“Would you like to see something else?” Roxy asked

Tom was ready to howl in frustration. “Yes, please.”

Roxy backed away a bit so he would get the full effect, placed her hands on her thighs and began gathering the fabric of her skirt into her palms. The hem rose, inch by excruciating inch, revealing the tops of her bright red boots, the lacy white stockings…

“Aw, Slim!” he groaned. “Don’t stop now.”

“Remember the last time, when you tore my panties off?”

The skirt rose a half inch higher, revealing a slice of bare skin above the tops of the stockings.

He started to sweat. “Yes. I remember.”

“Do you know why you won’t have to rip my panties off?”

“No,” he said, but he could guess.

“Because—” she lifted the skirt all the way up “—I’m not wearing any.”

Dear Reader,

Like a lot of people, I have always been fascinated by the cowboy myth, and have long wanted to write a book set in the world of the rodeo. Now, those of you who are longtime romance fans may remember that I did do a sort of rodeo book once before, but the particular cowboy in that book (Luck of the Draw, Harlequin Temptation #608) was a retired bull rider and the rodeo merely provided the background for the story. This time I wanted my characters to be fully immersed in that special world.

To that end, I did loads of research (always one of my favorite parts of writing a book!). I watched movies about the rodeo and read books about it. I subscribed to Prorodeo Sports News and visited the Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association online (www.prorodeo.com/) to learn about the rules of the game. I went to rodeos. And, best of all, I interviewed cowboys. Lots of cowboys.

And so, taking bits and pieces of what I learned and tumbling them all around in my writer’s imagination, thus was born Tom Steele, the quintessential rodeo cowboy, and the hero of this book.

It took a little longer to find my heroine. I needed just the right kind of woman to be able to stand up to that bigger-than-life cowboy myth. She had to be strong and sexy and sassy, with an attitude. It wasn’t until I met a sixty-two-year-old retired barrel racer from San Antonio, who gave me some wonderful words of advice about rodeo cowboys, that the character of Roxy finally gelled for me.

I hope you enjoy Tom and Roxy’s story. I certainly did.

Best wishes,

Candace Schuler

P.S. You can contact me through my Web site at

www.CandaceSchuler.com. And check out www.tryblaze.com!

Good Time Girl
Candace Schuler

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To all the good girls of the world who are yearning to take a walk on the wild side—Go for it!

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Epilogue

Prologue

ROXANNE ARCHER designed her strategy like a four-star general—or a stalker.

The first part of the plan involved laying the groundwork. She studied her subject carefully. She plotted her itinerary. She listed her needs and requirements, defining and refining them as necessary. She carved out the time she would need. She saved the necessary funds. She acquired the necessary skills.

That had taken nearly six months to accomplish.

The second part of the plan involved general reconnaissance and one-on-one surveillance. She trailed several possible subjects, observing them in their natural habitat for several days before narrowing the field down to one. And then she trailed that one, learning his preferences, his habits, his predilections and inclinations.

That had taken nearly two weeks.

The third part was more hands-on. Bravely, she turned herself over to the experts and let them arm her for the coming campaign. She was plucked and waxed, trimmed and highlighted, buffed and filed and polished within an inch of her life. Then she selected and donned her camouflage so she would blend in with her surroundings.

That took nearly two days.

She was now as ready as she would ever be.

It was time to go get herself a good-looking, dangerous cowboy.

1

“WELL, I’M HERE to tell you, sugar, rodeo cowboys are a whole hell of a lot of fun but they’re the most irresponsible sons o’ bitches in the world when it comes to women. You can’t trust ’em any farther than you can throw ’em, and you sure as hell can’t believe a word they say. Especially the good-lookin’ ones. They’re the most dangerous kind, you know, ’cause they’ve been gettin’ by on looks and charm their whole lives and they got it down to a science. I’m tellin’ you the pure honest-to-God truth here, sugar. You got to keep an extra sharp eye on the good-lookin’ ones or you’ll get your poor little heart broke for sure.”

Roxanne Archer heard those cautionary words of advice echo through her mind as she pulled into one of the few remaining parking spaces in front of Ed Earl’s Polynesian Dance Palace, and resolutely reaffirmed her decision not to let the dire warnings of one crusty old ex-barrel racer from San Antonio put a damper on her quest.

She was going to get herself a cowboy.

A good-looking one.

The most dangerous kind.

If she got her heart broken in the process, well, so be it. It was no more than she expected, in any case. And a broken heart had to be better than one that had shriveled up from disuse. Not to mention a few other body parts that were in imminent danger of dehydration from prolonged neglect.

She turned off the ignition of her rented candy-apple-red Mustang convertible and sat there for a moment, her fingers still clasping the key, her foot on the parking brake, staring blindly at the flock of pulsating pink-neon flamingos atop the roof of Ed Earl’s, and contemplated the series of events—the series of non-events, actually—that had brought her to a cowboy honky-tonk on the outskirts of Lubbock, Texas, in the middle of her summer vacation. It was simple, really.

Roxanne Archer had been a good girl—a very good girl—for the entire twenty-nine, uneventful years of her life. She wanted to take a crack at being a good-time girl before it was too late. If it wasn’t already too late. She’d been mired in good-girlness an awfully long time, and it was an awfully deep rut to climb out of—even with the help of a dangerous, good-looking cowboy.

Provided, of course, that she actually managed to get herself one.

“I just won’t go home until I get him,” she muttered stubbornly, and reached up to flip open the lighted makeup mirror in the visor so she could check her lipstick—glossy candy-apple red like the car—and make sure her hair hadn’t blown all to pieces on her drive over from the Broken Spoke Motel. It had. But as promised by the young woman who’d cut it for her in Dallas just two days ago, being blown all to pieces had only improved the style. Roxanne smiled at herself, delighted by the chunky, layered cut that tangled with her eyelashes and caressed the back of her neck with such reckless abandon.

It was amazing what a new hairdo could do for a woman. Not to mention a new shade of lipstick. And new clothes. Especially when each and every item of those new clothes—right down to the leopard-print bikini panties and matching push-up demi bra—were so radically different from what said woman usually wore.

Feeling wild and wicked and blessedly unlike her usual boring self, Roxanne pushed the car door open, swung her feet out onto the graveled parking lot, straightened up to her full five feet nine inches…and teetered precariously as the high, stacked heels of her brand-new, lipstick-red Sweetheart of the Rodeo cowboy boots sank into the rocky, uneven surface. She made a hasty grab for the top of the car door to steady herself, wondering if maybe the high-heeled boots had been a mistake. She always wore flats at home, or sensible pumps with little one-inch heels so she didn’t tower over people—men—any more than necessary.

But, then, no, she told herself firmly, good-time girls didn’t wear sensible shoes, whether they towered over people or not.

And, besides, she’d always wanted a pair of red cowboy boots, ever since she was a little girl growing up in Greenwich, Connecticut, secretly dreaming about riding the range as a dangerous outlaw queen like Belle Starr or Cat Ballou. Although it didn’t actually say so in any of the books she’d read, she’d been absolutely positive an outlaw queen would wear red cowboy boots. She’d gathered up her courage and asked her mother for a pair.

Charlotte Hayworth Archer had lectured her nine-year-old daughter about her poor choice of role models and footwear, then bought her proper brown leather riding boots and a proper English saddle and signed her up for proper riding lessons, no doubt believing all that wholesome, healthful propriety would rechannel Roxanne’s interests and ambitions in a more socially acceptable direction.

Which it had.

Sort of.

Roxanne learned to keep her admiration for unconventional women to herself, and she never mentioned her desire for red boots again.

After a while, she almost forgot she’d ever wanted them. Dressage riders didn’t wear fancy red boots, nor did honor students or members of the debate team or the Latin club, and certainly no class valedictorian had ever pranced across the stage to the podium in red boots. A cheerleader might, of course, or a member of the drama club, but Roxanne was too tall and too inhibited and…well, just too plain geeky to belong to either of those cliques. A girl like Roxanne had been during her high school years—tall, gangly, scholarly, shy—would never wear or do or say anything to attract attention to herself. It got to be a habit, and Roxanne passed out of her awkward teens and into her marginally less awkward twenties without attracting any undue notice from anyone.

Shortly after her twenty-fourth birthday she became one half of a mature adult relationship with another teacher at the exclusive private school were she taught English Lit and beginning Latin to fifth graders, but she never really attracted his attention, either. Not completely. In the three years they spent together as a couple, he never once remembered how she liked her coffee—a half a spoonful of sugar, damn it!—or noticed that she faked her orgasms.

Which, in a roundabout way, was the reason she was standing in front of a cowboy honky-tonk outside of Lubbock, Texas, in the middle of her summer vacation, wearing red cowboy boots and the shortest, tightest skirt she’d ever worn in her life.

Roxanne Archer was finally ready to call some attention to herself, to cut loose, to kick over the traces, to take a walk on the wild side and find out what all the shouting was about. In the immortal words of Auntie Mame—another admirably unconventional woman with a flamboyant fashion sense—Roxanne was ready to “live, live, live!”

For the duration of her vacation, anyway.

She let go of the car door, then reached down with both hands—freshly manicured with glossy fire-engine-red polish instead of her usual tasteful French manicure—and carefully smoothed her sweaty palms over the curve of her hips to make sure her tiny denim skirt was still covering everything it was supposed to cover.

Someone whistled appreciatively

Roxanne started at the unexpected sound, her body stiffening instinctively, as if to ward off a threat or an insult. And then, deliberately, remembering her mission, she forced herself to relax. She’d dressed to attract attention, hadn’t she? Well, she’d attracted attention. Now she just had to figure out what to do with it.

She turned her head slightly, glancing over her shoulder, and flashed what she hoped was a saucy smile at her admirer.

The response was immediate. And immensely gratifying.

He puffed up like a rooster and swaggered toward her with the loose-limbed, bow-legged gait of a man who’d spent a lot of time on a horse. “Well, hey, there, baby doll,” he crooned appreciatively as he honed in on her.

He was six foot four, at least, with shoulders like a bull, a trophy buckle the size of a pancake decorating his belt, and a smile as wide and open as a Texas prairie beaming out at her from under the rim of a cream-colored Stetson. An honest-to-goodness cowboy. Good-looking, too, in an open, aw-shucks, country boy sort of way that, unfortunately, wasn’t the least bit dangerous.

Roxanne had her heart firmly set on dangerous.

Still, a cowboy was a cowboy, even if he had freckles and a snub nose. And she could certainly use the practice. She fluttered her eyelashes experimentally.

“Hey, yourself, sugar,” she drawled. Her accent was a near perfect imitation of the San Antonio barrel racer who had warned her against trusting cowboys. The flirtatious tilt of her head was the result of two weeks’ worth of close observation and diligent practice in front of a mirror. Amazingly, it worked.

The cowboy swaggered a bit closer and leaned in, putting one big, beefy hand on the open car door. The mingled scents of horses, saddle soap and a musky men’s cologne, liberally applied, engulfed her. “You here alone, baby doll?”

Roxanne stifled the urge to take a quick step backward, out of range of that too strong cologne and the unfamiliar burden of his undivided attention. It was what she would have done. Before. Now, she shut the car door with a sassy little thrust of her hip, dislodging his hand, and gave him what she hoped was a provocative look from under the fringe of her chunky blond bangs. “I’m meeting someone inside.”

“Girlfriend?” he said, looking so much like an eager, oversize puppy that Roxanne couldn’t help but smile at him again.

“Boyfriend.” She touched the manicured tip of her index finger to the center of his massive chest and pushed lightly, backing him up. “And he’s real jealous, sugar, so I’d be careful if I were you.”

The cowboy’s grin widened. “I’m willing to take a chance if you are, baby doll. We could run away together before he even knows you’re here. My truck’s right over there.”

Roxanne laughed and shook her head, causing her tousled flyaway cut to shimmer in the pink neon glow of the flock of flamingos gracing the roof of Ed Earl’s. “I wouldn’t want your death on my conscience, sugar. But thanks for the invitation.” She sighed regretfully. “It was a real sweet offer and if I wasn’t otherwise engaged, I’d be tempted.” She batted her eyelashes again for good measure. “I really would.”

She patted his chest and turned away, tucking the car key into the pocket of her stretch denim skirt as she sauntered across the parking lot—slowly, because of the unaccustomed height of her boot heels and the graveled surface beneath her feet. The careful pace made her hips sway seductively, in a way they never did in her usual flats.

“Man, oh, man,” she heard him say reverently, and she slowed down even more, exaggerating the fluid movement of her hips, enjoying the moment, reveling in her unexpected success.

Oh, it had been so easy! Who would have ever believed it would be so easy?

With a triumphant, self-satisfied smile tugging at the corners of her glossy red lips, Roxanne pulled open the front door of Ed Earl’s Polynesian Dance Palace and sashayed in like she owned the place.

It was as if she had stepped into another world and—like Dorothy torn from her black-and-white life and thrust over the rainbow into a brilliantly colored Oz—she could only stand there and blink in stupefied amazement. It was loud, smoky, and tacky. Unapologetically, unrepentantly, gloriously tacky.

Chinese paper lanterns were strung from life-size wooden cutouts shaped like palm trees. Brightly colored plastic fish dangled from the ceiling. Bedraggled fisherman’s netting, studded with glass floats, striped beach balls and pink plastic flamingos of various sizes, was draped across the walls. Gyrating hula dolls—the kind found on the dashboards of cars of people with questionable taste—decorated each table. The wait staff wore gaudy Hawaiian Aloha shirts and paper flower leis with their Wranglers and boots. The four members of the twanging cowboy band stood on a small, raised stage constructed to look like a log raft. The crowded dance floor was huge, kidney-shaped and painted a vivid blue. Roxanne’s cocky smile faltered a bit as she watched the dancers’ whirling, skipping, kicking progress around the scuffed blue floor.

Dancing had never been her strong suit. Not that she didn’t love to dance. She did. But girls who were five feet nine inches tall by the time they were thirteen, especially girls who were brainy and wore glasses, too, didn’t get much opportunity to learn all the latest dance moves. Her mother had insisted she learn all the standard ballroom dances, of course—and what a wretched embarrassment those lessons had been, being waltzed around the room by an unwilling partner whose head barely reached her chin!—but she’d never danced any of the popular dances all the kids her age were doing back in high school. Not in public, anyway.

Determined not to be left out this time around, she’d secretly taken a six-week series of dance lessons in preparation for her Wild West adventure, but none of the half a dozen country-western dances she’d so painstakingly learned bore more than a passing resemblance to the bewildering series of steps currently being performed on the floor of Ed Earl’s Polynesian Dance Palace. Obviously, her instructors—a fresh-faced young preppie couple in matching pastel plaid shirts—had never been in a Texas honky-tonk. Or six weeks of lessons hadn’t been nearly enough. Either way, she couldn’t possibly—

“Dance, ma’am?”

Roxanne shifted her gaze from the dance floor to find another cowboy smiling at her from beneath the rim of a broad-brimmed, black cowboy hat. This one was lean and rangy, with dark, soulful eyes and an uncanny resemblance to a young John Travolta. Unfortunately, he was also no more than twenty, at most. Still, it was heartening to be hit on as soon as she came in the door, as it were. Another sign, if she needed one, that her transformation from party pooper to party girl had been successful. If she hadn’t been ninety-nine percent sure she’d fall flat on her face, she might have taken him up on his offer, just out of pure gratitude that he’d asked.

“Thank you, no.” She smiled at him to cushion the blow. “I’m meeting someone.” She gestured across the sea of dancers toward the bar and pool tables on the other side of the blue lagoon. “Over there.”

“How ’bout I dance you over that way, then? Little bitty slip of a thing like you might get stomped on, you try to make it through this rowdy crowd on your own.”

Even without the warning from the San Antonio barrel racer about a rodeo cowboy’s proclivity for stretching the truth, Roxanne knew a line when she heard one—and his was long enough to hang clothes on. No one had ever, in all her twenty-nine years, referred to her as a “little bitty slip of a thing.” She’d been called skinny. Scrawny. Bean Pole. String Bean. Arrow Archer. But never a little bitty slip of a thing. And by someone who was smiling at her as if he really, truly meant it. At the moment, anyway. It was irresistible.

“All right, sugar,” she drawled, suddenly feeling powerfully, erotically female. Little bitty slip of a thing. If she could call forth that kind of shameless flattery from a young, good-looking cowboy by just standing there, she could do anything. Even dance in public without disgracing herself. “For that, you get one dance. The man I’m meeting can wait.”

He whooped as if he’d just won the lottery and snagged an arm around her waist, whirling her onto the floor before she had a chance to change her mind.

“One dance,” she reiterated as they joined the enthusiastic throng.

They danced two dances.

After all, the first dance hardly counted, as the song was more than half over when they joined in. And the second dance was the Cotton-Eyed Joe. It would be an affront to Texans everywhere to leave the dance floor when the Cotton-Eyed Joe was playing. Roxanne acquiesced to that argument, spurious though it was, but managed to stand firm when he tried to cajole her into a third go-round. Cute as he was—and he was darn cute!—she had other plans for the evening. And it was about time she quit stalling and put them into action.

“I’m meeting someone,” she stated firmly, resisting when her dance partner tried to twirl her into the two-step that was just beginning. “And you said you’d dance me over there—” she gestured with her free hand “—after one dance, now didn’t you, sugar?”

The cowboy gave an exaggerated shrug, pantomiming both compliance and disappointment, and obligingly two-stepped her backward through the crowd. As they approached the edge of the dance floor, he spun her in a series of quick, showy turns that ended with her pressed up against his lean, rock-hard young body, their joined hands clasped against the small of her back. Breathless, laughing, Roxanne clutched at his shoulder with her free hand for balance and found herself looking into his face from only inches away. The expression in his soulful brown eyes had her reconsidering her definition of dangerous.

“Oh, my.” She slid her hand from his shoulder to his chest in an effort to give herself a little more breathing room. Unlike the cowboy who’d accosted her in the parking lot, he didn’t budge. “Well…um, that was certainly invigorating,” she said brightly, forgetting to drawl. “Thank you.”

“Thank you,” he purred, and dipped his head with unmistakable intent.

Roxanne drew back sharply, as far as the arm encircling her waist would permit.

“Is that a no?” he murmured.

“No. I mean, yes. That’s a no,” she stammered, fighting a curious combination of schoolgirl panic and equally schoolgirlish triumph.

He wanted to kiss her!

It was out of the question, of course. He was just a kid. Younger than her youngest brother, Edward, who was a junior at Brown. But still…this young John Travolta lookalike wanted to kiss her! It was a heady thought and if he were a few years older or she were a few years younger, she might be tempted to let him. Maybe.

“Sure I can’t change your mind? I know lots of other—” his arm tightened fractionally, pressing her closer to his overheated body; his voice dropped an octave, becoming intimate and suggestive “—invigoratin’ things we can do together.”

“Yes, I’m quite sure you do,” she said primly, wondering how she’d gotten herself into this. And how she was going to get out of it. “But I’m meet—” She sucked in her breath, startled into silence when he reached up and brushed her cheek with the back of one finger.

“You sure have soft skin,” he murmured, his finger wandering down her cheek to the side of her neck. His dark eyes sizzled with potent male heat. “You this soft all over?”

Roxanne reached up and grabbed his hand, stopping its unerring descent toward the scooped neckline of her lace-edged camisole blouse. “No,” she said firmly, with no equivocation in her voice this time, and no indecision in her expression that might lead him to think she could be convinced to change her mind.

The young cowboy sighed and let her go. “I enjoyed the dance. Dances,” he said with a smile, as earnest and polite as if he hadn’t just tried to cop a feel. “And if you change your mind about anything—” his voice took on a playful, suggestive timbre “—you just give a holler and I’ll come runnin’.”

His easy, good-natured capitulation to her rejection boosted Roxanne’s confidence another notch. Obviously, she was better at this man/woman thing than she’d thought. Or, rather, her sexy alter ego was better at it.

“And just who should I holler for, sugar?” She tilted her head, looking up at him from beneath her lashes. “If I do happen to change my mind, that is.”

“The name’s Clay.” He offered his hand. “Clay Madison.”

Roxanne put hers into it. “Roxy Archer,” she said, giving him the version of her name she’d decided went with her new persona.

“Well, Roxy, it’s been a real pleasure.” He lifted the hand he held to his lips and brushed a careless kiss across her knuckles before letting it go. “You remember what I said now, hear? Holler if you change your mind.”

“I’ll do that,” she promised mendaciously, knowing it wouldn’t happen.

Clay Madison knew it, too. He touched two fingers to the brim of his hat in a brief cowboy salute, then turned and left her standing at the edge of the dance floor while he zeroed in on a big-haired, big-bosomed young lovely in skintight jeans and a skinny little tank top that exposed a great deal more cleavage than Roxanne could ever hope to possess, even with the help of a push-up bra.

“Oh, well,” she said to herself, watching without rancor as he twirled the delighted girl onto the crowded dance floor with the same smooth moves he’d used on her. “Easy come, easy go.”

She had no doubt at all that if she’d been willing, it could have been her out on the dance floor, plastered up against young Clay Madison with his hand inching inexorably toward her butt. It was a comforting thought. Before Clay and the cowboy in the parking lot, her belief in her ability to inspire that kind of lustful feeling in a man had been based on little more than research and hope. Now, it was established fact. She could do it. She had done it. She could do it again. All it took, apparently, was a short, tight skirt, a provocative smile, and the ability to flutter her eyelashes.

She was utterly amazed it had taken her nearly twenty-nine years to figure out something so simple, but now that she had, she was going to put her new knowledge to good use. With a confident toss of her head, Roxanne turned and headed for the bar with a sultry, hip-swinging stride that drew more than one admiring male glance.

“Lone Star,” she purred when the bartender smiled and asked her pleasure.

She waved away the mug he brought with the beer, wrapped her hand around the frosty long-necked bottle and swiveled around on her bar stool so she was facing the pool table tucked into the far corner of the honky-tonk. She raised the beer to her lips and took a long, slow swallow, surveying the men playing pool over the upturned end of the bottle.

There he was.

Her cowboy.

The good-looking, dangerous one.

She lowered the beer, resting the cool frosty bottom on her bare knee, and watched him as he circled the pool table with the cue in his hand. He wasn’t movie-star handsome like young Clay Madison, but Roxanne didn’t want movie-star handsome. She wanted craggy and rugged. She wanted virile and manly. A real cowboy, not the rhinestone version.

The cowboy playing pool was as real as it got.

He was long and lean, an even six feet according to his stats, although his boots and hat made him seem taller. Broad at the shoulders and narrow at the hips with the strong, hard thighs of a horseman, he moved around the pool table with the ambling, easy, loose-kneed gait of a man who knew the value of patience. He was older than most of the other rodeo cowboys—an important consideration to a woman staring her thirtieth birthday in the face—with tiny lines of experience etched into the tanned skin around his eyes, and laugh lines creasing his lean cheeks. His dark hair was conservatively cut, neither short nor long, with the appealing tendency to curl from underneath the edges of his hat. His snap-front, Western-cut shirt was a plain, pale blue; his jeans were snug but not tight; the silver trophy buckle on his belt was moderately sized. His whole manner bespoke quiet, rock-solid confidence with no need to advertise either his physique or his prowess.

Roxanne had been surreptitiously watching him for the past two weeks, sizing him up from the safety of the stands and around the rodeo grounds. Now, her decision made, her quarry in sight, she leveled her gaze at him from across the room and stared openly, her interest obvious to anyone who cared to look.

The object of her interest stood, hip cocked, head down, the brim of his hat shadowing his face, his upper body bent over the pool table as he lined up his shot, seemingly oblivious to the woman watching him.

Roxanne kept staring, willing him to look up. According to all the books she’d read and the research she’d done in preparation for her Wild West adventure, the easiest and most direct way for a woman to signal her interest in a man was with eye contact. Prolonged, direct eye contact. The trick, she realized now, was to get him to look at her in the first place. The books and magazine articles had made it all sound so simple. Catch his eye, lick your lips, trail your fingertips suggestively over your cleavage or the rim of your glass, all the while holding that all important eye contact, and he’d come running. That was the theory, anyway. Unfortunately, nothing she’d read had mentioned what to do if he was so intent on his next pool shot that he didn’t even notice you were staring at him.

She was just about to switch tactics, steeling herself to slide off the bar stool and saunter over to the pool table for a more direct approach when, suddenly, his shoulders twitched under the pale blue fabric of his shirt. His hands stilled on the pool cue. He raised his head, slowly, his upper body still positioned over the felt-covered table in preparation for his shot.

She saw the chiseled angle of his jaw first as it emerged from beneath the shadow of his hat…the full, sculpted curve of his lips…his blade of a nose…the strong, angled cheekbones under skin the warm golden color of old doubloons…and then, finally, the startling blue of his eyes as he looked straight at her from under the brim of his hat.

Their gazes locked.

Held.

Roxanne felt the jolt all the way down to her toes. Steady, she told herself, fighting the urge to lower her gaze. Steady. Now wasn’t the time to get all girlie and flustered. She’d caught his attention. Now she had to engage his interest enough to make him approach her. Deliberately, with a gesture she’d practiced a hundred times in front of the mirror in preparation for this moment, she lifted her free hand and touched her crimson-tipped fingers to the lace-trimmed edge of her scoop-necked blouse, brushing them lightly, languidly, back and forth over the cleavage produced by the push-up bra.

The cowboy’s eyes widened and his gaze flickered downward, following the sultry movement of her fingers on her skin. The expression in his blue eyes when they came back to hers was hot, focused and intent, rife with speculation and frank sexual curiosity.

Roxanne felt equal parts fear, excitement and sheer female power sizzling through her at the success of her ploy. She’d done it. She’d hooked him. Now all she had to do was reel him in.

Come to mama, she thought, and smiled in blatant, unmistakable invitation.

2

IT TOOK TOM STEELE a good ten seconds to convince himself the hot little blonde at the bar was actually aiming her come-hither stare at him. Not that he hadn’t been the focus of a come-hither stare before. He did all right with the ladies. Always had. But the trophy-hunting buckle bunnies who hung out in places like Ed Earl’s usually went after bigger trophies—and younger, flashier studs. There was nothing flashy about Tom Steele.

His last birthday had put him on the far side of thirty, for one thing, making him a good five to ten years older than most of the peach-fuzz cowboys in the honky-tonk. And even in his younger days he’d never been one of those Fancy Dans who went in for wildly colored custom-made shirts, glittery bat-wing chaps or oversize silver belt buckles. He was a circuit cowboy, and proud of it. A weekend competitor who fit his rodeoing in around a job and a ranch and an eighty-hour workweek.

Or rather, he had been a circuit cowboy.

This year—his last year before he quit for good—he’d decided to go hog wild and really live it up, competing in as many rodeos as possible, traveling from one go-round to the next, living, eating and breathing the foot loose and fancy free life of the professional rodeo cowboy for one full season. So far, that meant he spent a good deal of his time behind the wheel of his pickup, chasing the rodeo from one dusty Podunk town to another, living on fast food and bad coffee, and getting tossed around by snortin’ mad broncs on a daily basis instead of just on the weekends.

It was a good life, as far as it went. The days were mostly hot and dirty, comprised of long periods of boredom and inactivity interspersed with eight-second intervals of heart-pounding, teeth-rattling, bone-jarring excitement. The nights were mostly spent on the road or in honky-tonks like Ed Earl’s. He had no responsibilities to speak of beyond making sure he was paid up and on time for each of his events. And no worries beyond wondering which bronc he was going to draw in the next go-round. About the only thing missing from his last fling was, well…a last fling.

It appeared things might be looking up in that department.

“Well, hell, Tom. You gonna stand there, starin’ at that little gal like some big dumb critter what ain’t got no sense, or you gonna take your shot?”

Without shifting his gaze away from the woman at the bar, Tom straightened and handed his pool cue to the cowboy who’d asked the question. “I’m going to take my shot,” he said.

“Hey, you got a twenty ridin’ on this game,” the cowboy reminded him.

Tom didn’t even glance at the crumpled bills under the shot glass on the edge of the pool table. “Consider it forfeit,” he said. “I think I’ve just found a more interesting game to play.” Then, paying no attention to the hoots and hollers that followed his comment, he rounded the end of the felt-covered table and headed toward the blonde at the bar.

He moved slowly, purposefully, the way he did when he was approaching the chute to climb aboard his next ride. His gait was measured and even, his boot heels clicking against the floor with every deliberate step, neither his gaze nor his pace wavering as he unerringly honed in on her through the noise and smoke of the jam-packed honky-tonk. She didn’t fidget, didn’t look away, didn’t blush or giggle or toss her hair. She simply sat there, perched on the bar stool as regal as a princess—her back ramrod-straight, her long slim legs crossed at the knee, her hand playing idly at her breast—and watched him come to her.

She was a tall, cool glass of water, for sure, a far cry from the usual oversprayed, overdone, overeager groupies who congregated around rodeo cowboys. Long and lean with a glossy, high-tone polish, she had a pampered, well-bred look to her underneath the fancy packaging, like a Thoroughbred racehorse all decked out in a show pony rig. And, hot damn, what a rig!

Her short blond hair was kind of rumpled and tousled-looking, as if she’d just rolled out of bed and wouldn’t mind rolling back in. Her lips were red and shiny, as if she’d just licked them. The tiny little skirt she was wearing showed off miles of slender, well-toned leg and clung like denim-colored Saran wrap to the sweetest curve of hip it had ever been his privilege to see. The neckline of her white blouse dipped just low enough to offer a tantalizing glimpse of cleavage. And those long, red nails…

Damn, she knew just what she was doing, brushing those glossy red fingernails back and forth above the scooped neckline of her blouse, all nonchalant and casual-like, as if she had no idea she was doing it or what the sight did to a man, with that mysterious, knowing little smile curving those matching red lips, offering compliance and challenge without a word being spoken. And all the while staring at him as if she meant to gobble him up when he got close enough.

It riveted a man’s attention, for sure, and got the blood pumping through his veins harder than it did when he was in the chute, sitting on top of twelve-hundred pounds of quivering horseflesh and waiting for the gate to swing open.

Tom did what he always did in that situation. He narrowed his focus to the task at hand, settled in, and prepared to take hold, determined to assert his dominance from the get-go. Women or horses, he’d always figured the game plan was pretty much the same. A man had to show ’em who was boss, right off, or he’d end up getting stomped on. Especially with the high-spirited ones. And he could tell at a glance the long-legged blonde with the cool, glossy polish and the hot come-hither look in her eyes was definitely one of the high-spirited ones. If a man let a woman like that get the upper hand, he’d never get it back.

He came to a stop directly in front of her.

And then he just stood there, his jeans-clad knees inches from her bare dimpled ones, his wide shoulders blocking her view of everything except him, and silently offered up a hot-eyed challenge of his own.

Her sassy little smile faltered a bit and the tip of her tongue came out, licking nervously at her bottom lip, but her gaze never wavered. “Buy you a drink, cowboy?” she purred.

Her voice was low and husky with a hint of something foreign and exotic under the drawl, as if she were from someplace other than Texas. Tom liked exotic, especially when it was sleek and blond and brazen. He pushed the brim of his hat up a fraction of an inch with the tip of his thumb, then, still silent, leaned in and put his hand on the bar beside her.

She shrank back, just slightly, and her gaze dropped for a split second. Then her spine stiffened and her chin came up, and she met his eyes. Five long seconds passed in silence as they stared at each other, deep blue eyes gazing into pale golden brown, male to female, yin to yang, speculation, curiosity and pure undisguised sexual energy crackling back and forth between them like static electricity as they silently jockeyed for position in the age-old battle of the sexes.

Then one of her eyebrows rose, all hoity-toity and imperious. “Well?” she said, and there was a snap under the cornpone and molasses in her voice. “Do you want a drink or not, sugar?”

Tom bit back a grin—damn, he liked a woman with sass!—and put his other hand on the bar, caging her between his outstretched arms. “How ’bout we skip the preliminaries, Slim,” he said, his voice low and husky and suggestive, “and just get right to it.”

Her eyes flared wide for a second, and he would have sworn he saw her gulp, but the angle of her chin stayed the same. “Skip the preliminaries?”

He leaned in just a bit closer, all but surrounding her with his size and strength in a deliberate attempt to overwhelm her with the none-too-subtle body language of the dominant male animal. The grin he couldn’t quite control curved his lips, quirking up one corner of his mouth when she refused to give ground by shrinking back a second time.

“No sense wasting time when we both know what we want, now is there?” he said silkily, close enough now so that his knees were bumping hers and the brim of his hat shadowed her upturned face.

Roxanne lifted her free hand in automatic reflex, putting it against his chest in an instinctive effort to preserve what little space she had left, and opened her mouth to inform him in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t that kind of girl. Fortunately, she remembered in time that she was, for the duration of her vacation, anyway, exactly that kind of girl. The problem was, she had no idea what that kind of girl would do now, with six gorgeous, well-muscled feet of cowboy all but pressing her up against the bar.

“Well…um….” She stared up at him, her head tilted back, her hand resting lightly against his broad chest, her mind working frantically.

He was so close she could feel the warmth of his breath on her cheek, so close she could feel the brush of his shirtsleeves against her bare arms. The look in his deep blue eyes was confident and cocksure, as tempting as sin on a hot Saturday night. The heat of his body was an almost tangible thing, reaching out to curl around her like the loop of an expertly thrown lasso.

Her heartbeat quickened in response, sending an answering heat surging through her, making her nerve endings sizzle with a heady combination of panic and excitement as she tried to decide what her next move should be.

None of her carefully orchestrated plans for her fall from grace had included the possibility of falling quite so fast—and without any of the preliminaries he seemed so eager to dispense with. She’d expected at least a few minutes of getting-to-know-you pleasantries over that drink she’d intended to buy him. Maybe a dance or two to warm things up and put them both at ease. A little sweet talk and romantic nonsense to disguise what was really going on. Apparently, her good-looking, dangerous cowboy didn’t believe in wasting time with subterfuge or romantic nonsense.

So, how would a real good-time girl handle the situation?

Hold him off?

Or urge him on?

Tom stood stock-still, waiting, his hands on the bar on either side of her, the little half smile still turning up one corner of his mouth, an unholy gleam of masculine devilry and undisguised anticipation lighting his face, and watched the whirl of emotions parade through her big whiskey-colored eyes as she debated the issue with herself.

He knew he’d disconcerted her with his directness—that had been his intent, after all—and he had read, quite clearly, the first flash of instinctive, feminine outrage at his masculine arrogance and presumption. He also saw the flicker of uncertainty that replaced it, the swift calculation and consideration, the bubbling excitement beneath it all that got his own juices flowing fast and hot…and, then, suddenly, surprisingly, the unmistakable glint of steely-eyed resolve.

Tom bit back a curse and prepared to be slapped down—verbally, at least—for daring to presume too much, too soon. Any man with good sense knew the high-spirited ones, be they equine or human, didn’t take kindly to being rushed. And no woman, high-spirited or not, reacted favorably to the assumption that she could be too easily had. Even when she could be.

“You’re absolutely right,” she said briskly, surprising him again just as he was about to pull back and regroup by asking her to dance—and pretending that’s what he’d meant all along.

“Ma’am?” he murmured vaguely, stalling for time while he tried to figure out what he’d been right about.

“No sense wasting time when we both know what we want.” She turned slightly and set the bottle of beer on the bar behind her with a decisive little click. “Let’s get to it,” she said, and slid off the bar stool into his wide-open arms.

Tom reacted automatically, shifting his weight backward, lowering his hands from the edge of the bar to catch her as she all but fell into his embrace. He bracketed her hips in his wide palms, holding her upright, meaning only to steady her until she found her balance before he let her go again. But she was a warm, fragrant armful of woman, sleek and sexy and soft.

Incredibly soft.

Everywhere.

Her hair was soft against his jaw.

Her breath was soft against his neck.

Her breasts were soft against his chest.

And he was suddenly, incredibly, excruciatingly hard.

Everywhere.

The unexpectedness of it caught him completely off guard. The intensity of it short-circuited his brain, urging him to bypass the teasing, testing first steps of the mating dance they’d been doing in favor of the pure, primal male instinct to dominate and possess a willing female. Between one breath and the next, he forgot he’d been going to ask her to dance, forgot they’d only just met, forgot he didn’t even know her name. Instinctively, without conscious thought or premeditation, he tightened his hands on the curve of her hips, pulling her solidly against his suddenly aching erection.

Roxanne gasped and her eyes widened, the pupils dilating until they all but obscured the golden brown of her irises. But she didn’t stiffen. She didn’t pull back. She didn’t move by so much as a fraction of an inch. And she didn’t look away.

Couldn’t look away.

They stood there in the noisy honky-tonk in front of the long, busy bar, chest to breast, belly to belly, groin to groin, and stared at each other as if they were the only two people in the place. The heat sizzling between them built exponentially, second by second, growing higher and hotter and more intense, until it was zigzagging back and forth like lightning on a stormy summer night. No words were spoken. None were needed.

He wanted her.

She wanted him.

It was as simple, as basic, as elemental as that.

Obeying rampant male instinct and the hot female invitation in her eyes, he bent his head and kissed her. One hard, ravening, devouring kiss, unmistakable in its carnality and erotic intent, as intimate and intemperate as if they were alone in a quiet bedroom. She kissed him back the same way, deeply, avidly, instinctively, her mouth open, her tongue tangling wildly with his for a long, hot, mindless moment out of time. And then they drew apart a fraction of an inch, both of them flushed, both of them breathing too fast, and stared at each other for another long moment. His hands were hot and hard on her hips, holding her securely against him. Hers were curled around his biceps, her shiny red nails pressing into the unyielding muscle beneath his pale blue shirt. Questions were asked and answered, decisions made as they stood there, silently staring into each other’s eyes.

“Are you sure?” he growled, low, just to make certain he was reading her right.

“Yes,” she murmured breathlessly, and then, more firmly, “Yes, I’m sure,” she said, and nodded her head for added emphasis.

Incredible as it seemed, she’d never been more sure of anything in her entire life. There wasn’t a shred of doubt in her mind. Not a smidgen of hesitation. Not a second thought to be had. The earlier niggling fragment of panic had receded into absolute nothingness, wholly replaced by reckless excitement and wild anticipation for what was to come. She’d been waiting for this moment, fantasizing about it, her whole life. She wasn’t about to chicken out now that the fantasy was within her grasp.

“Yes.” The word was an affirmation—and a vow.

“You’ll leave with me now?” he said, giving her another chance to come to her senses. “Just walk out of this bar with me right now? This minute?” His gaze was still inexorably locked with hers. His erection was unmistakable, pressed firmly against her pubic mound. His fingers bit into her hips. “Even knowing we’re going to end up naked and sweaty ten minutes after you do?”

She nodded again. “Yes,” she said, her tone unequivocal and rock-steady, despite the erratic fluttering of her heart and the rush of heat that flooded her body at his words and the feel of him against her.

“Then let’s get the hell out of— Damn!” The word was a hot expulsion of air against her lips. “I don’t have a room. I was planning on hitting the road later tonight so I didn’t book a room.”

And all the nearby hotels and motels would already be chock-full of the cowboys who weren’t hitting the road until the next morning.

“Damn,” he said again, his brows drawing together as he struggled to think through the thick cloud of lust in his brain and come up with an alternate plan.

There was always the front seat of his truck, but that didn’t seem quite gentlemanly. And, besides, the way he was feeling, he was going to need a lot more than the front seat of a pickup to maneuver in, even if it was the biggest damn model Chevy made. Maybe he could work a trade with one of his buddies, or offer a little monetary incentive to someone to give up their room or… Hell, if there were absolutely no other accommodations to be had—and he was pretty sure there weren’t—he was hot enough to forget his gentlemanly scruples in favor of the front seat or the sleeping bag stashed in the bed of his pickup or an empty stall at the—

“I do,” she said, interrupting his train of thought.

“Do what?”

“Have a room.”

Lust instantly fogged his brain again, shorting any and all remaining thought processes. He could only think of one thing. She had a room. “Where?” he growled, barely managing to croak the word out.

“Ah…” The way he was looking at her—as if he wanted to devour her where she stood—had her struggling to remember. “About five miles down the road. West of here. The Broken Spoke Motel.”

Without another word, he peeled one of her hands from the sleeve of his shirt, grasped it firmly in his and headed for the glowing red Exit sign on the far side of the dance floor. He plowed through the loud, surging crowd with the single-minded determination of a man hell-bent on getting laid before the night was very much older.

“Hey! Hey, Tom!” A short, bandy-legged cowboy with an energetic dance style stopped mid-twirl, blocking their path. “You comin’ back?”

Tom threw him a narrow-eyed look that made the other cowboy grin.

“That mean I need to find myself another ride to Santa Fe?”

“Oh, hell. I forgot.” Tom stuffed the first two fingers of his free hand into the front pocket of his jeans and extracted a couple of keys on a ring. He started to toss them to the cowboy, then hesitated and shot a glance at Roxanne. “You got transportation, Slim?”

“A rental car,” Roxanne said. “Out front.”

Tom nodded and tossed the keys to his grinning buddy. “I’ll catch up with you tomorrow in Santa Fe. Don’t put any dents in my truck,” he ordered as he swept on by the man, towing Roxanne in his wake.

She tripped along behind him, nearly floating, her heart pounding, her knees shaking, her breath sloughing in and out of her lungs, one single, triumphant, giddy thought uppermost in her mind.

I did it! Oh, my God, I really did it! I got myself a dangerous, good-looking cowboy!

And she knew exactly what she wanted to do with him.

3

TOM HAD EVERY INTENTION of keeping a tight rein on himself until they got to the Broken Spoke Motel—he sincerely believed some things rightly belonged behind closed doors, despite that kiss in the bar—but she stumbled on the loose gravel of the parking lot as he dragged her through the warm night air toward the flashy little car she’d pointed out to him. Her small soft breasts pressed against his arm, her rounded hip bumped his, and all his good intentions disappeared in a firestorm of mind-numbing heat. He swung around, braced his hips against the low-slung red sports car and hauled her into his arms. “Com’ere, Slim,” he growled, and crushed his mouth down on hers.

Roxanne gave one soft, startled yelp, then melted against his chest like hot wax, reaching up to clutch his shoulders as he pulled her tight against him. His body was like iron against hers. His hands were hard and hot on her back. And his mouth was…oh, his mouth was delicious. Indescribably delicious.

She hadn’t really had time to appreciate that first kiss in the bar. It had happened so fast and been over so soon, and she’d been so…well, overwhelmed was the only word that came to mind. But now that he was taking his time she could fully appreciate his skill. Oh, yes, she could definitely appreciate his skill.

Her dangerous, good-looking cowboy was a wonderful kisser.

A glorious kisser.

Indisputably the best kisser who’d ever puckered up.

His lips were soft and firm at the same time, both greedy and generous as they plucked and nibbled and sucked at hers. Not too wet. Not too dry. Just moist and hot and absolutely perfect, all passion and impatience and wild intemperate lust, with no thought for rules or propriety or her good-girl reputation. She was being ruthlessly, ravenously, thoroughly kissed by a man who knew exactly how it should be done.

It was one of her most cherished fantasies come to life.

With a little sigh of pure unadulterated pleasure, Roxanne wound her arms around his neck to pull herself closer, and parted her lips to suck his clever, marauding tongue deeper into her mouth, determined to give as good as she got.

No way was this man going to be able to accuse her of being a cold fish. No way was he going to have to ask if she’d come. No way was she going to lie and tell him she had when she hadn’t. And no way was she going to censor even the tiniest, most insignificant element of her response to keep from shocking him. She was going to give him her all. Every sigh. Every moan. Every shudder. She was going to match him kiss for kiss, caress for caress, demand for demand. And before it was over, she was going to have all her fantasies fulfilled.

Every hot, lascivious scenario she’d ever imagined.

Every wistful romantic daydream.

Every passing erotic thought.

“Everything,” she murmured fervidly, the words hot against his lips. “I want everything. Now.”

Tom gave a low, ragged groan, like a man mortally wounded, and slid his hands down her back, cupping her tight little buttocks in his palms. “Lord, Slim, you’re killing me here,” he growled as he lifted her into the V of his splayed thighs.

Roxanne whimpered in helpless delight and squirmed against him with the wild abandon of a buckle bunny out to get herself another notch on her belt. With no more thought than any healthy female animal in heat, she raised her knee, brushing it up along the outside of his denim-clad thigh, and rubbed herself against his leg in a paroxysm of mindless desire.

Tom slid his hand from the rounded curve of her buttock to the back of her bare thigh, lifting and turning her in one smooth movement so that she was sitting on the front fender of the Mustang. The glossy surface was cool against the backs of her thighs; his lean horseman’s hips were hot and hard between them. His fingers dug into her flesh, one hand high on her leg, the other still cupped around the curve of her butt. He pulled her forward—one harsh, quick, convulsive movement—so that the crotch of her leopard-print panties was pressed up against the straining fly of his jeans.

All of Roxanne’s fantasies suddenly paled into insignificance against the reality of what was happening. No fantasy, no matter how vivid, could have prepared her for his elemental, unrestrained sexuality—or her own recklessly hedonistic response to it. Awash in sensory overload, swamped by the strength and immediacy of her arousal, she forgot all her carefully laid plans for seduction and simply let herself react to the moment. And she had only one thought in mind at that precise moment. One goal. One overwhelming, pulsating, driving need. Shuddering, sighing, her slender arms locked tight around his neck, Roxanne pulled him down with her as she fell back onto the hood of the car beneath his encroaching weight.

They were chest to breast now, their breathing rasping and heavy, their hearts racing, just as they had been in the bar, but now he was between her thighs, his narrow hips moving in a slow, maddening grind that pressed the hard, heavy bulge beneath the fly of his jeans against the rapidly dampening crotch of her panties. His hands were flexing and kneading her buttocks through the denim of her skirt, lifting them to meet each deliberate downward thrust. His mouth was melded to hers, his tongue probing and exploring, devouring, rapacious and utterly devastating.

Roxanne strained against him, one booted ankle locked behind his thigh to hold him to her, her tongue dueling with his, her hands frantic, skimming over the long, hard muscles of his back, over the swelling mounds of his shoulders, searching for a way beneath the soft cotton fabric of his shirt to the flesh beneath. She found bare skin above his shirt collar—warm, satiny, slightly damp—and pressed her glossy red nails into it, making him moan and arch away, lifting his mouth from hers as he drove his hips forward and down.

She slid frantic fingers up over the back of his head to keep him where he was, found his hat in the way and yanked it off, tossing it blindly away so that it flew over the windshield and landed on the floorboard in the front of the car.

He moved one hand up her side, gliding swiftly over a rounded hip and the gentle dip of her waist, skimming the side of one soft breast, over her smooth, bare shoulder, to fist in the soft, tousled hair at her nape. He drew her head back, forcing her body to bow beneath his, instinctively reasserting his control over her, and dragged his open mouth down the long, elegant line of her throat to the tantalizing swell of cleavage revealed by the scooped neck of her blouse.

Roxanne’s response was unhesitating, unapologetic, and wildly uninhibited. She clutched his head in both hands and arched under him, pressing her breasts forward, urging him to take more. To take all. To take everything.

He obliged with flattering speed, his mouth open and sucking at the soft flesh of her breast above her blouse. One hand moved down to her bare thigh, then began inching upward again, sliding under the bunched-up hem of her tiny denim skirt. She felt his fingers skimming along the leg opening of her panties, and then they were edging under it, tracing the sensitive crevice at the top of her thigh, touching the soft crinkly hair that covered her mound, moving inexorably toward the throbbing, heated core of her.

She tensed. Breathless. Waiting. Wanting. Her nerves screaming with anticipation. Her body screaming for release.

“How do you like to be touched, Slim?” he murmured, his voice low and heated, just on the edge of ragged. “Slow and easy?” He skimmed her clitoris with his fingertip, gently, like a man lazily strumming a single string on a guitar.

Roxanne gasped as heat forked through her, and rolled her head against the hood of the Mustang, lifting her hips upward, pressing closer, straining.

“Or fast and furious?” He flicked the swelled nubbin of flesh, quickly, as if he were doing hot licks on a banjo string.

Roxanne bucked wildly beneath him and her hips began to piston in silent demand. She was as taut as an expertly coiled rope, the tension in her arched body a palpable thing that held her, quivering and breathless, on the edge of release, needing only the right touch to send her flying.

“Talk to me, Slim,” he growled, his head lifted now so he could watch her face as he held her there, trembling on the brink. His eyes were like blue lasers, hot, intense, and focused. “Tell me how you want to be touched.”

Roxanne moaned, incoherent with need and excitement, and reached down to grab his hand, intending to direct his fingers to where she most wanted them to be, to show him what she wanted with every fiber of her being.

“No.” He resisted the silent demand. “Tell me.”

“I…I… Oh. I don’t. I can’t. I… Oh, please. Please. Just touch me. Touch—”

“Well, hot damn, would you look at that.” The voice rang out across the parking lot, boisterous and male. “Yahoo! Ride ’em, cowboy!”

The two people sprawled on the hood of the Mustang stiffened, stilled in a frozen tableau of passion rudely interrupted. Tom’s hand was under her skirt, inside her leopard-print panties, a millimeter from where she needed it to be. Roxanne’s fingers were clamped around his wrist, the nails biting into his flesh in a futile effort to guide him to the right spot.

“Come on, Hank, honey.” It was a woman’s voice, high-pitched and giggly. “It ain’t polite to stare.”

“Well, hell, darlin’, it ain’t polite to do the wild thing in public, either, but—”

“Come on, Hank. Let’s just go inside. I want to dance.”

They could hear Hank grumbling but he went, his boot heels crunching in the gravel as he followed “darlin’” into the honky-tonk. The door to Ed Earl’s creaked open, spilling music and light out into the parking lot, then closed again, surrendering the night to the garish pink glow of the flamingos on the roof.

Roxanne bit back a strangled whimper of frustration and loosened her grip on Tom’s wrist, hating the loudmouthed cowboy and his giggling girlfriend with her whole heart. She’d been so close. So tantalizing close! All she’d needed was one more second. Just one more measly little second and she knew her good-looking, dangerous cowboy would have taken her all the way to paradise.

Tom swore ripely and withdrew his hand from Roxanne’s panties, silently thanking God or whoever was in charge of looking out for damn fools that Hank and his darlin’ hadn’t come by two minutes later. He’d been that close—that close—to unbuttoning the fly of his Wrangler and giving it to her right there on top the car. Two minutes more—hell, less than two minutes!—he’d have been bare-assed, his jeans around his knees, thrusting into her with no more thought for time and place than a stallion covering a mare.

And no cowboy yahooing in the parking lot would have stopped him until he’d gotten them where they both wanted to go.

Even now, it was a near thing. His control—such as it was—wouldn’t survive another close encounter. The next time he put his hands on her, he wouldn’t stop until both of them were naked, sweaty, and too exhausted to do more than moan in satisfaction. And, damn it, they needed a bed and some privacy for that!

“Come on, Slim.” He stepped back and took hold of both her hands, pulling her upright. “Let’s get the hell out of here before we get ourselves arrested.”

Bemused, befuddled, her body humming with unfulfilled desires, her brain fogged by unsatisfied lust, Roxanne slid obligingly, even eagerly, off the fender of the car—and then just stood there, staring up at him with a soft, besotted expression on her face. Lord, he was good-looking. And sexy. And she wanted him so much. So very much. More than she’d ever wanted anything or anyone in her entire life. She swayed toward him, her face raised, her lips parted, her eyes drifting closed.

He took a quick step back and dropped her hands. “No.”

Her eyes snapped open, widened at his abrupt, almost-biting tone.

“We lock lips again and, I swear, I’ll hoist you right back up on the hood of this car and finish it,” he warned, his voice low and soft and strained. “Every last cowboy in the bar could come tromping out to watch and I wouldn’t stop. Not until we were both too tired to move. And maybe not even then.”

Roxanne smiled beatifically, thrilled to the core by his ragged admission. “I wouldn’t want you to stop,” she said, her voice as ragged, as strained, as his. “I didn’t want you to stop before.”

Tom gulped audibly and his hands fisted at his sides.

The jolt of pure female sexual power that surged through her at that small, telling gesture was utterly intoxicating, adding another layer to her simmering sexual excitement. No man had ever threatened her with ravishment before. No man had ever had to fight to restrain himself from carrying out that threat, either. It made her feel irresistible. Invincible. Intensely, totally female. At that precise moment, good girl Roxanne Archer disappeared completely. In her place was good-time girl Roxy.

And Roxy was hot.

Roxy was itchy.

Roxy wanted a man—this man—and didn’t care who knew it.

She tilted her head, looking up at him from under provocatively lowered lashes, and gave him the same slow, seductive come-to-mama smile that had drawn him to her in the bar. But this time there was no calculation in it, no planning or plotting. She was acting on pure feminine instinct. “I guess we’d better do as you suggested, then, shouldn’t we?” she said, and licked her lips. Slowly.

Tom made a low growling noise and took a careful step back, away from her and the temptation she so blatantly offered.

Roxanne’s smile turned positively feline. Her eyes glowed. Without shifting her gaze from his, she reached down with exaggerated slowness and slid the first two fingers of her right hand into the pocket of her skirt.

“The key,” she said, and held the plastic Hertz key ring up in front of his face with the key dangling. “To the car,” she added, when he just stood there, staring at it as if he’d never seen a key before. “So we can get the hell out of here before we get arrested,” she prompted.

When he still made no move to take it, she reached out, hooked the tip of one long red fingernail on the edge of his shirt pocket, pulled it away from his chest and dropped the key inside. “You drive,” she said, and then turned and sauntered around the hood of the car to the passenger side, hips swaying seductively, glossy red nails trailing over the glossy red car. She made a show of getting into the car, affording him a leisurely, heart-stopping view of her cleavage as she bent over to pluck his Stetson off the floor mat, snuggling her butt into the soft leather of the seat, adjusting the hem of her minuscule skirt over her bare legs with a languid, caressing gesture, as if she enjoyed the feel of her own fingers on her skin.

Tom stood stock-still, watching her, unable to move, unable to respond, unable to speak, as dumb-struck as a wet-behind-the-ears, peach-fuzz cowboy who’d just been tossed on his head by a bronc and still hadn’t got his breath back yet.

She set his Stetson on her head, adjusting it so that it set, low and sexy, over her forehead, then tilted her head and looked up at him from under the brim. The invitation in her eyes was blatant, unashamed, unwavering, with nothing held back, nothing hidden. She smiled seductively, slowly, and licked her lips again.

Damn, she was…she was… Hell, he didn’t know what she was!

Except gorgeous.

And hot.

And so damned sexy it made his insides ache and his palms sweat.

One look, that’s all it had taken. One long, slow, hot-eyed look from a tall, cool glass of water, and he’d wanted to grab and take and possess. He had grabbed and taken and—very nearly, anyway—possessed. And that surprised him. Shocked him, actually. He wasn’t normally a man with a short fuse. Ask anybody who knew him and they’d tell you Tom Steele was one careful hombre. He took his time. He considered his options. He weighed all the pros and cons. Steady, that was Tom Steele. Not a man to rush off half-cocked, or to get all hot and bothered and lose his head over a pretty little piece of tail.

Except that he had.

He stood there in the parking lot of Ed Earl’s, in the pink-neon glow of those ridiculous flamingos, his heart thudding against the wall of his chest, his cock full to bursting against the fly of his jeans, and his hands… Good Lord, his hands were actually trembling.

He unclenched his fists, flexing his fingers like a gunfighter about to take that long walk down the middle of a dusty street, and took a couple of deep, deliberate breaths in a effort to bring down his heart rate. It didn’t work.

“Ah, the hell with it,” he muttered, and reached for the door handle of the car. The only thing that was going to slow his heart rate was the exhaustion that came after a fast, furious bout of hot, sweaty sex. Maybe.

She turned toward him as he slid behind the wheel, reaching out to run her hand down his arm.

He didn’t even look at her. “Keep your hands to yourself, Slim,” he ordered, tight-lipped, as he fished around in his shirt pocket for the key. “And don’t say a word.” He jammed the key into the ignition and gunned the engine to life. “Not a word until we get to the motel.”

Roxanne gave a soft gurgle of laughter, a low, throaty sound of feminine triumph and challenge, and settled back into her seat, her hands folded demurely in her lap. It was only five miles to the motel and judging by the rooster tail of dust and gravel he’d left in Ed Earl’s parking lot, they’d be there in less than five minutes. She could wait that long. Barely.

4

THE FACADE of the Broken Spoke Motel was cheap Hollywood Western, with an unpainted barn-board exterior, a split-log hitching rail running along the front, and horseshoes bracketing the room numbers on each of the doors. A red-neon wagon wheel, one spoke seeming to swing back and forth as it flashed on and off, sat perched atop a pole in front of the motel office, right above the unblinking No Vacancy sign. A bank of vending machines stood on the cracked concrete apron just outside the office door, in clear sight of whoever was manning the registration desk. At the moment it was empty, with a hand-lettered sign advising would-be guests to ring for assistance.

Tom pulled into the first open parking space in the lot, jammed on the parking brake, and was out of the car almost before the engine stopped idling. His boot heels sent up little puffs of dust as he rounded the hood, purpose in every deliberate step, burning lust in his eyes, one thing on his mind. Roxanne sat in the passenger seat in stupefied delight and watched him come to her, come after her, thrilled beyond belief to be the object of such single-minded desire. With a sense of delighted amazement, she realized she could actually feel her nipples, rigid against the satiny fabric of her leopard-print bra, could feel the wetness soaking the matching fabric between her legs, could feel the blood pounding through her veins. She had never been so aware of her body, never felt so sensitized, so aroused, as if every nerve ending was on red alert. She was tingling all over…her lips…her fingertips…her thighs…every part of her quivering with anticipation and wanton, intemperate need, making her wonder how she was going to manage to stand up and walk to the room without collapsing into a quivering heap at his feet.

She didn’t have to try.

He yanked open the door and bent down, scooping her up into his arms. “Which room?” he growled as he shoved the door closed with his foot.

It was another cherished fantasy fulfilled. Being swept off her feet. Carried off to be ravaged by a dangerous cowboy. The old Roxanne would have likely fainted from excitement; the new Roxy looped her arms around her cowboy’s neck and tickled his ear with her tongue, as if being swept off her feet were an every day occurrence.

Tom’s whole body tensed at her teasing caress, and his hands tightened on her thighs and back as a spasm of sheer sexual pleasure shot through him. If he didn’t get inside her in the next sixty seconds he was going to come in his jeans. And that hadn’t happened since he was fourteen. “Which room, Slim?”

“Seven.” She sighed the word into his ear, her breath hot and moist. “Lucky seven.” She slid her tongue down the side of his neck, and then up again, as if he were her favorite flavor of ice cream and she was intent on savoring every last delicious drop. “Second door past the office.”

Tom turned on his heel and headed toward the promise of paradise with long ground-eating strides, while the woman in his arms did her best to drive him to his knees before they got there. He stumbled slightly when she stuck her tongue in his ear, but managed to regain his balance with a quick, light-footed move that brought him to a halt directly in front of the trio of vending machines in front of the motel office. One offered the usual soft drinks, another candy bars and chips, the third had toiletries for sale…miniature tubes of toothpaste, tins of aspirin, palm-size packets of tissue, condoms. A mental picture of his battered canvas carryall, still stowed behind the front seat of his pickup, flashed through his mind.

Roxanne left off nibbling on his earlobe to raise her head. “What?” she murmured, her eyes wide and hazy with arousal, her voice softly slurred.

Tom indicated the offerings in the vending machine with a jerk of his chin. “Am I going to need those?”

Her arms still locked securely around his neck, Roxanne glanced over her shoulder to see what he was talking about. “I’ve got one inside my bra.”

His eyes blazed. “Only one?”

“And a whole box in my room,” she assured him. “There are a dozen in it. Well—” she loosened her hold on him with one hand and touched the little foil packet of protection tucked inside her push-up bra, inadvertently drawing his eyes to the creamy mounds of flesh above the neckline of her blouse “—eleven, anyway,” she managed, watching his eyes heat and burn.

“A dozen just might do it. Maybe.” He bent his head and nuzzled the scented valley between her plumped-up breasts, breathing her in with a long hungry gulp of air. “Or maybe not,” he said softly, the breath rushing out of him in a tremulous sigh.

And, just like that, Roxanne fell a little bit in love. Not the happily-ever-after, till-death-do-us-part kind of love. She wasn’t that much of a fool. But it was love, nonetheless, a light-headed, lighthearted, giddy kind of love, as insubstantial as moonbeams and neon, as temporary as the victory after a championship bronc ride. But it made what was about to happen just that much more wonderful and exciting. More thrilling. More everything. If she hadn’t already been dewy with need, that one sweet, tender gesture would have done it.

“Hurry,” she whispered, and nipped his earlobe for emphasis. “Hurry.”

Tom hurried.

“The key?” he said, letting her slide down his body as he set her on her feet in front of the door to room number seven.

“That’s in my bra, too.”

“Get it.”

She leaned against the door, her hands behind her back, her breasts thrust out, and looked up at him from beneath the brim of his hat. “Why don’t you get—”

“No.” It was the same abrupt tone he’d used in the parking lot when he’d backed off from kissing her. But this time he didn’t back off. He simply stood there, looking down at her with hot dangerous lights dancing in his blue eyes. “I’m on the thin edge of control here, Slim, and if I put my hand down your blouse now, I’m going to end up fucking you where you stand, right here against this door, in front of God and everybody. Is that what you want?”

She almost said yes. The word hovered on the tip of her tongue for a dangerous moment, enticing them both with the possibility of flagrant debauchery. And then Tom put his hands on her shoulders, jerked her away from the door, and turned her around. “Get the key, Slim, and open the damned door.”

Roxanne fumbled for the key, fumbled as she fit it into the lock, fumbled as she turned the doorknob and stepped over the threshold. She should be aghast, she knew. Ashamed of her lack of control. Appalled at her willingness to make a public spectacle of herself. Yesterday, she would have been. Maybe tomorrow, she would be again. But right now, she wasn’t. Couldn’t be. Right now, she was on fire, burning up from the inside out, trembling with desire. The only thing on her mind, the single driving thought in her head, was the overwhelming need to assuage the heat, to quench the aching desire, to find sweet release with her good-looking, dangerous cowboy.

And then the door crashed closed behind her, and his arm encircled her waist, and he spun her around, crushing his mouth to hers, and she ceased to think at all.

He propelled her backward toward the bed, his mouth fastened to hers, feasting, his hands moving over her body, frantically molding her breasts and back and the sweet, subtle curve of her bottom through her clothes. Her kisses were as greedy, as wildly intemperate as his, her hands as frantic, touching him everywhere she could reach. The backs of her knees hit the edge of the bed and she tumbled onto it, pulling him down on top of her. They bounced once, sending the cowboy hat she still wore somersaulting over the edge of the mattress to the floor. Entwined like tangled kudzu vines, they rolled across the bed and crashed into the headboard. It banged against the wall and they rolled away, mouths still hotly fused, hands still moving frantically, bodies pressed together, legs entangled, hips grinding together. Tom’s foot hit the rickety bedside table, causing the equally rickety bedside lamp to wobble on its base, sending shadows flickering precariously across the walls and ceiling, counterpoint to the intermittent flash of red neon from the motel sign pulsing through the slanted blinds on the window.

Neither one of them paid it any heed. Neither of them would have noticed if the lamp had gone crashing to the floor. The only thing that registered was the searing wildfire need that ricocheted back and forth between them, the only thing that mattered was satisfying that need.

Immediately.

Now.

Tom shoved both hands under her tiny denim skirt, pushing it up to her waist, and curled his fingers under the low-slung waistband of her leopard-print panties. And then he paused, still on the thin edge of control, and stared down into her wide, whiskey-colored eyes. She stared back at him, her gaze avid, unwavering, and unabashedly eager, without coyness or equivocation, primed and ready for whatever came next.

“This first time is going to be a fast, hard ride,” he said, his voice low and guttural. “If that’s not what you want, say so now.”

She bent her knees, planting her boot heels on the edge of the mattress, and lifted her hips. “It’s what I want.”

He yanked her panties off, tugging them past her raised hips, dragging them down her legs, wrestling them over her boots, and tossed them on the floor. His hands went to his fly, his fingers working frantically at the metal buttons to free his erection as he slid his body back up between her legs. He grasped her bare thighs, his strong callused fingers digging into her flesh as he spread them wider, meaning to drive himself into her, hard and fast the way they both wanted, to take her with elemental, unthinking fury.

But something about the way she lay there, her minuscule skirt pushed up around her waist, her bent knees splayed, her soft, hot, woman’s body open and vulnerable to his every desire, had him suddenly gentling his approach. She was so pretty and fragile there between her legs, all plump and pink and glistening, with the feeble light from the bedside lamp glinting on the smooth pale skin of her thighs, and the red neon pulsing like a heartbeat, giving her an all-over rosy glow. The soft blond hair between her legs had been waxed or shaved or whatever it was that women did, into a narrow little rectangle that barely covered her mound. It was rawly sexy, and inexplicably, elegantly refined. Just as she was.

He softened his grip and slid his palms down the inside of her thighs, slowly, caressingly, until his thumbs just touched her vulva. Her body jerked beneath him, a tiny involuntary movement that could have signaled rejection or acceptance of his intimate invasion. He raised his gaze to her face again. She stared back through the frame of her splayed knees, her lips moist and parted, her cheeks flushed, the expression in her eyes as soft, as hot, as open and vulnerable as her body.

Slowly, still holding her gaze with his, he slid his thumbs down and then up, then down again—once, twice, three times—gently skimming her most sensitive flesh. Her body undulated, like a field of ripe wheat rippling in the wind, and she uttered a breathy little sound, half moan, half sigh, that shuddered out between her lips.

“You’re wet.” His voice was low and caressing, his gaze voracious and admiring. “Hot and wet and slippery.”

“Yes.” She didn’t blush. Didn’t look away. “I am.”

“I want you wetter. I want you—” he moved his thumbs inward a fraction of an inch, pressing down, closing in, capturing her distended clitoris between them in a sensuous little squeeze play “—dripping.”

Her body tightened, straining, and the sound she made was definitely a moan. A deep, throaty, on-the-edge moan.

He eased his thumbs back a teasing fraction of an inch from her slick swollen center and watched her eyes flare wide in mindless entreaty, watched her bite her lip against protest and plea. Her desire was palpable, her anticipation a living, breathing thing between them.

He knew exactly what she wanted.

Needed.

Had to have.

In another mood, he might have made her say the words, might have teased her—and himself—by making her ask for what she wanted. Instead, he slid his hands under her hips, slid his body down off the bed until his knees were on the floor and his shoulders were wedged between her thighs.

“We’ll save the hard riding for later,” he said, and buried his face between her legs.

Roxanne nearly levitated off the bed at the first heated, silken stroke of his tongue against her throbbing clitoris. Her back arched like a bow. Her hands clutched at the worn chenille bedspread, gathering it into her clenched fists. Her booted heels pressed down into the edge of the mattress. She moaned. Loudly. And then more loudly still as he brought his fingers into play again, opening her more fully to his lasciviously talented tongue.

It felt as if every nerve ending in her body began and ended in that one tiny nubbin of sensitized flesh between her legs. She throbbed. She ached. She vibrated with need. And, then, in a blinding, incandescent blaze of sheer primal lust, she came. It was gut-wrenching. Breath-stealing. Mind-blowing.

Sublime.

“More,” she demanded, when her breath finally shuddered back into her lungs and she could breathe again. She released her death grip on the bedspread and reached down, fisting her hands in his dark, silky hair, pressing him closer, straining for another peak. “More.”

He acquiesced with satisfying gallantry and greed, with no hint of hesitation or resistance, as if continuing to pleasure her with his mouth had been his intention all along. And, maybe, it had been. She was sweet and tender, so incredibly hot and responsive that it was pure, unadulterated pleasure to give her what she wanted. Because it was what he wanted, too.

Making her scream with ecstasy had been high on his list of priorities since the first moment he’d seen her in the bar. He’d thought to do it by pounding her into the mattress. He still meant to do it that way. Later. Right now, he was determined to tease those screams of ecstasy out of her with his tongue. She’d uttered that one, long, shuddering, gasping breath when she came the first time; he wanted a full-throated scream the next time she went over. He slipped his hands back under her bare squirming bottom to hold her more securely, and set about getting what he wanted with the same single-minded focus he applied to everything.

In minutes, he had her writhing between his hands. Her hips undulated against his mouth in mindless entreaty. Her head thrashed against the bed. Her breath came in throaty little whimpers and panting moans, interspersed with disjointed pleas and fragmented demands.

“Oh, God… I… Yes. Oh, yes. There. Oh, please. Yes. Right there. Yes. Yes. Yes!”

The last yes came out as a strangled shout, a muffled scream that barely echoed off the thin walls of the motel room.

Satisfied with that, Tom lifted his head and pressed a soft kiss to the soft crinkly hair that covered her mound.

“Inside,” she demanded raggedly, nearly delirious with need. She yanked on his hair, trying to pull him up her body. “I need you inside me. Now. Right now.”

Tom didn’t have to be asked twice. He levered himself on top of her with a supple shift of his body, sliding up between her splayed thighs. His engorged penis nudged her slick folds, seeking the entrance to her soft, hot woman’s body. It took every ounce of his considerable willpower to keep from plunging into her. Instead, calling upon his last reserves of control, he pushed himself up onto his knees and reached for the top button on her blouse.

“The condom.” The words were gritted out between clenched teeth. His hands were trembling. “Where’s the damned condom?”

Roxanne pushed his groping hands away to retrieve it herself. “I’ll do it,” she said, curling the foil-wrapped packet into her fist when he would have taken it from her. “I want to do it.”

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