Mystic Cowboy(68)

“Hey!” With him? He grinned. Or in front of him?

He tore off after her. Even through the dust, he could see she was having the time of her life. She rode like an old pro, head down, arms pumping with each stride. She was holding the reins in two hands, not one, but Tanka was going flat out anyway. Oh, yeah, he thought, giving Blue Eye her neck. She looked damn good on that horse. He shouldn’t think dirty thoughts about watching her bottom rock as Tanka galloped, hell for leather. But it had been a long day, and he hadn’t had a hell of a lot of sleep. Madeline—on horseback, at top speed—was just what he needed.

He wanted to stay behind her just to enjoy the view, but she was following the road left when they needed to go right, over the hill. Tanka was good, but Blue Eye was better, and in less than three strides, he was in the lead.

And they headed home.

By the time his hill rose up over the river and he slowed Blue Eye to a trot, he wasn’t tired anymore. Instead, his blood was pumping, flooding him with a heat that sure felt like certainty. Damn, she was beautiful, she was amazing in bed and she could ride. Man, could she ride.

“Woohoo!” Madeline trotted ahead of him and then circled back, wearing the biggest smile he’d ever seen. “That was—wow! Can we do that again?”

“Maybe in the morning.”

She looked at him, wanting to argue, but then something about her changed. “Long day.”

The horses were walking side by side now, slowly but steadily heading back to camp. “Very.”

“Did you get everything taken care of today?”

“I think so.” He’d given Jesse a gentle kick in the butt, taken Albert to the funeral home, spent four hours in Super-Mart buying things for the giveaway and ordered cake for the funeral. On about three hours of sleep.

She didn’t say anything as they made it to camp. She didn’t say anything as they unsaddled the horses or spread the sleeping bag out on the sand. She didn’t even say anything as she handed him logs for the fire. It wasn’t until the fire was going that she turned to him. Her hands found his chest, and she kissed his cheek. “So, you take care of everyone?”

He hadn’t thought of it quite like that. “Yeah, I guess.” The buttons on his shirt began to give. He didn’t know where she was going, but he liked where she was heading.

She laid his chest bare, leaned over and bit down around his nipple. Heat poured from her mouth onto his bare skin and he shuddered. Grinning, she looked at him through thick lashes. “Who takes care of you?”

All that heat began to melt the parts of his brain that did the thinking. “What?”

“You take care of everyone. Even me.” His belt was gone, and his jeans were down. She was undressing him, just like he’d undressed her on that hot afternoon by the river. He could remember her being dazed, in a hazy way. Hazy, dazy—all he really knew was that he was hot. That she made him hot. “What I want to know is who takes care of you?”

His mouth felt stuck in the open position, which was a damn good thing when she kissed him.

“You,” he managed to get out.

His hat went flying, and she pushed him down onto the sleeping bag. His back hit the stump, but that was okay. He had a full view of her.

“Then let me take care of you.”

She let her own hair loose. It sprang free, and he began to sweat. No part of his brain was functioning right now. All he could think was this beautiful woman—his beautiful woman—was going to take care of him.

The fire blazed brightly behind her, cutting her silhouette out of the dusky night as she undressed for him. Everything was red-hot—the fire, the woman, his dick—especially his dick. He tried to lean over to grab his jeans and get the condoms in his back pocket, but she used her foot on his shoulder to push him back against the tree stump. “I told you, I’ll take care of you,” she scolded. He could hear the smile in her voice as she finished shimmying out of her jeans.

He was burning now, burning from the outside in, the inside out. She fished out the condom, and with that crisp efficiency that made her such a good doctor, rolled in on his aching dick. Her hands lingered, which drove that hot ache up into his gut. He groaned. He couldn’t take much more. Hell wasn’t this hot.

“I promise,” she whispered, her voice thick with the same kind of heat that was burning him through and through. “I promise I’ll take care of you.”

She straddled him, and then all of her warmth and wetness was surrounding him as she whimpered his name every time she rose and fell on him. He caught a breast in his mouth and sucked hard. Her noise went from a whimper to a scream in a second, so he sucked harder. The fire in his blood went from red-hot to clear blue as she took care of him, again and again. In his mind’s eye, he was watching her ride the horse. Up, down, up, down, faster and faster until he couldn’t tell who was going to win this race. She knew how to ride, all right. She knew how to ride with him.