Page 30 of The Wildest Ride

Her hands came to his shoulders with a firm grip as she lifted up to her toes on the gate, offering exactly the angle he needed to capture her mouth with his own.

She tasted like late springtime: warm, sweet, and a little naughty.

Sighing into his kiss like she’d been waiting for this moment her whole life, she stoked the fire that had driven him to kiss her in the first place, thickening into something more possessive, urging him to take more. He pressed closer, and she leaned in.

“AJ Garza!” The Old Man’s slightly raised, slightly outraged voice somehow cut through both the single-minded haze of his focus and the astronomical noise of the arena.

Reluctantly, he pulled back from the kiss without taking his eyes off her.

Around them, he realized the arena’s applause had morphed into playground whistles. Vague recollections of strict rules about keeping his personal life outside of the arena pestered the back of his mind, but he ignored them.

“I trust you realize you’re fraternizing with the enemy?” Diablo asked, voice dry as ever and lazy, even as he stepped into the spontaneous combustion of age-old arguments.

And then Diablo’s words sank in.

He was staring into the same stormy eyes he’d clashed with not once, but twice, already—even if at the moment the swirling cloudiness in her tempest gaze had nothing to do with temper.

Still kiss drunk, her full lips even fuller, emphasized by her lipstick and the swollen plumpness that he’d kissed into existence, she had no idea of the unheard-of effect she was having on his behavior. Was it any surprise that rodeo’s first female star would inspire unprecedented behavior in him? Either way, he’d answered a question he hadn’t even realized he’d been dying to know the answer to.

Lil Sorrow could kiss as well as she could ride.

He wondered what else she was good at.

She shined up well—not that he’d thought she wasn’t fine-looking before, he realized recalling his earlier images of her, he just hadn’t been looking at her as a woman. He’d been looking at her as a cowboy, he realized.

She was a damn fine cowboy. As a woman, she was mesmerizing.

Enough so, that, like Clark Kent, all it’d taken to fool him was a slight change in hair and accessories—a fall of curls and a nose stud—and he’d completely missed the things that were unmistakable about her: her clothes, the way she carried herself, and those one-in-a-million eyes. Eyes which even now threatened to yank him back into their private world—circumstances be damned.

Dawning awareness of their situation, however, rolled over her like a deadly wave of molasses. He watched it happen. A part of him was glad to know that getting all dolled up didn’t make her face any less transparent, though why that would make him happy, he didn’t know.

First came shock. Shock which he was honor bound to avenge, as it appeared that she had not considered the fact that she had been fraternizing with the enemy until Diablo had said so, and, more importantly, might have gone on doing so.

Next came shame. Heat radiated off her body that had nothing to do with him, and she came spurring to squirming life, jumping off the gate like it was lava. She landed as if the dismount were a routine they’d been working on, and his heart beamed a little in pride at her balance.

Finally, came horror, as she turned to realize that the entire enterprise had unfolded on the jumbotron, broadcast on the big screen to the delight of the audience.

Angling to shield her face with his body from both the camera and The Old Man and Diablo, he was the only one to see the sheen of tears glistening in her eyes as she tucked her face down, hiding it in the shadow of her hat, and dashed around him, trying to get lost in the crowd.

He watched her go, knowing she wouldn’t make it far. Not now, and probably never again at a rodeo. She was a star now, whether she knew it or not.

The Old Man didn’t approve of cowboys “taking up with strange women,”as he was famous for saying. He had drilled it into his boys as youths and demanded it from his pros as an example for those coming up.

AJ was respectful enough to be circumspect. Usually.

And so, though he wanted to go after her, even though it would only add fuel to the fire their very public kiss had undoubtedly just stirred up, he didn’t.

Instead, when The Old Man clapped a hand down on his shoulder and said, “You know the drill. Check-up time. Especially after a stunt like that.” AJ let himself be led away.

Respect for The Old Man might have him willing to let Lil Sorrow go without chasing her down to at least say something about their kiss, but respect wasn’t enough to keep the grit of irritation out of his voice when he replied, “Had no choice. You saw what I was working with.”

On The Old Man’s other side, Diablo nodded. “Looked like you were out of it for sure this time.”

The comment brought the cowboy in him to the surface, and he gave a lazy grin. “I always have a trick up my sleeve.”

The Old Man frowned. “That was a damn fool thing to do. You’re too old for those kinds of tricks.”

“Still around to get older.”

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