Page 5 of Beau
I let Lainey go and tucked her behind me, not sure what she might do. Then took a step, then another toward Gil. “I hear any of you fucking with a woman again, I’ll not only tell the sheriff about it, but all the other shit you’ve been up to. I mean it, Larry. You, too, Sherm.”
I had no idea what other shit they’re wallowing in, but there had to be something.
The seated guys nodded. Gil swallowed hard. Yeah, they were guilty as fuck. Which meant after Igot Lainey safe and Cammie settled with Momma, Colt Wilder was gonna hear all about this. He’d take care of them. These five were gonnawishthey were in prison when he and his brothers were done with them.
“And Gil?” I punched him in the face. He stumbled over the cooler and fell on his ass. “That’s for putting hands on my woman.”
I’d do more to him later, but with Lainey here, that was enough for now.
I took Lainey’s hand and led her away. She might think I was saving her, but I wasn’t planning on letting go. Ever.
3
LAINEY
I gratefully letBeau 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 intothe 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 thehelldid 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 whathanging outmeant.”
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 formeand 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,manenough, 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’dcalled 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.
