10. Warren
“Just like old times, eh, Burke?”
Dane grins at me as he raises his glass of draft beer.
“Me losing you mean?”
He winks. Fucker.
“It’s weird being happy because we won together, and then I beat you separately after. I’m not sure how to feel, you know? Technically, you’re not a loser since you’re my partner and we won.” He licks at the beer clinging to his lip. “But I’m still better. Objectively, of course.”
I had a disastrous tie-down run. I struggled to get the calf on its side and dropped my rope. I never drop my rope. Ever. I didn’t just finish second to Dane. I was last.
And I hate it more than I ever have before.
“Fuck you, Walker. Not tonight, okay?”
I can’t do this with him now. Hell, I can’t even focus on how well we did at the team event and enjoy that victory. Not when he brings up the other stuff.
“I’m gonna head to the hotel. It’s an early morning to get back home.” Standing, I finish my beer and don’t wait for his reply. He has a key, and he knows where the room is. I’m not his keeper.
I’ve barely left the bar when footsteps sound behind me. I don’t even look. I know it’s Dane.
“You could’ve stayed.”
“You looked like you needed a friend.”
My feet stop moving, and I turn to him. “Did you find one for me?” I deadpan.
He sighs and rubs his hand over his face. So what if this is bothering him? He’s the one being an asshole, not me. I spin on my heel and keep walking.
“Warren…I’m sorry, okay. Old habits and all that.”
My name shouldn’t sound so good from his lips. God dammit, why does he tie me in knots like this and why do I let him? I made him promise to not tease me and I’m letting him do it anyway.
Speeding up so we aren’t walking side by side, his quiet laugh is like a slap to my face. Sorry, my ass. He lives for this, and I wish I’d never agreed to this partnership.
He’s still a step behind me as we reach the hotel doors. I don’t hold it open for him. When he stands next to me at the elevator, I briefly think of taking the stairs instead, but the doors open and I step inside.
“You couldn’t wait for the next one?” I ask when he follows me inside.
“Why? There’s more than enough room for both of us in here, and I don’t want to wait.”
Dane leans against the rail as I punch the button for our floor.
“Warren, we—”
“Shut. Up. You’re not my favourite person right now.”
We step out onto our floor, and I’m practically running to get away from him. Which isn’t helpful since we’re sharing a damn hotel room.
“But I was your favourite once before?”
So many images flash through my mind with that question. The years of his smug smile and teasing. The years I spent searching rodeo entries for his name. Him lying under his truck, fixing brakes, and the worst one…his lips on mine and the feel of him so close.
Never my favourite, but always on my mind.
“You don’t sound very confident about that. Hoping I say yes?”
Reaching our room, I fumble for my key card, but Dane already has his out. He taps it before turning the knob and pushing the door open for me. I stomp inside and vaguely hear him closing the deadbolt behind us.
After tossing my hat on the table, my fingers curl into my hair, pulling until it hurts. It doesn’t make all these mixed feelings go away.
I’ve never thought about him as anything but the thorn in my side.
The one man who I could never beat. Now he’s kissed me, told me he has a sister in a care facility, and is my fucking team roping partner because I couldn’t say no to my dad.
I don’t want to like him, and I certainly don’t want to want him.
But I do.
Oh, how I do.
Turning around, Dane is already half undressed.
Like none of this bothers him, and he’s just going through his nightly routine.
Dark hair spatters his chest, and he’s leaner than I thought he’d be.
There’s a faded scar near his ribs, and when I finally meet his gaze, those ocean-blue eyes are like a tractor beam.
Fuck.
Fuck!
Crossing the small space, I shove him against the wall. His skin under my palm lights up every single ending. My breath is nothing more than sharp pants, and it feels like I’ve walked into a furnace.
“You drive me batshit, motherfucking insane.”
Dane slides his hand over mine on his chest and presses it there.
“Just another thing I’m good at,” he rasps.
“I don’t want to want you, Dane.”
His blue eyes flash with something I can’t quite read. “But you do, and we can either fuck it out or take turns jerking off in the shower.” He slides my hand on his chest to his zipper. The hardness behind his jeans is very noticeable, and my traitorous fingers curl around him.
Dane’s fingers drift to the buckle on my jeans, and he slips his fingers under my shirt. My breath hitches.
“Your call, Warren.”
I can’t form words. Instead, I slam my mouth to his while I desperately work to open his jeans. We’re a mad clash of teeth and lips with frantic hands, removing clothing.
“Fuck, you shouldn’t be this hot,” I mumble as I finally wrangle his jeans to his knees.
“Not sorry,” he grits when my hand closes around his cock. His breath comes in shorter pants as I stroke his length, and for a moment, his hands on me still. His eyelashes flutter across his cheeks as he pauses and melts into the moment. It’s…fucking beautiful and a disaster for me to even notice.
Like he knows I just caught him in an unguarded moment, he pivots and pushes me against the wall. His hands, so much bigger and rougher than mine, slide across my skin, sending bolts of white heat through my body.
Dane takes his mouth from mine to watch his hand on my dick, and I bite my lip to keep all my noises inside. He notices that, of course, and stops stroking me. With his thumb, he pulls my lip from my teeth and smooths the pad over it. “Spit,” he whispers and holds his hand under my chin.
Somehow, I have enough saliva to gather and do as he asks. “Fuuckk…” He smashes his mouth against mine again, and all I can do is struggle to remain upright.
“Put your hands on me, Warren.” Dane’s breath against my neck sends shivers along my skin.
Blindly groping, I grip his ass and haul him tight to me, forcing him to adjust his hand and rub us together.
I haven’t had sex in far too long, and my orgasm is embarrassingly close.
“Bet you I can c-come before you do,” I pant. Not exactly something to brag about, but I’m confident I can win, at least. My balls are already pulling up before he answers.
“Do it and let me hear you.”
I don’t even know if he was close, too, or what the hell just happened.
All I know is I’ve never come that hard in my life.
I’ve also slid down the wall, causing Dane to curse and wedge his knee between my thighs.
He never stops jerking himself, though, and he drops his head to my shoulder as his orgasm joins mine.
The air is thick with sex and ragged breaths. My pants are at my knees, and my hand finds Dane’s back. My fingertips dance lightly across his spine, and he places a kiss on my neck with a contented sigh.
It’s intimate and close to heaven.
Then I remember who this is and what I’ve just done.
“Can we please not talk about this ever again?” I allow my hand to fall away from his back and turn my face away from him.
Dane steps back, and the heat of his body and the touch of his head on my shoulder are a loss I feel to my soul.
“Whatever you want…Burke.”
His voice is flat and so void of any emotion, I want to go back in time and take away what I said. I want more of the blue eyes waiting for me to grant him permission to touch and taste.
The sound of the bathroom door closing, followed by running water, finally spurs me into action. After ripping off my shirt, I mop up the mess the best I can before shucking my pants—after my boots, because apparently, I was too horny to take them off—and rummaging for a clean pair of underwear.
I could ignore the kiss for a few weeks, but this? There’s no way I can forget this.
But what the fuck am I gonna do about it?
As I expected, our ride home the next morning is the most awkward situation in my life. It’s like a prolonged walk of shame.
Although I’m not ashamed of what we did. I liked it a helluva lot.
Dane would sit in the trailer with the horses if he could just to be further away from me, I think. I assumed he’d be his usual cocky self and not even let on that it bothered him.
But I’ve underestimated him again.
“We should clear the air before our next rodeo. It wouldn’t be good for us to have this…thing between us.”
Dane turns his head slightly towards me before staring straight out the windshield again.
“I thought you said not to talk about it.”
“I did, but clearly, we have some tension we need to work out. I don’t want this affecting our performance in the ring.”
“It won’t,” he clips, and I’m not sure if that makes me feel better or not.
“You sure? If you could ride outside the truck, I think you would. You’ve barely said a word for the last two hours.”
“Excuse me for not wanting to talk in the morning. I slept like shit, and the hotel coffee was also shit.”
“Is the sleep thing because of me?”
Dane huffs. “This might surprise you, Burke, but not everything is about you. You helped me come. I should’ve been relaxed. I wasn’t. The end.”
“Do you…Would you want to talk about what made you sleep like shit if it’s not me?”
“No.”
Okay then. Can’t say I’m surprised. I didn’t sleep well either, and it was totally because of him. Knowing he was so close in the bed across from me and how it felt to have my skin on his was a special type of deprivation.
I allowed my head to get ahead of everything and conjure a world where we were the best partners in and out of the ring. I might have even imagined us together at breakfast, being cute and sharing food. Dane would never, ever be so domestic, but it’s a fantasy for a reason.
It’s fucked up that I even went there because he hates me. Or at least doesn’t want to be with me that way, contrary to what happened.
The rest of our trip is just as wordless as the first part. When we pull into the back of the rodeo school where Dane left his truck and trailer parked, that changes.
“Motherfucker!”
He’s out of the truck before I even come to a full stop, running over to his horse trailer. All the tires are flat. Each one slashed across the tire wall with no chance of repair.
“How could this happen!? I thought you said Jesse was keeping an eye on things!” Dane paces around his truck and hesitates before opening the door. I’ve already pulled out my phone to call Jesse. This had to have happened last night. Or early this morning.
“Hey, Warren! How was—”
“Jesse, when was the last time you were at the school and checked on Dane’s truck and trailer?”
“Oh, I left around 6 P.M. last night. I haven’t stopped by today.”
“The tires of his trailer are slashed. All of them.”
“What the hell? I checked before I left, and it was fine.”
“Do we have cameras anywhere back here?”
“No.” Jesse sighs. “We thought about it two years ago and felt the money was better used for upgrading the holding pens inside and fixing the fence out back. The only camera we have is in the hall to the office.”
“Damn it. Okay. I’ll have to figure this out.”
“Do you need me to come down?”
“No, stay with Maise. I’ll let you know if I need you.”
After hanging up with Jesse, I return to find Dane with his forehead resting against the trailer.
“Jesse left here around 6 P.M. last night, and it was fine. We should probably call the police and report it. It’s vandalism.”
Dane’s laugh is dry and humourless. “Reporting it won’t do anything. It’s not gonna pay for new tires that I can’t afford right now.”
“Your insurance will want a police report. I know they don’t pay out that fast, but at least you could get money back.”
“I don’t have that kind of insurance, Burke. I have the bare minimum for my truck, and that’s it. I’m not reporting it.” His sigh is so heavy that I blurt out anything to help.
“We have extra space at the ranch. My dad won’t mind you boarding Trigger there, and it’ll be easier for us that way. I can load both horses in my trailer and pick you up. Keep the trailer here until you can fix it.”
“I don’t want charity,” he spits. “Not from you.”
There’s so much venom in his voice that I recoil with a step backwards.
“It’s not charity. It’s helping a friend. A fellow cowboy down on his luck.”
“No.”
“Well, how else are you gonna get your horse around, Walker? You gonna ask me to borrow my trailer and take your horse home, then come back? Stop being stubborn.”
“Warren…” His voice is so tortured, I stop dialling my dad to meet his gaze. “I don’t want you to care about me. Please.”
There’s so much he doesn’t say in those sentences. Those steely blues plead with me not to push the issue, but I can’t just leave him to figure something out that I have an easy solution for.
“I care about Trigger. So get in, and once she’s taken care of, you can go back to hating everything about me.”
Without another word, he walks around the truck and slides into the passenger side.
Breathing a sigh of my own, I get back in and turn us around to head to the ranch.
I’ll explain to my dad later, and I’ll be asking Pops if not reporting things is a good idea.
But I’ll keep that to myself.