Page 109 of The Wildest Ride

“You’ve been missing out, Sierra, I hear there’s big money—plenty for nail repair—in bull sperm,” AJ added from the back seat, the cadence of his voice doing things to Lil’s stomach that didn’t seem reasonable given that it’d been over a week since they’d truly had a moment alone and likely wouldn’t again for the remainder of the competition. She’d have thought her system would have settled down and accepted the inevitable by now.

The Closed Circuit tour was nearly complete, now. Soon they would go back to their regular lives, Lil back to the ranch—which was closer now distance-wise than it had been in over a month—and AJ back to where it had all begun, Houston.

The thought brought a heaviness to her chest that she couldn’t afford, not at this stage in the game and not with the scores so close. She and AJ had remained neck and neck throughout the competition, trading the number one spot back and forth like kids on a playground, but they couldn’t keep doing that much longer. Sooner rather than later, one of them would emerge the champion. One of them would walk away with enough money to save the thing they loved most in the world, and the other wouldn’t.

She tried to comfort herself that, at $500,000, far larger than any INFR prize she’d ever gone for, the second-place prize wasn’t anything to sniff at—that it was plenty to make a huge dent toward either one of their goals.

It just wasn’t enough.

Not enough to keep a youth-based, high-risk, nonprofit in an expensive city up and running, and not enough to ensure she and Gran didn’t lose the ranch to a series of snowballing debts.

And that didn’t even begin to touch the rest of it, all of the parts she would never be able to forget and didn’t know how in the world she would ever walk away from. Nothing could bring Houston closer to Muskogee.

But none of that mattered at the moment, because if she didn’t get every ounce of it off her heart and out of mind, her gran was going to know the second she laid eyes on her when they reunited at Golden Acres. They hadn’t seen each other in over a month and it was the longest they’d spent apart outside of her trip abroad. But it wasn’t long enough to evade her grandmother’s sharp perceptions.

Golden Acres was a stud operation, making their money, and very good money at that, in livestock insemination, and particularly that of Black Angus beef. And because stock was a rancher’s gold, and Lil was their resident rancher, the Closed Circuit had devised a challenge around stock and its insemination, one of the most important tasks on the ranch.

And one of the most uncomfortable, because no matter how you sliced it, whether you used a portable stall and an electro-ejaculator, or a team and an artificial vagina, when it came right down to it, it was a bunch of humans getting involved in the private business of bulls.

But for the next three days, and for three times a day, Lil, AJ, and Hank would be the ones to do it. Working as a team, each contestant would fill each role three times: managing the teaser, managing the bull, and catching the sperm. They’d be judged on how successful they encouraged mounting with the teaser, animal distress, and how much seminal fluid they collected. Their scores for each day would be added together and averaged, the same amount of points awarded to each cowboy as the base score. The following three days, they would work alone, with an electro-ejaculator and a stall. Once again, they would be judged on the amount of fluid collected, the additional points added to their score and totaled.

The final rankings, determining bulls and ride order for the grand finale, would be decided only after AJ’s back-home challenge was completed and all possible points totaled, but because this was her challenge, it represented her last best chance to amass real points. AJ would have the advantage on his home turf.

“Never thought I’d say it’s cleaner making money at the rodeo!”

Even Lil cracked a smile at Sierra’s joke, corny as it was. Rodeo had never been accused of cleanliness.

“Don’t be so quick to write it off, Sierra. There’s drama and intrigue, as well,” AJ said.

She lifted a brow, expression game, overbright and genuinely interested, likely because it was AJ who was speaking. “Oh really,” she purred, eyes alight.

Lil had observed that Sierra’s... Sierraness...took on a layer of genuine feeling it lacked with everyone else when it came to AJ.

But there was no more time to dwell on Sierra’s crush, or the mild sour taste it left in her mouth, because they had arrived at Golden Acres.

The insemination orgy was about to begin.

But before that, a reunion that was long overdue.

Outside of the entrance at the ranch’s main office, Gran stood in her Sunday best, her arms stretched wide.

Seeing her as she stepped off the bus, Lil let out a whoop and dashed across the asphalt to catch the older woman, smaller even than Lil, up in her arms and swing her around in a circle.

The cameras ate it up.

“Now, put me down, Lilian. You know I’m too old for all of that.”

Lil obliged, too excited to see her gran to mind the fact she’d used her full name in front of her colleagues.

“And just who might this ravishing woman be?” AJ asked, joining them, Texas heavy in his voice, his charm on full blast.

Lil’s stomach did a one-eighty. She’d been so worried about keeping her feelings for AJ off her face when her grandma was around she’d completely forgotten about their inevitable meeting.

Gran turned to him slowly, deliberate no doubt, gave him an excruciatingly obvious once-over, and then said, “So this is the handsy cowboy that thinks he can kiss my granddaughter on national television.”

Lil’s stomach, and her lungs, and all the rest of her guts fell right out of her.

Hank guffawed and Sierra’s laughter tinkled overhead like wind chimes.

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