Stripped Down

She shrugs. “Pain’s relative.”

What the fuck has she seen or done that makes her so blasé about tracing a needle over her own thigh? Axel sees something too, because he nods slowly. I scoop Rose off the counter and drop her on her feet. She elbows me hard in the stomach, and I’m pretty sure she was aiming for Mr. Happy.

“Grab your shoes.” I smack her on the butt too, and I can practically hear her brain explode. She’s torn between yelling at me and plotting a sneakier, more painful demise for me. This is where I have the advantage because I grew up with two brothers and an endless supply of cousins. This, followed by two tours of duty with the US Navy, has made me an expert on aggravation and practical jokes.

“Rose is riding out with me,” I tell Axel. “We’re gonna check on the water trough on the south side.”

Axel nods like this is perfectly normal and crams the remains of his first sandwich into his mouth. Usually, it’s his job to check the troughs, so he scores out of this one as I herd Rose toward the door. When we reach the bottom of the stairs, I lean down so I can whisper in her ear. My dirty girl likes that.

“If I have to come get you, I’m finishing what we started in the kitchen wherever I find you.”

She turns red as a peony. “That was all you in there,” she hisses.

As if her pussy wasn’t wet.

I glide my hand down her arm and over the pulse banging in her wrist. She’s excited and we both know it.

“Tell me no and I’ll go away,” I tell her.

She doesn’t.

ANGEL

I need to establish a few ground rules before we get to our destination. At least she’s a captive audience in my truck. It’s summer, there’s a drought, and we’re driving through acres of brown plain rimmed by mountains. It’s not like the close up landscape’s gonna hold her attention.

“When we get to the trough, you follow the rules.”

Rose has got me hotter than hell, but she’s more rush in than hold back. That’s great for sex—as long as it’s with me—but not so safe around cattle. Those beasts are gonna outweigh her. When she looks at me, all sweet innocence, I add, “I mean it, Rose. No games.”

I wait for her nod, because I need the buy in.

“Sure.” Her hand darts out and flicks the radio on. She’s not one for silence, either. She used to blast pop music out of her room the summer she lived with us, and I’d hear her dancing around, belting out the lyrics. Her voice is good, and I used to think she might make a career out of singing. Used to think lots of things.

I cover her fingers with mine. “Give me the words.”

“I can follow the rules.” When she spots the grin tugging my mouth, she slaps my fingers away with her free hand. “I can.”

I let her, nursing the small sting as I guide the truck down yet another dirt road. “You never met a rule you didn’t want to break, Rose.”

“I was a kid,” she protests.

“You were sixteen and old enough to know better. You took the truck out into the foothills and camped out in the truck bed for two days. You had a bonfire going when I showed up, although the only food you had were marshmallows and beer. Three days after that, you toilet papered my barn. Four days later, you did the same to my orchard. If I posted a no trespassing sign, you’d be sitting just beyond it in a lawn chair.”

“I did those things once.” She gives me a devilish grin.

Okay. So she’s the best kind of trouble.

“You cemented my saddle to the tack room wall and I woke up one morning and you were all sleeping in the cattle chute.”

“Those were pranks,” she protests. As if it makes everything better that she did it for fun and laughs. The guys in my SEAL team were also pro-prank. Shit got so frequent there that I’d had to think stuff up proactively. Of course, everything’s fun right up until someone dies or fires a mortar round into your fucking tent.

Case in point? “When I discovered you in said cattle chute, I’d just pulled up with a load of bulls.”

The discovery took at least ten years off my life. After you’ve seen a grown man go down beneath a thousand pounds of animal, you know exactly what would happen to a small girl like Rose. “What do you think would have happened if I’d unloaded directly into the chute?”

“You didn’t. We all knew you wouldn’t run cattle in that chute without double-checking first. You were always careful.”

Rose pulls her hair up into another one of those gravity-defying twists she likes so much. Her new do exposes the back of her neck and the top of her tattoo. There’s an orange flower right where her hair meets her neck. It’s half-open, half-closed, a bright pop of color.