Chapter 3
LAINEY
I gratefully let Beau pull me away from the men and toward the arena, but he stopped halfway there, then turned to me. I skidded to a halt by bumping into his side. I had to tip my head back to meet his dark gaze. I’d seen so many cowboys in my day that I thought I was immune.
That none of them held any more interest for me than any of my brothers.
Until Beau Rivers. I sure felt things for him.
Things I thought only others could feel, that maybe I was broken because I’d never been into the guys I’d dated in the past. Never got sweaty palms. Or butterflies.
Hard nipples. How was it that a rodeo champ, just like my oldest brother, was the man who made my panties damp?
Maybe it was because he was gorgeous. Dark hair, eyes that focused so intently it was like there was no one else around. A square jaw and a goatee. Rock solid body that I knew didn’t get made in a gym.
“You okay, love?”
I swallowed, then nodded beneath a gaze that didn’t seem to miss much. I’d probably freak out about what happened later when I had a chance to process it, but for now, I was okay. So glad that Beau came along. “Yep.”
In fact, I wasn’t thinking about much of anything except the feel of his hand holding mine.
The rough callouses, the warmth. How it made my tummy swoop and my nipples ache.
And that was just from a simple hand-hold.
For once, I wondered what I would feel like with his hands roaming over other places on my body.
He’d been calm up until this point and then all of sudden… “Why the hell did you do something as reckless as–”
His voice wasn’t raised, but he was definitely upset. I lifted a hand and cut him off. I’d dealt with enough over-the-top men in my life to know how to hold my own. “As reckless as saving a young woman from what they had planned?”
“They were gonna do that to you!” he countered. “Gil said you two were gonna hang out for a bit and then let you go, but I have a pretty good idea of what hanging out meant.”
The look on his face was murderous, as if he considered returning to kill the whole group.
This was Trig’s friend, the one who’d come to family dinner the other night.
The one who’d sat across from me and stared at me as if he were hungry for me and not the huge spread on the table between us.
As if we’d been the only two in the room.
The man who made my clit throb just looking at him.
I’d spent the entire meal studying him. Noticing how his workworn hands were so strong.
The broadness of his shoulders. His strong brow.
I’d squirmed as I wondered if that goatee would be soft brushing against my inner thighs.
Imagined him on the back of a bull, gripping and bucking with the animal.
Was bull riding stupid? Absolutely. It was also, for some reason, incredibly hot.
Maybe it was the big dick energy a man had to have to ride one.
It didn’t matter if his watchful gaze over corn on the cob and ribs was because he was interested in me.
If he saw me more than his friend’s little sister, it didn’t matter, because I was off limits.
None of my brothers’ friends attempted to ask me out.
Not since Hayes’ friend, Ethan, had made the attempt when I was twenty and all eight of them had lined up on the porch behind me and scared him off.
Zeb had only been ten at the time and still made the guy quake.
And his invitation had been to a church fundraiser at the bowling alley.
No one since had been brave enough… hell, man enough, to handle the overprotective glower of the Wilder boys.
There’d been Chris, the last guy I dated, who’d ghosted me.
Before him, I might’ve had a few secret dates with men I met at competitions, but nothing ever came of them because they all knew me as the very-famous Trig Wilder’s kid sister.
I wasn’t going to fall for a guy who thought of me that way. I wanted a guy who wanted me, Lainey Wilder, cowgirl and barrel racer.
Beau wouldn’t be any different, I was sure.
He’d called me the Wilder boys’ kid sister.
No one wanted to fuck a kid sister. Did I want to fuck Beau?
I’d tossed and turned thinking about it when my house was dark and quiet.
Imagined him over me, pressing me into my bed and filling me hard and deep with his big dick while saying all kinds of dirty things into my ear.
Things he planned to do to me without once thinking about my eight brothers.
It was only a coincidence that he’d been the one to rescue me. I doubted I’d have ever seen him again otherwise.
“I was working on it,” I told him finally.
“On what?” he said through gritted teeth.
“Saving myself.”
“How…” He looked up at the black sky, then sighed.
“I couldn’t just let the guy take that girl away!” I explained. “You’re victim blaming! Those men are the ones who you should be yelling at. They’re the ones who took–”
“My little sister.”
I blinked at his simple and surprising response. “Your…”
“Cammie, my little sister.”
“Oh my God, is she okay?”
He nodded. While the lights from the arena brightened the sky, his face was in shadow beneath his dark Stetson. “Thanks to you.”
I sighed, suddenly all the adrenaline seeping away. “That’s good. I kicked him in the balls, Beau. Was running away, too, but he got a grip on the back of my shirt. Caught me. I swear I kicked him hard enough for him to suffocate on those tiny things. I have a knife on me. I was gonna–”
He held up a hand and swore. “I don’t want to hear what you were gonna do with a knife or how he could have overpowered you and used it on you.” He studied me.
“What?” I asked.
His gaze lowered to my lips and suddenly the summer night around us crackled like there was an incoming storm. “Fuck it.”
I was following along, but when he cupped my face in his hands and kissed me, I was surprised.
Then I wasn’t because the kiss was everything I expected from a man. He took charge. Took full control, angling my head just the way he wanted to take the kiss deeper. To have his tongue find mine when I moaned. To claim.
I had no idea how long we kissed for. I also had no idea how I’d ended up pressed against the side of an empty horse trailer, Beau’s body holding me in place.
I felt his heft. His hardness. I tasted him. Smelled him. I was absorbing him as if I were a plant in the desert and it finally rained.
When he lifted his head, he ran a thumb over my lower lip. His hat was gone. The hot, intense look in his eyes was giving off the idea that he didn’t have any plan to stop. He looked like he wanted to devour me, but somehow was holding himself in check.
“What was that for?” I whispered.
“Just giving you your last first kiss.”
I blinked. “What?”
The corner of his mouth tipped up. “You heard me.”
My last first kiss. As in he was the only person I was going to be kissing from now on.
“You can’t mean–”
“Yes,” he said simply.
“But–”
He put his finger over my lips for a moment to silence me.
“It’s done, love. You’re mine.”
I frowned. “You do realize the irony of you telling me that after rescuing me from a shitty kidnapper.”
He growled. It seemed he didn’t like being reminded of what just happened. “The difference is I’m gonna take care of you and treat you like a fucking queen.”
He… what?
I had to admit, it sounded good. To have a guy look at me like he did and want me? Butterflies were having a party in my stomach. That kiss proved there was definitely chemistry. And he’d rescued me? Hot.
“There’s one big problem.” I shrugged. “Well, eight.”
“I can handle your brothers,” he replied confidently.
“No one’s handled them yet,” I muttered.
“Those men didn’t deserve you then.”
I opened my mouth to respond, then shut it.
The roar of the crowd from inside the arena broke through our quiet little bubble.
I gasped, realizing the time. “I gotta go compete. Shit, that little stunt set me back. I hope I’m not disqualified.”
He leaned down and grabbed his hat off the ground, dusted it off and set it atop his head as he stepped back. I missed his heat, the hard feel of him, but he took my hand again and that felt good. Right. “Come on, love. Let’s get you to the staging area.”
I dug my heels in and pointed in the opposite direction. “By my trailer. My horse is tethered there. You don’t have to go with me. I’m–”
“I’m gonna watch my woman compete,” he explained simply. “With Cammie and my momma.”
“You should go to them–”
The rest of my sentence was cut off when he spun me around so my hands slapped against the metal side of the trailer and his hand came down on my butt in a hard swat.
I gasped because he’d spanked me! I tried to pop up in utter indignation, a hand at my nape held me in place for one, no… two more!
“Beau! What the hell? People are around!”
“Your shouting’s gonna draw more attention than anything else, love.”
He gave me one more spank over my jeans, then spun me back around and pressed into me again. He was hard and thick against my belly. Spanking me had turned him on!
I swallowed, stunned by what he’d just done. He’d actually manhandled me and spanked me. I wasn’t sure if I should be appalled or aroused.
No man, not one, had ever done something like that.
“You paying attention now, love, or do you need a few more swats?”
I narrowed my eyes, but bit my lip. I wasn’t saying anything.
He huffed out a laugh as he studied me.
“There is no way on God’s green earth that I’m letting you out of my sight until you’re safe atop your horse inside the staging area with the entire arena full of people around you.
If you keep arguing, you’re gonna compete with a redder and sorer ass than you’ve already got.
I’ll pull those jeans and panties down and really go to town and anyone walking by will know you’re being mulish and sassy and need to be taken in hand. ”
“Mulish and–”
He dipped his head down and gave me a look, one that said he’d do it, too.
I pursed my lips closed, although I wiggled a little. The spanking had morphed from a sharp sting to heat. Heat that spread to my pussy and clit.
Reaching down, he cupped my pussy right through my jeans.
I gasped again, this time for a completely different reason.
His big hand pressed against me was… shit, a tease.
I wanted my jeans to dissolve so his rough fingers would touch my needy pussy directly.
I had a feeling I’d probably come if he did that.
“That’s what I thought. You like that idea. Need it, too, based on how wild you are. I knew you were perfect. Your family here with you?”
I could feel my cheeks flame because he’d picked up on something about me I didn’t even know existed.
I did like the idea of him spanking me, of him pulling down my jeans and panties to mid-thigh and continuing.
To turn my ass red. To make it hurt. My arousal would drip down my thighs and he’d know I liked it.
Know I needed it. What was wrong with me?
Since when did I want a man to take control like that?
I knew the answer. It was Beau who saw past all the toughness and brazenness that had me able to hold my own with all my brothers.
The Wilder boys could hold their own. The only Wilder girl had to, as well.
Only Beau. Any other man and I’d knee him, too, in the balls.
I cleared my throat. I appreciated that he changed the topic, that somehow those three spanks to my ass wiped my slate clean.
“Yeah, Shep and Zeb are with our mother in the stands. They didn’t want her standing too long after what happened to her,” I said. “They’re gonna meet me after the races.”
Beau’s face darkened, which meant he knew what happened to her. Everyone in Devil’s Ditch did since the confrontation happened in the snack aisle at the grocery store.
“Good girl. You’ll wait for them?”
I reveled for a moment in the good girl, then rolled my eyes. “Beau, I’m not stupid. Of course I’ll wait for them.” It seemed like he thought there were crazies everywhere these days.
He didn’t respond to that, only said, “Where’s your horse?”
He was calm, collected. Bossy.
I was not going to tell him I liked it. While I wanted to argue with him longer out of principle alone, I didn’t have time.
I frowned, but pointed again. “By my trailer.”
“What about your phone?”
“There, too.”
He took my hand but let me lead him. To Junior and for us to exchange numbers.
To the warm-up pen for only one practice drill before it was my turn to be in the staging area.
Only then, surrounded by plenty of people and astride Junior, did he leave me to find his mother and sister.
He also left me with my reeling thoughts.
My butt did hurt in the saddle and that made me think of Beau… and when he’d spank me again.