

I always thought that this “partying at bars” thing could wait until later.

But now? I feel so out of my element.

Clearly, I wore the wrong shoes. Everyone here is either in heels or sparkly cowgirl boots. I’m in my sneakers.

I also didn’t put on any makeup before leaving my house. My hair is in a ponytail and I didn’t bother to put my contact lenses in, so I’m wearing my large blue-rimmed glasses that I usually reserve for hanging around at home.

But I did wear a skirt tonight…only because the constrictive fabric of pants is still painful on my thigh.

My thigh…the place that Sam touched, his hard hand soft and gentle, smoothly gliding the slippery, sticky ointment over my tender, burned skin.

It felt far more intimate than such a mundane act has any right to feel. It felt… sexual.

I shudder and Nadia looks at me.

“You okay?” she asks.

“I’m fine,” I murmur, glancing down. “Just not sure what to do with my hands. At work, I’m usually holding a coffee pitcher or a book.”

“You need a drink.”

“Good idea. That’ll give me something to hold with my hands.”

“No,” Nadia laughs. “Not for that reason. I mean, you need a drink so that you can loosen the hell up. Stop worrying about how you look or what to do with your hands!”

“Easier said than done,” I comment.

“Here,” Nadia says, pushing her untouched beer into my hand. “Have this. I’ll go get another for myself.”

“You’re leaving me here?” My eyes widen as she begins to walk away.

“Kay, I know it’s your first time in a bar but please. Try to relax! You need this. You deserve this. After the way Douglas treated you…”

Ugh. Douglas. My ex-boyfriend who treated me like dirt.

Actually, he treated me like an ATM. Eventually, he figured out that I don’t have direct access to my parents’ bank account, and that my ‘cute little coffeeshop thing’ was a real job that I worked hard at.

That’s when he dumped me like I was yesterday’s garbage.

Now I’ve sworn off men. At least, any man from Wild Bronco.

If I ever date again, it’ll be some guy from the other side of the country who has never even heard of Wild Bronco. Someone who doesn’t care that my last name is Beaumont.

Being born into a rich family isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Yes, I’ve never lacked food or a roof over my head. For that I’m grateful.

But it was isolating. It’s not like I was some kind of beauty queen. I was a chubby dork with glasses, braces, and acne. What happens when the rich girl isn’t conventionally beautiful and popular, like she usually is in the movies?

She gets bullied twice as much, that’s what.

I think of Sam. Part of why we connected so well when we were younger, is because he was also an outcast.

Oh sure, he was good looking. And he had that bad boy thing going for him. All of the girls chased him…but they treated him more like a plaything than like a real person. I never realized that girls objectified boys in the same way boys objectified girls…but it’s real.

Sam was used, played with, treated like a prop and a weapon to piss off ex-boyfriends and overprotective fathers.

And then once his usefulness ran out, he was dropped like a hot potato.

Kind of like me.

Even though we never dated, I always felt like I understood him the best. I saw beneath the bad boy exterior. I saw the guy who was hurt, felt left behind and forgotten by the people who were meant to love him best.

My parents took him in, and I anticipated he might stay for a week or two. Long enough for things to cool off at his house. His mom always seemed to have a new boyfriend, and the latest boyfriend didn’t like him.

But Sam stayed longer than a week or two. He stayed for two years. Two long, agonizing years of growing closer to him at home, while being distant at school.

He’d smile and wave at me in the hallways, of course.

But never more than that.

I used to wonder why he didn’t sit at lunch with me, when the night before we’d been up late playing Mario Kart and eating pizza.

It took a while for me to realize: He didn’t want to be seen with me. He was embarrassed of me.

I look around Blue Horse. The crowd is a mix of familiar faces and new ones. My eyes scan them until they stop abruptly, landing on an unpleasantly familiar one, the guy who is the last man I want to see tonight.

Nadia returns to my side.

“Okay, the bartender talked me into trying this prickly pear pina colada drink and I hate it, can we switch back? You like sugary drinks, right?”

Nadia swaps our drinks without waiting for my confirmation. My eyes are still fixed across the bar at him and to my horror, he looks up and meets my gaze.

Nadia follows my eyes curiously, finding the man I’m watching.

“Oh no,” she groans. “Of course he’s here. Now I’ll never convince you to have another night out with me again.”

I take a sip of the drink she handed me. Thank god, it’s delicious. I gulp down the rest of it in one go, feeling the rum burn the back of my throat.

“Woah,” Nadia widens her eyes, then glances over. “Shoot, now he’s coming over here. Want me to cause a distraction? Maybe I can pull a fire alarm?”

“It’s fine,” I gasp through the burn of the alcohol in my throat.

I feel rooted to the spot as Douglas comes nearer, his smile more like a smirk. He’s wearing a cowboy costume: Clothes that have never seen a day of work, boots with no scuffs, no tan line around his neck.

Looking at him right now, I’m not sure what I ever saw in him. Compared to Sam, Douglas is small and feeble looking. And Douglas definitely never gave me the kind of full body tingles that Sam is capable of giving me with just one glance.

“Hey Kayla,” he drawls, and I realize that he might just be the source of the nasty cologne smell that seems to fill the whole bar. He’s wearing enough of it for forty men.

Gross. He never wore cologne like that when we were dating. Maybe because he wasn’t trying too hard to impress me? Tonight he’s on the prowl, looking for his next girlfriend or hookup.

For his next victim, more like.

“Hey there, Dougie ,” Nadia says flatly. “Surprised to see you’re still allowed into places like these. Or does your parole officer not know where you are tonight?”

I don’t know what Nadia is talking about. I raise a brow at her and she shakes her head.

“Dougie here was picked up last month for a DUI,” she explains.

“You never mentioned that,” I say.

“I didn’t think he was worth mentioning at all,” she says with an eye roll. “I mean, you certainly haven’t been talking to me about him. I figured you wouldn’t care what this loser was up to.”

It’s a blatant lie.

After the breakup, I talked Nadia’s ear off about my ex, crying and re-playing the relationship to figure out how I could’ve been so dumb.

Nadia is a solid friend, though. And she knows that if there’s one thing I don’t want, it’s for Douglas to know how much our breakup affected me.

“Right,” Douglas chuckles, looking at me. “You got over me that fast?”

“Sure did,” I reply.

“I don’t believe it.”

He’s wearing a smile on his face, but I know better. I can see the mocking behind the grin.

I don’t know why I accepted this treatment for so long. The casual way that Douglas would dismiss and insult me.

“Well, believe it,” Nadia cuts in, putting her arm around me. “My girl is back on the market…she’s actually seeing someone.”

“Sure,” Douglas snorts.

My cheeks are warming.

Suddenly I feel like my old high school self, standing in the middle of the cafeteria, looking for a table that might accept me with my baggy clothes meant to hide my body, my greasy bangs and pock-marked cheeks.

“Yep,” Nadia lies casually, flipping her silky brown hair over her shoulder. “She’s gone out with this one guy, what, five or six times now? It’s getting serious, I think. He’s so handsome, and behaves like a perfect gentleman. Plus, he’s got a huge -”

“Truck,” I interject. “He has a huge truck.”

Nadia snickers.

“Right,” Douglas says reluctantly, glancing between Nadia and me. “Well, if this guy is so great, why isn’t he with you tonight?”

Shit.

Douglas and I wait for Nadia to answer, interested in where this elaborate lie is going. She looks over my shoulder and her eyes widen.

I turn around and collide face-first into Sam Wallace’s broad, muscular, denim-covered chest.