Cowboy Jackpot: Valentine's Day (6 page)

His breath panted from his chest, his heart beat rapidly,
and his forehead shone with sweat.

She kissed the spot over his heart. She could lie here
forever.

"Aw jeez, sweetheart, I'm sorry."

She lifted her head and looked into his dark eyes.
"Sorry?"

"I didn't mean to be so rough."

Digging her nails into his chest, she made her smile
sensual. "Cowboy, it was perfect. I like it when you're unleashed."

"You do, huh?" He grinned. "Kira, sweetheart,
when we have sex, there'll be very few times when I'm on the leash."

"Good." She imagined him taking her from behind,
or in the shower, or against a wall, or making her ride him hard and fast.
"You're a fantasy come true."

With a groan, he pulled her in for a kiss. He possessed her,
his tongue twining with hers, tasting her then sucking her tongue into his
mouth where he captured it with his lips. He slowed the kiss when his cock
hardened against her belly. "We've gotta get ready, don't we."

She checked the clock radio. "Half an hour. Figure
fifteen minutes for a shower and makeup."

He traced her cheek with one finger. "You don't wear
any makeup."

She batted her mascara-enhanced lashes. "Nature didn't
give me these thick, black lashes, you know."

"Mm. Okay. So, that leaves us with fifteen
minutes." He poked his hard shaft into her hip. "What should we
do?"

Although she wanted desperately to repeat everything they
just did, there was something hanging over them that she wanted to clear away.
She made a face. "Can we talk?"

He dropped his head and threw his arms out to the side.
"Words designed to soften any erection."

She laughed and smacked his chest. "Better to do it now
than when we get back from the party tomorrow morning."

"True." He eased out from under her. "Hang on
a second." He headed to the bathroom.

Kira stretched, feeling sore muscles and tingly flesh, but
loving every twinge and ache because it came from Dallas making unleashed love
to her.

She piled pillows up at the headboard and pulled back the
comforter, climbing under the sheet. This conversation would be less awkward
without nudity.

Dallas came out of the bathroom and pulled on his underwear.
"Water?"

She nodded, he headed into the next room and came back with
two ice cold bottles. Sitting back on the pillows next to her, he sighed.
"Want me to start?"

"Yes, please." She touched his arm. "But tell
me only what you feel comfortable sharing."

"All right." He picked at the label of his water
bottle. "It was last summer, August, I think. I met Layna at a rodeo in
northern California. We spent the night." He looked at her then glanced
away. “I stayed the week. We hit it off. She came back with me to Reno."

He'd fallen hard and fast. It didn't seem like the Dallas
she knew.

"After a few months, she hadn't found a job, and wanted
access to my bank accounts, saying she wanted to take care of things around the
apartment when I was on the road." He took a long pull of water.
"When I said no, we argued."

Kira's nerves jangled. She could see where this was headed.

"Sometimes…" He looked at her, his eyes full of
sorrow. "I'd come home and she'd have bruises."

She reached out but drew her hand back. She wanted so badly
to comfort him, but he needed to get this out.

"She explained that she was a klutz, and that she
wanted to join the gym, but I wouldn't give her access to my accounts, so she
couldn't." He smacked the bottle on his bare thigh. "I offered to set
up automatic payments, and I gave her cash, lots of cash, enough to buy food
and clothes and whatever else she needed. But she was angry that I didn't trust
her with my account information."

He went silent for so long, she thought he might not be able
to say any more.

Dallas hauled in a breath. "Around Thanksgiving, I knew
it was over. I asked her to move out. Offered to pay for her gas back to
California and a couple month's rent and expenses."

He stood and walked to the window. "She started
shaking, begged me to reconsider. When I held her and told her we were through,
she picked up her keys and looked at me. Her eyes were dead, lifeless. She
said, 'You give me no choice, Dallas,' and she walked out."

"No choice?"

His head turned and he faced her. "I didn't know what
it meant until the trial."

****

Every muscle, every bone in Dallas's body hurt as he told
Kira the story of his last girlfriend. The last woman he'd made love to, the
last woman he'd trusted—who made him the hollow shell he was today.

Kira sat up in bed and crossed her legs under the sheet,
keeping it tucked firmly around her. "Until the trial? But that wasn't
until last month."

He crossed his arms over his bare chest. "How did you
know about that?" He barely held back his anger.

Her eyes opened wide.

"Your investigator, right?"

"Dallas, honestly, I didn't ask him to keep track of
you." She reached out a hand. "Please. Come and sit."

He let go of the distrust that gut punched him at the
smallest sign of a lie. Trudging over to her, he sat on the edge of the bed.

She dropped her hand. "He called me." She shook
her head. "His contact in Reno let him know the results of the trial, and
he thought I'd want to know." Clasping her hands in her lap, she started
to speak a few times, before she said, "I'm sorry."

"It's okay. I'm guessing you wouldn't have come up to
this suite with me if he hadn't told you I was innocent."

"Well, Boone had mentioned…" She pressed her lips
together as if she'd let out a secret.

"Boone told you?"

She nodded. "I'd go with Gigi sometimes to rodeos. And
he came to New York a couple times." She scooted closer to him. "He
didn't tell me anything except you were found not guilty, and that he knew you
too well to ever believe you could harm a woman."

Dallas laid his hand on top of hers on her knee. "I'm
not pissed, so you can stop looking at me like I'm a bomb about to go
off."

Her eyes held a wounded look. "You have a history of
that with me, you know."

He mentally kicked himself. "Yep, and I've been
regretting it since Christmas."

"All forgiven." She waved a hand through the air
as if by magic it could be forgotten as well.

"Thanks, Kira." He looked at her closely. She was
a woman he could easily become attached to. "You're good for me."

Her cheeks colored attractively, but she didn't speak.

"Anyway, a couple days after Thanksgiving, I'd just
gotten home from a rodeo, and Layna showed up. Just walked in the apartment.
Except…she was battered. Her eyes were blackened, lip split, nose bleeding. Her
arms were black and blue." His heart beat faster remembering his fear. "I
asked her what happened, but she wouldn't talk for a few minutes. Then she gave
me the threat."

Kira's fingers pressed to her mouth. Her eyes stared, wide
and frightened.

"She said I could either give her the twenty eight
thousand dollars I had in my bank account, or she'd tell the police I'd beaten
her."

"Oh shit. Oh God, Dallas. You must have been just
sick."

"Sick? Yeah. I'd let her into my life. I'd trusted her.
I…loved her. And the whole time, it was the money." He had to hold Kira.
Dallas sat back against the headboard, lifted her in between his legs, tucking
her head under his chin.

She snuggled in with a quick kiss to his collarbone.

His heart went from aching from the fear caused by reliving
that day, to the sweet pleasure of holding this amazing woman close.

"I couldn't let her get away with it, Kira. It wasn't
the money, it was the idea that she and whoever was making her do this, whoever
had beaten her, couldn't be allowed to do this to someone else."

"You did the right thing."

"Did I?" A humorless laugh echoed in the room.
"She'd already called the police from her cell phone just outside the
apartment door. They arrived in minutes and cuffed me. Hauled me out of there.
My neighbors saw it. Saw her standing there beaten and bleeding…" He held
his breath to regain composure.

Kira sniffled and he felt moisture run down his chest.

The thought of her crying over him…fuck, he was so screwed.
How was he supposed to let her go after the wedding next week? How had he let
himself grow so close to her?

"They took her to the hospital, and me to jail. They
didn't find her blood or DNA on my hands, but I had cuts and bruising from the
rodeo. Based on this and her complaint, I was booked. It was nearly morning
before Boone and his dad bailed me out."

"I'm so sorry. It must have been horrible."

"It wasn't so bad. It surprised me how I never felt
fear. I knew I'd be exonerated."

She looked up at him. "You're a strong man, Dallas. I'm
proud that you did what was right."

He brushed a tear off her cheek. "Plus, I learned a
whole passel of swell new legal terms."

She laughed softly and tucked back into him.
"Cowboy." It was all she said, but the one word carried a whole
chapter of meaning.

"My neighbors wanted the building owner to evict me,
but I fought that, too. The town and county newspapers carried the story, and
the rodeo association heard about it. I had to appeal suspension of my
association membership pending the outcome of the trial."

"She really disrupted your life. Do you ever wish you'd
just paid her?"

"I did a couple of times…a couple hundred times. But I
had to see it through." He stared out the window at the flashing lights of
the strip. "At the trial, my lawyer, who had been a friend of my parents,
represented me pro-bono… Another big law word."

She laughed quietly. "That's nice of him. He must have
believed in you."

"He did." Besides Boone, Jayden, and their family,
he was the only person who'd stood by him, and didn't treat him like a
criminal. "He argued that there was no physical evidence; on me, on her,
or in the apartment, to prove that there had been an altercation. He noted that
one of the police responders had checked her car and found the hood hot, like
it had just been driven. And she'd said I kept her locked in the apartment with
me for an hour while I…hit her."

"Oh Dallas." She shivered then took a breath.
"That was good police work."

"Lucky. Stupid luck, again."

She sat back. "Take your luck any way you can get
it."

Staring into her beautiful green eyes, he thanked luck for
bringing Kira to him, not once, but twice. "I will, from now on." He
took her hand. "The lawyer was good. He found evidence of her being
hospitalized a few times for what looked like abuse. These happened before I
met her."

"So, whatever man, or woman, she was with had her under
their control. Made her do these things for money."

"I'm pretty sure it was a man." The thought of
Layna cheating on him was almost as agonizing as thinking of her being abused
all those years. "Two of the neighbors in the building had seen her with a
man. They testified for me."

"You got your life back." She tried a smile.

He shook his head. "My physical life, but not my
quality of life."

"What do you mean?"

"She stole from me." His faith in people, his
ability to trust, and possibly even his ability to love again. Love and trust
were too closely bound.

"What did she take?"

Dallas wasn't going to go anywhere near his emotional issues
while Kira was in his arms. "While I was in jail, she went through the
apartment and took all my championship belt buckles."

"Oh no."

"It was really all I had of value. I didn't realize
they were gone until a week later. By then, she'd pawned them all over Reno. It
took me a month to find all of them. Well, all except one." He could still
see the shiny face of that buckle. "My favorite. Grand champion."

"I know how impressive that is, now that Gigi's hanging
out with a rodeo man. Can't you get it replaced?"

He shook his head. "Nope. They made only one. I won it
a year to the date after my parents died, and I dedicated it to them that
night."

"Dallas, that's so sad." Her eyes glittered again.

"Don't worry. It's just a buckle."

"It's more than that." She rubbed his cheek.
"It's your life as you knew it."

"That's shot to shit, Kira. Ain't never gonna be the
same again. I gotta learn to live with what I have left."

She tipped her head. "It'll take a while to heal. Have
you thought about pro—"

"Professional help?" He swung his leg high over
her head and got off the bed. "Now you're sounding like Gigi." He
padded into the bathroom.

"I guess we're done talking?" she called from the
bedroom.

"Look at the clock." He turned on the shower,
waiting for it to get hot.

Squealing, Kira ran in, tucked her hair up in the
hotel-provided shower cap, and jumped into the icy stream of water. "Five
minutes, cowboy. And if you're not ready, I'm leaving without you!"

He laughed and jumped in with her, damn near freezing his
nuts off.

At eight fifteen, Dallas held open the casino's front door
and let Kira walk ahead of him out onto the sidewalk. The dry desert heat hit
him. He inhaled, enjoying real air after all the canned air conditioning inside
the building.

They were the last to arrive. Boone and Gigi stood off to
the side, held tightly in each other's arms, talking.

Jayden stood talking to a couple of rodeo buddies, Rance and
Mitch. Three of Boone's friends, Ace, Toby, and Bryan hung out by the black
stretch Hummer, looking ready to get going. Ace worked on Boone's parents’
farm, and Toby and Bryan owned small ranches adjacent to Boone's land.

Stormie slid out of the back door of the white Hummer.
"She's here! Let's go!"