Chapter 11
MAGGIE
Turns out watching a man ride a bull does something to you.
But the thing it did to me had less to do with the man who’d just jumped off the bull than the one who’d pulled him back over the fence.
McCoy was in all his glory with his arms up, soaking in the crowd in a way that made me laugh.
But it was Hunter behind him in the settling dust, grinning like a fool at his brother, that made my pulse snag. His eyes found mine through the crowd so easily, and he watched me like he had nowhere else to be and nothing else to look at.
The heat that always followed Hunter worked through me in slow, insistent ripples that built under the sharper thrum of adrenaline. I felt it everywhere, up my throat, blooming through my chest, and spreading through my belly.
“Holy shit,” Brody muttered next to me as his hand settled on my lower back.
I jerked my gaze away from Hunter and back to the person who I’d come here with, the person who was actually interested in me.
I looked up at Brody, his eyes still on the arena, but he glanced down at me with a smile. “I think McCoy’s going to win it all.”
“Yeah,” I said, trying not to think about Hunter, but my gaze slid back to him before I could stop myself. “He’s really something else.”
Hunter’s eyes were still on me, on Brody’s hand against me, and my pulse went wild. I could feel the weight of his stare, hot and aching on my skin, carving through every inch of bravado I’d layered on tonight.
I should have leaned into Brody’s touch, let him pull me under his easy charm, but my body had never been good at lying. Not where Hunter Calloway was concerned. Not when he looked at me the way he did.
They announced McCoy’s score over the arena loudspeakers. The crowd roared, but I barely heard it. The dust and heat pressed in; the air so thick I could taste it.
Brody laughed as he leaned in close enough for me to feel his breath at my temple. “I knew it!”
I tried, desperately, to fix my focus on Brody’s words, on the safety of his hand at my back, but all I could feel was that wild, hungry thing inside me twisting in the opposite direction.
Even when I gripped Brody’s arm and tried to drag my attention back where it belonged, Hunter’s gaze reeled me in. I could feel it, even when I wasn’t looking. Especially when I wasn’t looking.
Hunter didn’t smile at me so much as he dared me. There was something slow and certain in it. The kind of look that knew exactly what it was doing to me and wasn’t the least bit sorry, and worse, knew that I wasn’t either.
I swallowed, feeling the burn of my own pulse in my neck.
The crowd thickened as the next event lined up, people pressing in on all sides, and for a second, I felt the urge to break into a run, to sprint down the stands and barrel straight into the ring where the Calloway brothers were still soaking up the crowd’s roar.
But Brody’s arm kept me anchored in place, and the tension in my chest was a rope pulled taut between what I should want and what I couldn’t stop wanting.
Blaire, Colt, and Ruby made their way toward the arena fence first, leading the way through the shifting crowd. Blaire shot me a look over her shoulder, and I stuck close behind her, letting the movement of bodies distract me from the ache in my chest.
When we reached the edge of the ring, McCoy was already vaulting over the gate, and he spotted me instantly and swept me into a hug without any warning, lifting me clean off the ground. I shrieked in surprise, but the noise turned into a laugh so big and helpless it almost hurt my stomach.
I could feel the wild thump of his heart through his vest, his face hot and smeared with dust, and his hands steady and gentle even as he whirled me through the air.
“Did you see that, Mags?” he said with the biggest grin I’d ever seen, as if I’d somehow missed his ride.
“I saw it, all right.” I clung to his shoulders, breathless and a little dizzy. “You scared the crap out of me, but I bet you’ll have no trouble getting laid tonight.”
His smile only got bigger for it.
My feet had barely touched the dirt before he lunged for Ruby. She was already reaching for him, her arms open wide, and McCoy swept her up and tossed her in the air above him.
Ruby squealed with laughter as she landed in his arms and wrapped herself around his neck. “You did it, Uncle Coy! You were the best one!”
He grinned at her before dipping her low and blowing a raspberry against her neck that only made her laugh harder. “You’re damn right, I was!”
I should have stepped back into Brody’s side, but I found Hunter without meaning to. He stood a few feet away, arms crossed, watching me like he’d been waiting on me to look.
I barely registered Colt clapping McCoy on the shoulder, or Blaire wrapping her arms around him.
Even Brody, who had trailed me through the crowd and now stood at my back, didn’t seem to exist. The only thing that mattered was the way Hunter was looking at me, like it didn’t matter that there were a thousand other eyes in the bleachers, or that Brody’s hand was still warm on the small of my back.
He didn’t try to close the distance between us. He just tipped his head the slightest bit, a slow smile pulling at the corner of his mouth, and something low in my belly pulled tight in answer.
The crowd surged as a bronco exploded from the chute, and Brody’s hand shifted on my back as he turned to watch. Hunter didn’t turn. He didn’t even blink.
He just kept his eyes on me like I was the only thing worth watching in the whole damn arena.
I slipped out from under Brody’s hand and crossed the distance between us. Hunter watched every inch of my approach, arms still crossed, completely still.
I stopped right in front of him, close enough to see the sweat against his skin, and God, he was so frustrating. The brim of his hat shadowed his face, but it did nothing to hide the hunger in his reckless brown eyes.
The air around him felt hotter, and I wasn’t sure if it was the dust, the sweat, or the noise of the crowd.
Every instinct I had said I should turn away, but my body, my entire traitorous self, only leaned in closer.
I could feel the flush climb up my neck, settling against my cheeks, as if his gaze had painted it there.
I’d thought I could get lost in Brody, in the idea of someone new, but all that did was make the impossibility of wanting Hunter more acute. I hated how much I needed his attention, how I was hungry for it even when I knew I shouldn’t be.
He let the silence stretch, and I watched helplessly as his tongue swept slowly across his bottom lip.
It was a casual, unconscious gesture, but it knocked the air out of me.
I felt every nerve ending go white-hot with anticipation.
There was no hiding, no running, not even the illusion of safety left.
Hunter Calloway would ruin me if I let him, and God help me, I was already letting him.
He leaned in and tipped his head, and the shadow of his hat brim fell over both of us.
“Hey, Sunshine,” he murmured, voice low enough to slip right under my skin.
“Hey, you,” I said breathlessly. “Congratulations.”
“I didn’t do anything.” He smiled and glanced over my shoulder before meeting my eyes again. “That was all McCoy.”
I swallowed, the taste of dust and longing thick in my mouth. “You helped.”
I looked over my shoulder where he’d just looked, and there were people surrounding McCoy and clapping him on the back. He still held Ruby on his hip, and she beamed up at her uncle as if he’d hung the moon.
Nobody was paying attention to us, not really. Even Brody had drifted down the bleachers to shake hands with someone I didn’t recognize.
“Are you on a date?” Hunter asked gruffly, and my gaze slammed back into his.
“What?”
“Brody?” Hunter didn’t look away from me when he said it, like he was testing my reaction, seeing if I’d flinch. “Is that a date?”
“I wouldn’t call it that.”
“What would you call it?” He was teasing me, but there was something sharp under the softness, like he was dissecting me with every word.
“None of your business.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “Can I have a hug then?”
“Why would I do that?” I could feel my pulse pounding in my wrists, at the base of my throat, everywhere.
“You gave McCoy one.” His words were playful, but his pupils were blown wide, the warm brown almost swallowed by the black.
“McCoy won.” I tilted my chin up and narrowed my eyes. “You said yourself that you didn’t do anything.”
He shrugged, and his tan arms unfolded from across his chest. “I did enough,” he said, and before I could process what he was doing, he reached for me.
He hooked two fingers into the belt loop of my shorts and tugged me forward until my knees brushed against his jeans. The heat of his body, his sweat and cologne and everything that made him so viscerally Hunter, wrapped around me until I could hardly breathe.
“Give me a hug, Sunshine.”
I should have pulled away. I should have stepped back, but I was already leaning in, already so far gone that I couldn’t tell where my want ended and his began.
I pressed my palms to the hard planes of his chest. His shirt was sweat-damp at the collar, and I could feel his heart going as hard as mine.
He pulled me in by the waist until there was no space left between us, and I let him, tipping my face up toward his jaw as I wrapped my arms around his neck.
His thumb found the strip of bare skin above my waistband and moved there, and I forgot every reason I had ever had for not wanting this.
“Are you sure it’s not a date?” His lips grazed my ear. “Brody’s looking at me like he wants to kill me right now.”
I pulled back just enough to look at him. “You don’t fight fair.”
His eyes dropped to my mouth for one long, unhurried second before they came back up. “Never claimed I did.”