Secret Obsession (3 page)

"I'm a cowboy, baby." He winked. "There's nothing I can't ride."

Raven blushed, just as Finn hoped she would. He watched her as she checked him out, her eyes traveling from his face to his torso. She bit her lip, when she noticed the bulge of the erection he wasn’t trying to hide.

"Then show me what you got."

Raven's excitement was genuine and also gave Finn an idea.

"I will, but let's make a deal."

She raised a brow in suspicion. "Ok...”

"If I manage to stay on the bull for longer than ten seconds, then you have to ride too." Finn’s excitement rose at the thought of seeing that show.

"Make it thirty seconds," she said.

"Deal."

Buck, who had remained quiet for most of their exchange, followed them both to the back of the bar. Sandy had been thrown for the second time and was making way for the next rider to have a turn. It just so happened that Finn would be that rider.

"Hey Finn," Sandy greeted him with a seductive hug. She was such a flirt. "Haven't seen you up on the bull in a while. You've been holding out on us."

Finn merely tipped his hat to her. Sally was trouble, and as far as he was concerned she could be Buck's problem. He wasn’t interested. Looking back, he gave Raven a sly smile before mounting the mechanical contraption. It was older than the Alamo and a pain in the ass to ride, but he was a master after years of practice. Raven had fallen right into his trap when he suggested ten seconds. He could do sixty seconds with ease.

Raven
stood amongst the spectators as Finn strolled towards the bull. She might as well have been standing alone. Her entire world had been narrowed down to focus on him. The sexy sway of his gait, the way his t-shirt hugged the muscles in his back, and his nice tight ass. And she loved that he wasn't cocky. Finn had an easy confidence about him that she found very disarming. His warm brown eyes seemed to look right into her, and made her wonder how much of her soul he could see.

Hopefully not enough to know how bad she wanted him. He turned back to wink at her and she felt the flush rise up her neck and cheeks.

In one quick leap, Finn threw one long leg and then the other over the bull. He straightened his back, placed one hand on the hook, and raised the other in signal of his readiness. The music started and after a backwards count from three to one, he was set in motion. After his first five seconds, Raven knew he wouldn’t be falling off anytime soon.

He was magnetic. Looking cool, confident, and in total control as he kept his balance while the bull jerked and swayed. The way he eased his hips forward and arched his back to move with the momentum of the ride was beyond sexy. And the crowd ate it up. Some women cheered, others watched with the same dreamy expression. Finn was a living, breathing fantasy.

The guys placed bets. Most bet that he would last more than a minute. Others thought he would fall at the next unexpected shift. They were clearly haters. No doubt, Finn held the attention of every woman in the room.

He rode that bull for one minute and forty-five seconds. Then he let go on his own accord and threw himself onto the mat, hopping to his feet in the same motion. Raven stood in awe, with her lips slightly parted when he approached her.

"Your turn."

"I–"

Finn shook his head and took her by the arm to guide her to the bull.

"No backing out Miss 'I know how to work my hips'. You're up!"

Raven didn't have time to protest. Before she knew it, Finn had her lifted onto the bull and adjusted for the ride. Once she was seated and the popular country song began to play, her nerves settled and her natural performer's nature kicked in.

"You good?" Finn asked. Raven waved him off, shaking off the trepidation with a wink of her own.

"I got this!"

She raised one arm to signal and then she began to move.

Standing with his arms crossed and a big smile on his face, Finn watched on with a mixture of pride and enthusiasm. He hadn't seen her, but he'd felt Raven's eyes on him when he’d rode. Now he was able to watch her, and boy was it a treat.

After a shaky start, where it looked as if she would be thrown in her first three seconds, she righted herself, and rolled with the jerky motions of the bull, syncing to the beat of the music. He couldn't stop staring at her, not even when Buck tapped him to comment on how hot she looked up there.

In his mind she was riding for him alone, like he was the only man in the room. Without thinking, Finn stalked forward, too drawn to her to stop, and jumped on the bull behind Raven. She laughed wildly and let out a loud he-haw. He slid an arm around her waist and pulled her close.

"Hold on, baby," he whispered in her ear.

Raven's laughter died down to an uncontrollable smile at the erotic sensation of Finn being so close to her. Finn's chest pressed against her back. His fingers clutched her hips to guide her to his tempo. And his obvious arousal pressed against the crease of her ass. If she weren’t having so much fun, she would have fainted from overheating.

While they rode he whispered and crooned words of encouragement in her ear. It was all in fun, but she couldn't stop thinking about how good his body felt against hers and how she could tell he felt the same way. But she knew that they had just crossed some sort of invisible line, a broken yet unspoken rule, and committed an infraction in the whole stepfamily hierarchy.

She knew she was supposed to care.

But she didn’t. 

Raven
couldn't believe her luck. Or the lack of it, to be exact. Her day began thirty minutes late, after she slept through her alarm, and was ending with a flat tire. A flat tire and a cell phone with no battery life because she had been running late and forgot to grab her travel charger. She ignored the voice in her head that chided her for not leaving the damned charger in the car.

There was no time to worry about that now.

Sidling out of the driver’s seat, she headed to the trunk. The spare hid beneath her gym bag and the load of clothes she had yet to drop off at Goodwill. Shaking her head, she managed to pull the donut out while only breaking one nail. Now all she had to do was remember how the hell she was supposed to change a flat.

After thirty minutes of strenuous labor, the only progress made was removing two lug nuts from one tire. Raven wanted to cry in sheer frustration. It was moments like this that she wished she had a man in her life. A good man, not the kind she usually dated who were only good for one thing. If she was really lucky, they were so stellar in the sack that she'd forget how horrible they were out of it. This lead to her usual random thoughts of Finn, who she had a feeling would be a champion in the bedroom.

Raven had done as she planned and tried her hardest to stay out of his way. After their intense introduction that included his healthy erection, and then their salacious bull ride encounter, she was even more determined not to cross his path. That night, she pleaded to being too tired to stay out and had not spoken when Buck drove them home. She'd just muttered a sleepy goodnight and flew inside.

Finn must have had the same agenda because she rarely saw him. He was always long gone before she woke up for breakfast. The few times she had seen him were at dinner and a couple of random trips to his minibar. Nothing compared to seeing him shirtless, staring at her with fire in his eyes and a growing bulge in his crotch.

Those thoughts served as a reminder of how horny she was, since she hadn't been with a man of any kind in months. Her ex-boyfriend didn't have time to sleep with her because he was too busy banging half of her dance squad. Raven blinked hard, willing those thoughts away. They were immediately replaced with thoughts of Finn. Again. She couldn't believe that she'd spent the last few weeks in close quarters with the sexiest man she'd ever seen in real life. Unfortunately he was off-limits. The good ones always were.

The threat of tears caused her eyes to twitch. The thick humidity of the July evening clung to her skin like a wet towel, weighing her down. The work blazer she sported that day had already been discarded, and the sweat rolling between her breasts was enough to grant her access to any wet t-shirt competition.

Why had she taken this route home? If she had just stayed on the main road another car might have driven past by now and she could have at least flagged them down for the use of their phone. All around her, crickets and other noisy insects taunted her. She had already swatted her neck three times with the fear that a nasty bug was trying to stowaway down her shirt.

Raven wondered if Texas had a higher bug count than most states, or if it was part of her misfortune to be stranded in the middle of the most bug ridden field ever. She was so consumed in her miserable musings that the distant sound of tires crunching over gravel eluded her.

Finn
was intrigued. He wasn't sure what was more interesting. Raven attempting to change a flat tire, or Raven hot and sweaty on her hands and knees. The slight jolt of his cock answered that question. Her thick, black wavy hair settled around her shoulders like a blanket, and the hem of her tiny shirt rested just at her waist, leaving her plump little ass fully exposed. His stepsister had the body of a porn star. He didn't know much about her besides the fact that she moved back home from college, worked in her father's office all day, and had moves that could put a belly dancer to shame.

Oh, and she liked taking long showers. Many a night he had succumbed to massaging his dick imagining her naked body as the water rained down her smooth skin. Some nights he imagined the shock in her eyes of him joining her while she bathed. The real life image of her bending over with her ass in the air would now be put into his visual repository.