Chasin' Eight (Rough Riders 11)

Hiding her superior look because she had planned for using only cash, Ava unsnapped the billfold portion of her wallet. She counted out seventeen hundred dollars and dug in her purse, finding another two hundred dollars worth of crumpled and folded bills.

Chase took out his wallet and counted out twenty-one hundred dollars, then reached in the glove compartment, coming up with five hundred more.

Holy crap. He had more money than she did. Not fair. “Can we stop at a cash machine so we’re even?”

He shook his head. “We’ll never be even. Remember I hafta pay contestant entry fees outta that.”

“But if you win…you’ll have more money.”

“I’m not keeping anything I earn. Don’t know what I’ll do with it yet.” He shoved his money back in his wallet. “So I gotta know, Hollywood. You up to the challenge of living like those of us who don’t have an easily replenished pile of cash?”

“If I say no?”

“Then I’ll know you ain’t serious about wanting to experience something real, ’cause living on a budget is as real as it gets for most people.”

Ava understood why Chase was pushing her. Didn’t mean she appreciated it, but if she said no, everything would end before it began. What was she out? Wasn’t like the temptation for gourmet dining would be an issue. Or boutique shopping for designer originals. Or forking over big bucks for a mani-pedi at an exclusive spa. Or buying pricey cocktails at trendy nightclubs.

“Ava?”

She met his challenging gaze head-on. “I’m in.”

“Now the real adventure begins.” After gifting her with his dazzling smile, he returned to the highway.

She dozed off at some point. After she woke, to the sound of crunching sunflower seeds, she asked, “You’ll be okay to ride with as sore as you’ve been the last couple days?”

“Ain’t as bad as it was. I’ll be stiff no matter what I do, so I might as well try making the buzzer.”

“What’s the entry fee?”

“Sixty-five bucks.”

“Do you want me to drop you off so I can find a hotel?”

“Yep. But it needs to be under a hundred bucks a night.”

Ava started humming the music from Mission Impossible and Chase laughed.

“Since you’re dropping me off, you’ll have to park in public parking since I won’t have a contestant tag yet.”

“They have a separate area for contestants?”

He nodded. “Timed-event competitors take their horses and horse trailers take up a shitload of parking space. The competitors who travel with their family have campers.”

“Sounds like the contestant area is one traveling party town.”

“You’d be right. When I first started competing and I didn’t have a nickel to my name, I’d drag an old tent along. Some of the stuff I saw people doin’…gave me quite the sexual education at the tender age of sixteen.”

“Give me the juicy details so I’m not shocked by what I see.”

Chase smirked. “Shocked. Right. I bet you’ve seen wild stuff in wacky Cal-y-forn-i-ay, so the countrified version will probably seem tame.”

“Still not an answer, Sundance.”

He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “I went to the first overnight event by myself ’cause my buddy Jet couldn’t get time off from work. I set up my pup tent. Had a couple of pilfered beers in my cooler, feeling like I was hot shit, right? So I’m sitting in my lawn chair, watching the goin’s on around the campground after the event ended. I hear a noise and creep around my tent to see two guys and a girl at the picnic shelter. They’re having a good time. One guy and a girl are clearly a couple ’cause they can’t keep their hands off each other. I start to back away when the other guy grabs the girl and kisses her. I’m thinking his buddy is gonna punch his lights out for touchin’ his girl, but he yanks the girl’s top down.

“The chick starts rubbing herself all over both of them. The guy behind her lifts up her skirt and shoves his hand between her thighs. I see his arm moving and I wondered what he was doing to make her squirm like that. She starts moaning real loud and the guy behind her turns her head to the side and kisses her to keep her quiet.”

Chase’s retelling of the story was making Ava squirmy.

“I figure they’re all done. Except this chick dropped to her knees. At sixteen, I knew what that meant even when I hadn’t found a girl willing to…ah, perform that particular act on me yet. I thought she’d blow one guy at a time while the other one watched. But no, she worked them both at the same time. Switching back and forth. And I was shocked that they were moving, f**king her mouth, not standing there letting her do the work. Then the guys take a half a step back and jack off on her tits. I’d never seen anything like it live and in person.”

Ava rested her shoulders against the door, surprised by his honesty. “Did it turn you on, Chase?”

“Mad me hard as a f**kin’ brick.”

“What did you do?”

His cheeks bloomed a charming shade of pink and he smiled guiltily. “I jacked off right there. ’Course, afterward I sorta felt like a pervert. But it didn’t stop me from checking out the picnic shelter the next night to see if they’d come back.”

She laughed. “So how did seeing that affect you, other than making you horny?”

“I wanted that type of experience for myself.”

“I assume you got to experience that, or something like it?”

“Yep. Eventually.”

That’s when he clammed up. Ava waited a couple of minutes before she said, “Come on, Chase. We’re friends. Friends share stuff like this all the time.”

“Not me.”

“Not even with your brothers?”

“Nope. So can we drop it?”

“No way.” Ava put her hands in the middle of the bench seat. “To show you this friends sharing thing isn’t one-sided, you tell me the rest of the story and I’ll tell you a story about me.”

“Christ.” He lifted his ball cap off his head and yanked it back down. “Is this the way the trip is gonna be? You nagging me?”

“Nagging? Really?”

“Bad word choice. What I meant is, are you gonna keep pestering me to blab personal shit that no one else on the planet knows about me?”

“Yes, Chase, it’s really too f**king bad that I want to get to know you on more than a superficial level, because God knows I don’t have enough of those fake friendships and relationships in my life.”