Long Hard Ride (Rough Riders 1)

He grinned and gave Cash a friendly whack on the back. “I owe you one, buddy.”

“Don’t think I won’t collect one of these days.”

Colby drained his beer and stared at Channing until she glanced up at him. Their gazes locked. Heated.

He mouthed the word “now” and her face flushed prettily.

She sucked down the rest of her drink as he ambled toward her, a man on a mission, not bothering to hide his intentions from her or anyone else in the bar.

By the time he’d reached the table, his dick was hard as concrete.

Channing scrambled to her feet and stammered as she said good night. Colby didn’t hear the lewd suggestions from his friends. He didn’t see the knowing looks, the winks and nudges. Everything swam out of focus but her. Channing.

He sensed her nervousness, yet surprisingly, she didn’t jabber mindlessly as they walked back to the motel side by side. Not touching.

Her womanly fragrance enveloped him like a drug so invigorating he didn’t trust himself to even hold her hand.

Colby unlocked the motel room door and shut it behind them, sliding the deadbolt and the chain into place. When he wheeled around to look at her and saw that her yearning matched his, he had to take a moment to regain his control, lest he tackle her to the bed and rut on her like a stag in season.

He flipped on the lamp on the table by the windows. The low wattage and the burgundy lampshade sent a soft pink glow across the room. It wasn’t candlelight, but it was better than the screaming white fluorescent tubes shining down like a spotlight from the ceiling.

Finally, he found his voice, though it didn’t sound like his voice at all, but a low and husky rumble. “Darlin’, take off them clothes before I tear

‘em off.”

“Colby—”

“Now.”

“Are you—”

“That was your second warnin’. There won’t be a third.”

Keeping her hot gaze focused on his eyes, she shimmied her orange tank top over her head and flung it in his face.

He brought the soft cotton to his nose and inhaled until her perfume filled his lungs to bursting. Then he tossed it over his shoulder. “Keep goin’.”

The sassy, little “fuck me” heels with yellow flowers on the pointed toes were kicked off, and kicked over, right on top of his shitkickers planted in the shag carpeting.

And still Colby didn’t move.

Then the skintight, rainbow-striped capris were peeled down her slim thighs and pooled at her feet. One loud click of the front clasp and her sheer bra was gone. And as the sexy, defiant—yet strangely shy—woman stood before him in just a tiny wisp of lace panties, he lost it.

Colby scooped her up and tumbled her on the closest bed.

Her startled girlish shriek vanished in his hungry mouth as he clamped his lips to hers.

Channing was as ravenous as he was. She tugged and pulled at his clothing—vest, Western shirt, Wranglers, boxers, sock and boots—until the pieces ringed the floor around the bed and he was bare-ass naked.

As he kissed her, he realized tonight she tasted different, darker, a heady sexual cocktail of tequila and a smoky hint of fear.

With one shaking hand he stripped the polyester comforter from the bed and spread her out across the plain white cotton sheets. She writhed and twisted beneath him as he glided his legs over hers, knowing the contrast of the coarse hair on his thighs rubbing against the satiny smooth flesh of hers made her crazy with want. Made her mad with lust.

Colby pinned her arms above her head. Instead of letting fast tongues and deep wet kisses escalate their mutual passion to a frenzied rush, he slowed down and nuzzled every naked, delicious, utterly bare section of skin she’d presented to him. And some areas she hadn’t offered up he decided he’d take on his own.

His lips brushed the crown of her head. The desire-warmed angle of her cheekbone. Her elfin chin and her damp neck. The tasty sweep of her slender shoulders. The sinew and softness of her arms. The tempting pillow of her br**sts. Her dainty ribcage that he could nearly span with his wide hands. The cute belly button, peeking out from her flat abdomen, above her line of dark pubic hair.

When he purposely ignored her pu**y, already wet and fragrant and eager, she made a frustrated noise in the back of her throat.

Without missing a beat, he dragged his parted lips along the tender inside of each thigh and zigzagged a moist trail over the tops of her legs, down to her small, perfect feet. He relentlessly tongued her anklebone and she nearly shot off the bed.

“Colby!”

He growled and flipped her on her belly, keeping his palm in the small of her back as a signal for her not to move. Then he repeated his mouth-watering exploration of her oh-so-feminine dips and valleys, heedless of the quaking in her limbs and the way she tilted her ass toward him like a mare waiting to be mounted.

Since Channing couldn’t see his face, he didn’t hide his grin as he tasted the dimples above her butt before he licked a slow path up her spine. He nibbled on her shoulder blades, then he let his breath drift across the nape of her neck. Not kissing her, not teasing those downy soft hairs hiding beneath her tousled mane, not even touching her. He stayed still, just letting her sense his primitive need to take her, to make her his, by showing her the changes her nearness had wrought upon his breathing.

In that heightened moment, he swore he felt her heart beat faster in the air pulsing between them. His blood pounded in perfect cadence to that sensuous tempo.

No words were needed.

Colby tapped the inside of her thighs and she stretched them wider.

While bestowing open-mouthed, nuzzling kisses on the back of her head and inhaling the flowery aroma of her shampoo, he speared the entrance to her pu**y with two fingers. He rocked those fingers in and out of her wetness, rotating his hand to brush the callused pad of his thumb over her bottom hole. Lightly. A barely-there sweep across that extremely sensitive knot of nerves.

Channing wiggled and panted, bumping her hips, trying to wrest control from him, frantic for deeper contact.

A quick slap on her heart-shaped ass and she gasped.

He reached for the lube on the nightstand and tugged her closer to him so she was perched up high on her knees; her arms were in a “V” above her head. Her hands were fisted into the sheets. Tilting the lower half of her body to his liking, he removed his fingers from her pu**y and parted her ass cheeks. Goddamn, she was gorgeous here, too. He ran his wet tongue in an extended line from her clit over her slippery slit, to circle that secret portal with the very tip of his tongue.