Herd That (The Valentine Boys 1)

And when his brother came up, Ace was proven one hundred percent correct.

After accomplishing his eight-second ride, he hopped off the bull like it was a child’s ride and walked to the gates. When the bull came after him with vengeance in his eyes, Banks calmly climbed up the fence and out of the arena without a second glance.

“He acted like it wasn’t a big deal,” I murmured softly, leaning back farther into Ace’s chest and running my hand up and down his hard pecs.

“My brother has a death wish,” Ace muttered to me. “He has this innate ability to always find the worst situations and put himself smack dab in the middle of it.”

The next bull rider was up, and we all watched as the scores for Banks’ ride were displayed on the screen above our heads.

“Is that a good number?” I asked quietly, my jaw stretched as I stared at the number.

“Ninety-one is good,” Ace replied. “Really good for how long he’s been off a bull. The goal for an experienced rider is to get above seventy-five. The first rider scored sixty-four, remember?”

I nodded my head and started to drop my head back down and turn, but suddenly Ace’s lips were on the pulse just under my jaw, and he was pressing a kiss to me.

My heart skipped a beat, and then my pulse began to race.

Before I could bring my hand up to cup the back of his head, he was gone, sitting back with a smile on his face.

“Y’all are disgusting,” Darby said from my side.

“No, you’re disgusting,” I shot right back.

Darby’s lips twitched, and Georgia leaned over me to stare at her baby brother. “You know what’s disgusting? When I walk in on my baby brother getting a blow job.”

Darby’s cheeks flushed. “Nobody was supposed to be home!”

Georgia sat back in her seat with a huff.

Ace turned to his brother. “Who was the chick?”

Darby sighed. “A girl from my Calc-II class.”

Ace’s lips twitched. “A girl that you want to date? Or a girl that you want to…”

I slapped my hand over his mouth before he could finish the sentence.

Ace licked my hand, and Darby rolled his eyes.

“She’s a friend.” He paused. “That I like.”

“A friend doesn’t give a friend a blow job.” I felt it prudent to point out.

Darby shrugged. “Well, we may be more. We may not be. I haven’t exactly figured that out yet.”

“Well, you figured out how to get a blow job out of her,” Georgia muttered darkly.

I snickered against Ace’s throat, then tensed when I heard Scooby’s name being called over the loudspeakers, along with Hector’s name.

I bit my lip and latched onto Ace’s hard bicep, my fingernails digging in slightly.

“This is a family event,” I heard whispered loudly.

I didn’t have to turn around to know who it was.

Marie.

Son of a gun, would I never catch a break?

Ace felt me tense in his arms and squeezed me lightly before tipping his head down and whispering low in my ear.

“Ignore her and I’ll eat your pussy out in the front seat of my truck in ten minutes,” he growled.

His sexy drawl would’ve been enough to send shivers down my spine straight to my vagina. But the words that had come out of his mouth? Let’s just say that I was wet and would be the rest of the night.

I didn’t answer him, though, just calmly kept my ass in my human chair and waited with bated breath.

“I don’t know,” I heard someone else mutter just as snottily. “I’m not sure she’s as much a whore as she is a bitch. At least lately.”

Ace started nibbling on my earlobe, and I momentarily forgot what I was thinking.

“You would think that she wouldn’t come back after all that she did,” Marie continued. “I mean, stealing the assistant chief’s cruiser. Getting his son in trouble by blaming it all on him? Vandalizing the school. Fucking her way through the…”

Ace had finally had enough.

“If you don’t get your ass away from me right now, I’m going to tell your husband that you slept with his best friend,” Ace all but snarled.

My mouth fell open first at the abrupt jerk of Ace turning with me in his arms, then even farther at the words that had come out of his mouth.

Marie had slept with someone that wasn’t Jace?

Holy fucking shit.

Marie looked startled for a few long seconds, then got up and left before the crowd around us had even digested the words.

Marie’s friend was the next to go, and all of a sudden we had two empty seats at our back and a whole lot of people staring at them as if they couldn’t believe what had just happened.

I couldn’t blame them.

I didn’t either.

“And for anyone else wanting to know, I love Codie Spears, and she’s moving in with me,” Ace declared loudly. “And I don’t fucking care if y’all think she’s a troublemaker. She’s my troublemaker.”