Last of the Red-Hot Cowboys (16 page)

Yeah, his heart had stopped, but the rest of him was functioning fine. “You're beautiful. More than beautiful. A goddess.”

“Shh,” she said, pulling him down so she could catch his mouth with hers. He froze completely, tightened up when she wrapped a hand around him, stroked his balls. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying not to go off like a rocket in her soft hands. She was so gentle, so sweet.

“Come on, cowboy,” she whispered. “Don't leave me alone here.”

Alone? Hell, he was right here with her. “Don't worry, sweetheart.” She tugged him and he groaned, taking one very tempting nipple in his mouth. He was drowning in the soft skin and magic of Ava, fast approaching a point of no return. She stroked him into a state of hardness achieved only by diamonds, whispered something sweetly dirty on a breath so soft he almost didn't catch it.

But he had. Big-time.

“Condom,” he stated, making short work of it, kissing her all the way down to her belly as he pulled the condom on over his swollen skin. She was trying to help, but her delicate fingers on him just about sent him over the edge. He was revving much too fast; this was going to end before everything got good for her, so he caught her hands in his, pinning them above her head. “We're in no rush. Let's slow things down.”

“Cameron and Harper will be back soon.”

He heard the urgency. But he wasn't going to hurry. “You know I'm all about the details,” he said, kissing from her navel to her mound, sliding his tongue along her slit. She writhed, bringing what he wanted closer to his mouth, and he slid his tongue inside her, sighing at the soft, sweet slickness that he found there. Ava gasped, but he kept her hands in one of his, stroked her nipples with his free hand, kept his tongue hard inside her for a moment more. He had her exactly where he wanted her; this was the heaven he'd dreamed of.

“Oh, my God, Trace,” Ava cried.

He pinched a nipple lightly and she arched onto his tongue. As he licked and tasted her, it seemed his hunger grew until he finally had to release her hands to hold her hips up so he could bring her closer still. She cried out, wrapping her hands in his hair, her thighs trembling. When he could tell she was absolutely wild for him, in the same place he was for her, he wrapped his mouth around her clitoris and slowly slid two fingers inside her hot wetness.

Ava grabbed his shoulders, practically coming off the bed. He felt the sweet spasms pushing against his fingers, kept suckling on her gently, feeling her climax again, catching every bit of it. She cried out, reached down, pulled him no-nonsense onto the bed, rolled him onto his back. Got on top, straddling him, and took hold of him, guiding his hardness to her. Slowly sank onto him, and it was all he could do not to come right then.

His dick was on
fire
.

“Don't stop, Ava.” It came out as a plea-beg-command.

“You said there was no hurry,” she said, rocking on him very slowly.

“Well, your roommates,” Trace said, grabbing hold of her hips, his fingers
digging into her flesh, squeezing her.

“Will be in for a surprise.” She jiggled on him, riding him a bit harder, then stopped.

He moved her hips against his groin, trying to tempt her into keeping up the mind-blowing movement she'd had going. She stopped him.

“It's my turn,” Ava told him. “You don't get to do all the training in Hell.”

A groan escaped him. She was killing him. Planned to torture him right into sexual heaven. “I don't know if I can last long enough to get you to a second time.”

Ava smiled down at him, so foxy and cute all he could do was stare. The nipples teased at him like hard pebbles, just begging for his hands and mouth; her tiny V held him pinned hot and tight inside her. “You'll manage. They say you're the best in Hell.”

Okay, but not at keeping it together with a sexy brunette squeezing him like a python. “Holy shit, I think I hear your roommates,” he said, lying like a rug, but he was dying to get her to finish him off so he'd still have something left in the tank for her.

She just smiled, knowing exactly what he was up to, leaned over, swayed her nipples in front of his face. Rocked on his dick in a slow up-and-down motion, very much like how she posted on her horse, an easy, strong, controlled motion that threatened to take him over the edge. He sucked a nipple into his mouth, drawing another cry of pleasure from her. Decided to hell with the rules, grabbed her fanny, flipped her over and pressed her into the sheets.

Got as far up inside her as he could, took her lips with a hunger he didn't think he could satisfy in one night. Sweet, so very sweet, and hot, and wet in all the right places. He stroked inside her, and Ava arched against him, holding him even tighter, clinging to him, calling his name between kisses, and all he could do was hold on to her like a life raft as he went spinning out of control into her arms, calling her name.

If this was a mistake, it was the sweetest one I ever made
.

Of course it was a mistake. He collapsed against her, trying to recover from the climax that had separated his brain from his skull, and even he knew it was a mistake. Every moment of Ava was a mistake. But the beauty of life was that smart men learned from their mistakes, every time they made them. And when life offered you a onetime deal, you grabbed that brass ring.

And Ava was definitely the brass ring.

On his best days, Trace was a bit of a hard-ass.

Today was not even close to being a good day. Ava glared at him as he told her for the hundredth time to loop the barrels. “I'm not doing it again,” she said. “I'm not going to wear my horse down just because you can't make up your mind.”

He glared at her, and she shrugged. “Judy will be back tomorrow. You're supposed to take our team to learn bullfighting. And don't pretend you have a plan anymore for a different kind of team. You don't have any plan at all. You've been trying to pass yourself off as having a plan, but your only goal is trying to keep us from doing what we came here to do.”

Trace waved a hand. “Fine. Cool your horse down, put him away, and we'll go. Cameron and Harper going, too? Or just you?”

“We're all going. We're a
team
,” Ava said, emphasizing that fact. He'd been a stern taskmaster today, almost as if the weekend had never happened. She could have sworn they were getting closer.

Today he'd been so irritatingly difficult that she knew something had changed. The old Trace had been replaced by drill sergeant Trace, determined to do his job and nothing more.

Fine by me
.

“Here's the deal,” Trace said suddenly, surprising her. She waited, her horse shifting impatiently. “I'm not going to train you to bullfight.”

Her jaw felt like it had unhinged. “Why not?”

He shook his head. “You're not even close to what a bull rider wants to see protecting him. You're a well-trained rider, but that's what you are. A rider. I should have told you that sooner.” He blew out a breath. “I think I was hoping there was a way I could think of to make it work. But there's not.”

She stared at him. “Why are you telling me this now?”

“I've said all I'm going to say on the matter. I have to make the call as the trainer.
And I know you're not fit for the job. I can't put cowboys at risk just so you can follow a dream. They have dreams, too. But your dreams can get them hurt.”

He walked away. Ava stared after him.

Cameron rode into the practice ring for her lesson. “You look like you ate something bad.”

Ava shook her head.

“Is everything all right?”

“Not really.” Ava replayed Trace's words, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. “I'm going to go.”

“Are you okay?”

Ava dismounted, walking her horse from the ring, tears jumping into her eyes. No, she wasn't all right, everything was all wrong, and the worst part was, it was pretty much her fault for crossing a line she'd known better than to cross.

* * *

Trace knew he'd done a bad job of telling Ava the truth. Frankly, she'd deserved better. But Declan and Saint had been right: He'd gotten way too involved. The Belles were there under false pretenses—Judy's pretenses—and that wasn't his problem. What he owed everyone was the truth, but he hadn't been truthful because he had the hots for Ava.

He'd wanted to be a hero, and it just wasn't going to work out that way.

And the hell of it was that even if his buddies hadn't warned him that Ava was all wrong for bullfighting, he himself couldn't put the sweet, sexy darling into an arena with bulls. It'd kill him if she got hurt—especially since Declan and Saint
had
warned him. Shit, what man would deliberately let his woman get crushed?

Of course, Ava would read him the riot act in a flash if she knew that their making love had instilled in him a whole new dose of overprotectiveness toward her.

Ava came into the barn office behind him. “Would you care to explain what just happened?”

“No.”

“You've changed your mind because—”

“I changed my mind because it's never going to work. You're a good rider, Ava. You can probably do anything you want to on the back of a horse. But you can't bullfight. I'm sorry.”

“Have you told Judy?”

“No. But I will, as soon as she gets back in town.”

He could barely meet her big-eyed gaze, not the least because he wanted to kiss her so badly. And that was the irrefutable problem: Every time he got near her, he wanted to drown in her sweetness. Wanted to kiss her lips until he possessed them, possessed her. Again and again.

This was no way to train a team, and he was a selfish bastard.

She left, pissed, and with good reason.

Trace told himself he'd done the right thing.

* * *

Ava was shattered. She went to sit at Hattie's Rolling Thunder Café to process what Trace had just told her. On a day like today, she was drawn to the yellow booths and comfort food the Rolling Thunder served.

She'd gotten cut.

Not from Judy's team, but from Trace's training.

It was devastating, and all the more so because she knew he was putting up a wall between them. She could live with the wall, but she couldn't live with the dishonesty—it was the fact that he was being a jerk about his feelings for her that cut the most.

Hattie came over and sat at her booth, smiling her calm smile. “A little rain has fallen in your life, I think.”

“A small thundercloud,” Ava admitted.

“Let's have some white tea and hibiscus honey on biscuits, shall we?” Hattie said, waving over a teenage server in a pink-striped uniform.

“Thank you,” Ava murmured, grateful.

“Trace is like the wind,” Hattie said, getting right down to the heart of the issue. “Men don't always say what they mean, and they don't always mean what they say.”

“Creeps,” Ava said, and Hattie smiled and added, “Yet we love them all the same.”

“Trace doesn't want to train me anymore, says he's not even remotely thinking of training me to bullfight. I presume that speech he gave me this morning only pertained to me, because Cameron's there right now getting her private lesson.” She looked at Hattie, and was torn between disgust and leaking a few tears, something she never did. “I don't know what happened. Yesterday he was kissing me. Today, he cuts me.”

“Trace marches to the beat of his own drummer, for certain.”

“I promised myself that if this team didn't start pulling together in a week, max two, I was going to cut my losses. I thought Judy was the problem, that she'd only half pulled this team together. Now I see exactly what she knows—that Trace has everything we need to become the team we want to be.” She looked at Hattie, outraged. “And then he tells me I haven't got the right stuff. So I have no choice but to head back to Virginia,” she said, feeling lower than low.

“Not totally,” Hattie said, making Ava a biscuit drizzled with honey. “You can work for me, if money's an issue. And I assume it's at least a consideration—anyone with a horse is usually looking for extra money for one thing or another.” She shrugged. “I wouldn't give up just yet on Trace.”

“He was adamant.”

“Trace is a good man to have on your side.” Hattie stirred her tea. “In the meantime, I can use the help. If you want to stay in Hell, that is. Give Trace a chance to think things through.”

Ava wasn't certain what good it would do. She didn't want to go back to Virginia—but there was no reason to stay here if her dream was over. “Maybe I was crazy to hitch my wagon to Judy's star.”

“And that's the other thing,” Hattie said. “I sure wouldn't count our mayor out. She's always got one more ace up her sleeve, and she's determined to grow this town into something other than a no-woman's-land.”

Ava sat silently, pondering her options.

“No business grows perfectly right from the beginning. You girls are her inaugural team. Judy's not going to give up on you.”

“The unspoken advice being that we shouldn't give up on her if she doesn't give up on us.”

“Not so soon, anyway.”

Ava nodded. “I'll take you up on your offer of employment gratefully.”

Hattie smiled. “We work hard here, but my business is growing, and I need able girls to help me.”

She could at least pay board and vet care for Mack. “Thank you, Hattie.”

A gray-haired man with a gray cowboy hat slid into the booth next to Hattie. “I've been looking all over for you.”

“Jimmy Merrill,” Hattie said, “you have not been looking anywhere for me. This is where I am seven days a week. Ava, this is Jimmy, one of our town pillars and one of my dearest, oldest friends. He owns a little bit of land near Judy—”