Eight Seconds to Fly, page 9
It was Davi who spoke. “Não. You do not threaten women,” he said in stilted English.
Junior sneered. “She gave up that right when she stuck her ass in where it had no right to be. Bull riding is a man’s sport. She doesn’t belong here.”
Holding my tongue had never been my forte. “If being a man was a prerequisite, you should probably tuck up your micropenis and turn around and go home too,” I snarked from between Miguel and Davi. The former looked at me disapprovingly, but I smiled and shrugged. He shook his head, but glared back at Junior.
“She can ride. She belongs,” he said, his English even worse than Davi’s but in that moment I wanted to hug him. Then hug his wife, and probably his mama.
Junior spat on the ground at Miguel's feet. He lowered his voice. “If I had my way, you fuckers wouldn’t be in this sport either.”
This time I pushed in front of Miguel and Davi, getting right up in Junior’s face. He could talk crap about me, but I wouldn’t stand for this racist bullshit. “If you had your way, Daddy would hand you the gold buckle and you’d never have to get on a bull. You’re mad that they are better riders than you, but newsflash fuckface, everyone in this room is a better rider than you. Now get the fuck out of my face before I put my boot so far up your ass, you’ll cry and call me mamãe.”
Davi snorted, but he had one arm across my front so he could pull me out of the way of a rampaging Junior. I could have told them all this was unnecessary; Junior didn’t have the balls to do anything.
He scowled and turned away, looking at the others in the room. “This is why women don’t belong in bull riding. They cause fights.”
I rolled my eyes at him as he went and sat down next to another young rider who looked vaguely uncomfortable. He didn’t have his cronies with him, so he was going to have to source a whole bunch of new yes men. I didn’t doubt he would though. His family’s money had clout in this industry.
I turned my back on him like he meant nothing, which he did. He was an irritation.
Davi herded me over to where all the Brazilians sat together. There was segregation even here, and it was more than the language barrier. There was a lot of ill will about them being let into the sport here in the US way back when, but that was decades ago. It was time to let it go. You don’t like competition? Get out of the arena.
Davi plopped me between him and another young rider. I mean, they were both young, nineteen and fresh off the amateur circuit. I guess so was I, but some of these kids had been on bulls since they were three. I’d had a bit of catching up to do.
I didn’t know the other kid’s name, hadn’t caught it last week, but when he put out his fist, I grinned as I bumped it. The conversation back in the room picked up, and I settled into the flow of Portuguese around me as they talked bulls and women, the two favorite topics of young riders. Miguel wandered over, pushing his hat on his head. “You are crazy, angering him like that. His family could get you thrown off the tour.”
I shrugged with a nonchalance I didn’t feel. If I got kicked off, my world would crumble. But if I stood by and let that shit stand? Then I may as well say goodbye to my soul now.
Davi laughed. “We are just excited that there is an outsider even more outside than us now.”
They all laughed and I laughed along with them. It was just one of those situations, where you laughed or you cried. And if it made you cry, you may as well quit now, because it wasn’t ever going to be any less tough.
As the last riders finished up, I was nudged out of fourth place by another young rider, but it didn’t matter. I got a payday and I rode a bull. That was a successful week in my book. Branch took out first, riding his bull for the full eight seconds, and got himself a gold buckle, Dylan coming in second. I didn’t mind that either. They were great riders who had good rides.
I followed the rest of the riders who were scrubbed and in clean jeans up to the foyer where we would sign pictures of ourselves. It was freaking surreal that I was even here.
I sat beside Dylan, because apparently they did it alphabetically, but I appreciated the friendly face.
What I didn’t anticipate was the fact that I would be all but ignored. Dylan, however, was overrun with women wanting him to sign hats and cards, and on one particularly beautiful blonde with enormous bolt-on tits, some cleavage.
I had the odd kid come up, the ones collecting all the signatures, and they made it better. I had time to chat to them about their favorite rider, who was the rankest bull. Their faces lit up and it made the whole situation better.
One kid in a hat bigger than his torso was talking to me now. “And that's why I think Dylan should ride The Butcher because I think that he would be the only one who could ride him.”
I sat back in my chair and grinned. “You don’t think I could ride The Butcher?”
The boy frowned and looked me over appraisingly. “No Ma’am.”
I raised an eyebrow, his mother watching from behind him with a frown like she was going to whack him upside the head as soon as he said something rude. “Why not? You don’t have to be strong to be a rider, otherwise weight lifters would do it. You don’t have to be a boy to ride a bull, unless you know some secret I don’t?”
“That’s not it either, Ma’am.”
I pushed my hat back on my head and gave him an appraising look. “Why do you think I can’t ride The Butcher but Dylan Montaigne can?”
The boy frowned, chewing on his lip. “‘Cause you're right-handed and The Butcher likes to spin to the left and you prefer when they spin into your hand. Dylan is a leftie like me.”
I grinned wide, and the kid gave me a tentative smile back. “You make a pretty good point kid. I’m going to have to work on that if I wanna beat that bull. Thanks for the advice.” I signed a card for him and he waved it around til the ink dried before handing it back to his mama. He looked at the line around Dylan, mostly women and old men with soft middles and sighed.
“We gotta go home now. We only gots a babysitter for another thirty minutes,” he said, the disappointment written all over his face. Call me freaking soft, but tough kids with sad faces broke my heart.
I lifted my chin toward him. “Come over this side of the table.” He looked back at his mom, and when she nodded, squished between the small gap between the tables. “What’s your name?”
“Buck.”
“Okay, Buck. You got something for Dylan to sign?” He nodded and held out a poster with Dylan’s face on it. “Now, you watch this.” I leaned around him, over to where a pretty teenage girl with a tied up shirt and jeans that were painted on, twirled her hair and blushed. Eesh. Save me.
“Hey Dylan,” I yelled over the crowd.
Dylan smiled politely at the girl in front of him, leaning back in his chair. The look he threw me was friendly, but underneath there was heat in his eyes when he took me in. “What's up, T.M.?”
“My friend Buck here thinks you can ride The Butcher because you’re a leftie.”
Dylan grinned and scooted his chair toward us. “Is that so? Well, I gotta say, I’ve ridden him a couple of times and he’s always put me on my ass, but one day, Buck, I’m gonna ride that bull for the full eight seconds.”
The look of pure adulation on Buck’s face was worth gold. “Can you sign my poster?”
Dylan nodded and took the poster without hesitation. “You going to ride bulls when you grow up, Buck?”
Buck shook his head. “Naw, my mama says I’m too smart for that. She said riding bulls is like being in the front seat of a car accident on purpose.”
We both looked at him, and then at his blushing mother who looked like she wanted to murder her son.
I threw back my head and laughed. “You should listen to your mama, because they are almost always right. Bull riding isn’t for the clever ones, and if they were clever to start with, they aren’t after landing on their head too many times.”
Dylan was chuckling as well. “She’s right, Kid. Become a dentist. The money is just as good and you are less likely to lose a limb.” Shaking his hand, Dylan turned back to the teenage girl and I helped Buck squeeze back out between the tables.
His mom was still looking horrified. “I’m so sorry,” she mouthed and I smiled.
“He’s a good kid. Keep up the hard work. Don’t become a dentist though. Dentists are boring. Do something you love.”
Buck gave me a solemn nod and I waved as his mother hustled him out of the room. I packed up my stuff and left the room.
I managed to avoid everyone on the way out of the building, dragging my gear like a lodestone. I loaded my crap into the back of a cab, and the mute cab driver got me to the hotel in half the time as my prior trip.
My truck still sat out the front, and I sucked in a deep breath. I was… nervous. What if he’d decided that I was too hard. That he couldn’t handle me dating other guys. Because, I was going to be honest with myself now, which was a new one for me. Normally I stuck my head in the sand and pretended shit was okay even if it was all burning down around me.
The truth was what happened with Beau wasn’t the same as those faceless guys in dark alleyways who scratched an itch, no matter how blasé I was about it last night. He was a little piece of my past. He saw me, the real me. Tessa May Everett, not T.M. Moore.
But Frankie was like another limb to me. Vital to my survival. So what the fuck was I meant to do with that?
I scanned my key on the card reader by the door and pushed it open slowly. I peeked around, and when I saw Frankie sitting on the bed, a relieved shudder rolled through my body. He was still here. He was freshly showered, his hair still damp and a little messy, like he’d been running his fingers through it.
When he looked at me, his face was soft. He opened his arms and my body was moving before I thought about it. I launched myself from halfway across the room into his arms and he caught me easily. Of course he did. He was always there to catch me.
I just curled into his chest for a moment, sucked in the familiar smell of him. He held me tight, and I let him. Eventually, I relaxed a little and settled into his chest, arms and legs around him like a koala.
“I’m sorry, Querida. I shouldn’t have dropped that on you out of jealousy.”
I nodded, but I didn’t look up at him. Talking into his chest was easier. “I was a bit shocked.”
He chuckled against my hair and then stiffened. “I can imagine. My, uh, delivery was off, but it was the truth.”
“I know.”
“We have to talk about this. It will, err, fester?” He gave that little nod he always did when he thought of the correct word in English. “You cannot ignore it like you do other things that hurt too much.”
I sighed heavily against the hard muscles of his shoulder and pulled back enough that I could see his face for this next bit. “I honestly thought you loved me like a sister. The way you loved Luiz.”
His laugh vibrated beneath my palms. “Very much not how I love my sisters or Luiz, Gatinha.”
I slapped his arm. “I get that now.” I sobered. “I love you too, Frankie. So damn much. The thought of you leaving me makes my soul hurt. We were buddies when Luiz was here too, just three friends. And when Luiz left, I didn’t want to rock the boat. Because I need you. If you left, I don’t know…” I shuddered. “It didn't occur to me that I should make that leap from friend to something more, even though now I could see how we were in a relationship without the fun parts. The signs are all there. I hated when you went home with other girls. You were my rock when I felt like I was drowning. You’re the first person I want to find when I ride a bull or any other important moment.”
I searched his eyes, looking for something, and his bottomless green eyes laid his soul bare. There was a world of promise there, which made this next bit harder. So instead of saying the words, I surprised us both and kissed him. His lips were full and pillowy, soft in a way that should be illegal. He sipped at my lips, tasting them, his tongue sliding between them and curling into my mouth in a way that was completely mind blowing. Because you could just imagine where else he could do that.
My brain fritzed at the thought.
His arms banded around my waist and pulled me tight to his chest, and I could feel the hard length of his cock against the seam of my jeans.
My body had a mind of its own as I ground down on his cock. He groaned into my mouth, snapping me out of my hormone-induced haze. I pulled back. I couldn’t take this further without finishing what I had to say. “Wait, wait. I have to finish.”
My lady bits disagreed wholeheartedly. The talking bit could wait till she finished. Luckily, I had a bit more self-control than that. Barely.
Deep breaths through the nose.
“Obviously we have chemistry.” In spades. “The problem is, that thing with Beau the other day didn’t mean nothing.”
Frankie frowned, then he gave me a half smile. “I know.”
“Excuse me?”
“Your friend Branch tracked me down last night. Dragged me along to visit your other friend Beau. Then he punched him in the eye.”
I was off his lap and on my feet in a flash. “He did what?” I screeched, wincing at the pitch of my own voice.
He was grinning now. “Not going to lie, Gatinha, it was kind of satisfying. But your boy Beau, he just stood back up, looked at me, and said ‘You get a free shot, but I am not giving her up’. So I nailed him one in the stomach, because I am a lover not a fighter. Now we are good. We have a gentleman's agreement that we will not stand in your way and you will decide when you decide.”
“You and Beau decided that?”
He nodded, a sly grin on his face. “And Branch.”
“Pardon me?”
“And Dylan, because I am not stupid. I see the way you look at him. I want to know that when you pick me, you will never wonder if I was the right choice or if he was the one that got away. So Dylan too.”
I blinked. Then blinked again. Dylan I understood, but Branch? “But Branch loathes me.”
Frankie threw back his head and laughed, his arms reaching for me and pulling me into his lap. “Ah, Tessa. You truly are beautifully oblivious.” He kissed the corner of my mouth and I melted into his body. “You don’t have to agree to anything now. Just think about it.” He took my bottom lip between his teeth and sucked it hard. “But sampling the merchandise cannot be a bad idea, right?”
Nope. Not bad at all.
9
Although Frankie and I had a serious make out session last night, we’d eventually broken apart, laid down on separate sides of the bed and pretended to go to sleep because I didn’t want to rush things. This wasn’t a shitty one night stand where I could leave the state and forget it ever happened.
Instead, I’d laid awake and thought about all the shit that could go wrong, and then somewhere around two a.m. I let myself think about how amazing it could be if everything went right.
At three a.m. I thought about how likely it would be that I could keep both Frankie and Beau. Hell, even Dylan. Branch… I didn’t know what the fuck was going on with Branch.
At four a.m. I remembered someone telling me about a breed of hyenas that gave birth out of their clitoris, so I googled it.
At five a.m. I fell into a traumatized sleep.
But it was my turn to drive first, so at eight a.m. I was barely awake but highly caffeinated, and we were on the road. Frankie had zonked out in the passenger seat ten minutes into our drive. I think we’d both been pretending to sleep last night.
I turned up the stereo, letting some classic country blare through the speakers. This is what they never told you about being a rider. It's all adrenaline and that wild rush for five minutes a week, then the rest of the time it was patching yourself up and these long, lonely stretches of road.
I looked at Frankie’s thick lashes lying on his sharp cheekbones. He was beautiful when he slept, though I doubted he’d appreciate the adjective. His bottom lip jutted out a little more, his golden skin looking infinitely strokable in the warm morning light.
“Stop staring and watch the road,” he muttered, and I blushed as my eyes shot back to the front of the truck. When I looked at him out of the corner of my eyes, his lips were pulled up in a smug smile.
I glared out the windshield. “You can drive if you have such a problem with it.”
He opened one eye and looked at me. “You wake up on the wrong side of the bed, Querida?”
Maybe. On top of sleep deprivation, I had an emotional hangover from the weekend. I achieved my dream, well at least the first step of it. Branch and Beau, my past, were back in my present. Dylan was there, tempting me like a sex god. And Frankie was declaring love in some macho claiming gesture.
Instead of saying any of that, I shrugged. It was still four hours until Texarkana. I didn’t want to have a heavy conversation then be stuck in a tin can sucking on awkwardness for the rest of the trip.
He straightened up and stretched. “Wanna stop in Nacogdoches at that waffle place? Then I’ll drive for a bit?”
I couldn’t say no to waffles, which Frankie damn well knew. I nodded, and when Frankie threaded his fingers through mine where they rested on the stick shift, I let a small smile tilt my lips. This was nice.
Frankie pumped the music when “The Git Up” by Blanco Brown came on the radio. Frankie loved to dance. He danced at any opportunity, and he led my two left feet like I was Ginger Rogers. As the music blared around the cabin of the truck, he managed to dance with his whole body despite the fact he was strapped in. It was a talent.
“Come on, Tessa. Dance,” he coaxed, shimmying closer to me, even as I rolled my eyes. But I gave a half hearted shimmy, making him shake his head and sing louder.
Frankie wasn’t just hot, though god knew he was. Tall and lean, his eyes smoldered and his smile promised a good time. But he was just so damn joyous and he sucked in women like honey. There was no way he could be happy waiting in the wings for me to make up my mind.
