The Cowboy's Texas Sky (The Dixons of Legacy Ranch 2)

Chapter Twenty-Four

“You getting used to the feeling in your knee?” Skylar called back as the trail they rode cut a line atop the edge of Cañón del Diablo.

Travis reined Handsome closer, peering over the canyon walls onto the tumbling sandstone chunks below, a dry arroyo cutting within and sprouting with scrubby trees and shrubs. Skylar bobbed with Patches’s methodical rhythm. Her hair floated on the breeze, her thin plaid shirt billowed upon her shoulders, hinting at a waist that dipped inward over her hips.

“How does your balance feel between your legs when you ride him?” she added.

His mouth quirked up at the corner. No smile followed the remark from her, though. So her mind’s obviously not in the gutter like mine is.

Though after the things they’d just laid bare, and both Brandon’s predicament and the new land location up in the air with Lopez, that lust was…different. That lust felt an awful lot like love. He’d always loved Sky, but he appreciated her heart in a way he never had before. She’d always made sacrifices. Sacrificed her safety growing up with Rhett, sacrificed her time for the animal shelter, sacrificed their immediate plans as fresh eighteen-year-olds for his enlistment, and would sacrifice career moves now for Brandon. It was hard to share her company and not feel humbled.

“Careful, babe. They got jokes about saving horses and riding cowboys.”

She snorted, glancing over her shoulder now. “Ah, but do they have jokes about riding surgeons?”

He grinned. Now her mind was in the gutter. He clicked his tongue and bumped Handsome’s sides to urge the docile horse’s walk into a trot, drawing up beside her, maneuvering the reins with lazy precision. He’d waited far too long to confront what he’d thought would be a mountain but was really just a mental hurdle. Relenting felt like a weight had finally lifted from his shoulders. Relenting allowed him to let go of his past expectations, to be excited about the prospect with Lopez, when he’d been reluctant up until now.

“Naw, but gimme a minute and I bet I can make one up.”

She tipped her head back and laughed. He gazed at the curve of her neck. Such a melodic, welcome sound, it played over his eardrums and teased his pulse. Ever since Anita’s phone call, she’d been tempered, and the easy laughter pleased him now. She side-eyed him, giving his physique a once-over again. Those familiar sparks, knowing she desired him, sparked right now.

She led Patches down an old sheep trail, and he fell behind her again to walk single file upon the narrow path. Splotches of rust-colored ore dotted the stratigraphy of the canyon walls rising around them, and plants determined to take root among the crevices, reached out like spindly fingers. A soft trickling echoed off the rock walls around him, making the location of the water hard to pinpoint. It grew louder, until Skylar reined her horse abruptly through a narrow gorge. Sparkling in the mid-afternoon sunlight, the most beautiful tinaja of water glistened, a trickling fall cascading down from a protruding ledge above from what had to be a natural spring into the wide eroded basin, patterns of lichen creeping up the sandstone walls, hidden from above ground.

“Whoa.” Sky looked back at him as she guided Patches alongside a tumbled boulder, that blond hair resting atop the rise of her rear and clinging to her shirt, a pleased smile curving her lips. “What do you think?” A hopeful sparkle brightened her eyes.

He held her gaze, taking in the soft contours of her face and shards of sun rays blinking upon her hair. “It’s beautiful.”

She hesitated, as if wondering whether he meant the water or her. I meant what you think I meant, sweetheart.

She used the boulder to dismount, unclipping her water bottle from a pouch, then settling the reins around the saddle horn. She let Patches plod to the oasis for a drink as Sky, all legs and supple waist, gestured for him to do the same—

She tipped the bottle up and took a long draw from it, a trickle rolling from the corner of her lips, down her neck, into the hem of her tank top resting on the rise of her breasts.

Hell, but it was so sensual, he forgot what he was doing. And yet like everything Skylar, she didn’t seem to know how it affected him.

He dismounted upon the rock, too, sitting and sliding to the edge, bracing his legs wide to make sure his boots were on solid ground beneath him. She stepped up between his spread legs to hand him the water bottle. Shit, she was playing with fire, brushing between his thighs, with his thoughts a jumble and his unplacated hormones from a week of wanting her increasing in heat, as she drew Handsome’s reins over the saddle horn for him and let him join Patches at the water.

He took the offered bottle, and, eying her, he tipped it back to take a few swallows. He could feel her eyes burning a path along his jaw, his throat as the water rolled in measured gulps and bobbed his Adam’s apple. Was she remembering how she used to tease his neck when he was driving? Place kisses along his pulse while a fingertip teased up and down his thigh as wind sailed through his windows? His dick twitched. Demanded that he rush.

Not this time, dammit. He wrangled the impulses down like he was roping an angry bull. Each time they’d been wrapped up around each other—when she’d locked her boots around his ass and tore at his shirt in the clinic while he’d ground himself between her thighs and messed up her desk, and again when she’d ridden his erection through their clothes like a bronco buster in the back of his truck while he’d been moments away from grabbing a condom and slipping within her to extract her pleasured moans—she’d flinched back, and he needed to know why. Despite her unwitting sensuality, he wouldn’t rush this time, wouldn’t act desperate to feel her and chase that euphoria he knew existed between her thighs when their bodies were naked and flushed with excitement. Now wasn’t the time.

But just thinking about it sent those pulses throbbing below the belt to the mass behind his fly.

“This is a helluva pretty place. Reminds me of Alpine.”

Maybe he could get her talking about it. Perhaps talk about that unopened, mysterious letter. Because she was good at not talking about a lot of things.

“This canyon is my most favorite place on this entire spread. I suppose because it reminds me of home.”

“Do you ever get back home? To Alpine?” Yeah, he was poking her, but she’d prodded the shit out of him up till now.

He handed the bottle back to her, wiping his mouth at his shoulder, not feeling the least bit compelled to move from this perch with his legs braced wide and Skylar’s rolling hips between them, though he did clamp them closed a bit tighter to wedge her in when she tried to step away to hook the water back onto a saddle.

Her eyes flitted to his at the gesture, as if trying to determine what he was getting at, anchoring her in place, and when he didn’t say anything, merely watched her, gaze following along the streaks of saturation along her tank top neck, she chewed her lip in that way that told him she was thinking hard about something.

“Aside from the possibility of your and Lopez’s clinic now? There hasn’t been a reason to go home.”

Slowly, she lowered the bottle to the ground, her breast brushing against his thigh. Just knowing she was eye-level with his waist only stoked the burgeoning lust. He folded his arms and watched the contours of her mouth, her neck, so close to his dick. Do not touch her and remember what it feels like to roll into her mouth… He cleared his throat. Swallowed the groan brewing in his throat. They’d been afforded little time to be alone, but now that he had her to himself, his libido was bucking all his good sense clean out of his mind. He shifted, hoping the maneuvering would readjust his growing erection which twisted in his boxers so he wouldn’t have to be creepy and fix the thickening problem with his hands.