Ride Me Cowboy #5 (The Cowboy Romance Series - Book #5) (6 page)

When I opened the door to the apartment, I was
surprised to see that it was dark inside. I flipped on the light switch and
called out, “Mom?” She didn’t answer, and I didn’t smell anything cooking. That
was weird since she’d insisted I come home for dinner. With a tickle in my
belly, I walked a little bit further inside. “Mom?” Still, no answer. I stepped
into the living room off the foyer and saw a note with my name on it propped up
on the table. I picked it up, unfolded it and read:

“Lexi,
I’m sorry, but I had to go out. I left your dinner in the microwave. Please
eat. I love you, Mom.”

“Really, Mom?” I was starting to wonder if she’d gone
senile in her old age. She was the one who insisted I come right home today.
With a sigh, I dropped my backpack and went into the kitchen. I was curious
about what she made for dinner, so I went over and popped the microwave open.
There was a covered plate inside. I took the plate out and lifted off the
lid…and stared at it for a good fifteen seconds before my mind registered what
it was seeing. There was nothing on the plate except for a white velvet box and
a tiny envelope. “What the hell?” The envelope had my name on it. I picked that
up and opened it first. I recognized Mark’s handwriting.

Lexi:
There is something magic in your eyes. I saw it the first day that I met you. I
didn’t know what it was then…I didn’t understand it. The way that I felt was so
wrapped up at first in who I thought you were. This was never supposed to
happen and I never planned for it to. But you can’t deny the magic, whether it
makes sense or not. It’s beautiful and it’s mysterious and it’s still there in
your eyes every time I look into them. It’s the magic I want to see and feel
for the rest of my life. It quickens my heart and makes me realize what I was
actually working towards my entire life and just didn’t know it. I’m a cowboy
and I love what I do, but what I do is not who I am any longer. Who I am now is
the man who loves you and hopes that you might consent to wearing this ring
that promises someday we’ll have a long future together filled with warmth and
laughter and even some little cowboys and cowgirls
runnin
’
around. I love you, Lexie.-Mark

My eyes were so blurred with tears that I could hardly
see as I flipped open the box. Sitting inside, nestled against red velvet, was
the most beautiful ring I had ever seen. It was white gold with a sapphire and
diamond setting. I was different than any ring I had ever seen and I thought it
was so fitting because Mark and I started out in such a “different” way. As I
stood there crying in the kitchen, I just assumed that Mark and Mom had set
this up together…I assumed he sent her the ring and the note and she left it
for me to find. I did wonder why he didn’t wait until he was home to do it
himself, but I was touched nonetheless. I headed into my bedroom to get my
laptop and call him on Skype. I needed to see his beautiful face when I said,
“Yes.” When I stepped from the kitchen back into the living room, I stopped
dead in my tracks. Mark was there, dressed in his cowboy finest, on bended knee
with a bouquet of red roses in his hand. “Oh my God!” The tears started again
and before he could say a word, I tackled him back onto the carpet. I kissed
his face all over. “Yes! Yes! Yes! I will wear your ring, I’ll be your wife,
and I’ll have your babies…” He was laughing, pinned underneath me, still
holding the roses. I finally calmed down enough to take them out of his hand.
“They’re beautiful. My ring is beautiful. I love you!”

He pushed himself up with his arms and took the roses
out of my hand. He set them aside on the coffee table. Then he took the ring
out of my hand and said, “May I?” I nodded, the tears freely flowing from my
eyes now. He took the ring out of the box and slid it onto the ring finger of
my left hand. Mom must have helped him with that, too…it fit perfectly. She was
getting sneaky in her old age. When I was younger, she couldn’t be trusted with
a secret to save her own life.

“It’s beautiful,” I said, looking down at it in awe.

He cupped my chin and tipped my face up to his and
said, “You’re beautiful, and you know what I noticed?”

“That my mascara doesn’t run when I cry?”

He laughed. “That, too…but I noticed that you didn’t
ask me how we would manage a marriage and my rodeo career.”

I realized that he was right. So far today, that
hadn’t crossed my mind, but I suddenly knew why. “I don’t care,” I told him. “I
honestly don’t care. As long as we can both do what makes us happy and be
together as much as we can, I think we can work it out. I understand now why
women do it. They do it because the men they love so much love it. It makes
them happy. It makes you happy and whatever does that is the life I want to
live. I love you so much!” He grinned at me like that was what he was hoping to
hear, but then he shocked me by saying,

“I love hearing you say that, but before I came home
I’d already decided. Las Vegas is going to be my last ride, win or lose.”

I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. I wanted to be
ecstatic because I worried about him constantly and I missed him desperately
when he was gone, but was that selfish of me? I was trying so hard to grow up
and be the unselfish adult that I wanted to be. I wanted to be like Mom and
make sacrifices for people I loved for a change, instead of the other way
around.

Mark loved rodeo so much. “Are you sure about this,
baby? I don’t want you to do that for me. I want you to do what makes you
happy. I’ve had time to figure things out since I said I would never live like
that. Never say never…you know?”

He took my hands and said, “When I used to think about
having a family and doing rodeo, I thought that I could do it. But, that was
when that family was just an illusion. Now it has a face, and I love the person
behind that face so much that I want to be there with them to discover life. I
want to be there when my babies are born and take their first steps, I want all
of that so much more than I want to ride another bull. I do have one request
before we start that family, though.”

I was crying again and I could hardly speak. Finally I
said, “What’s that?”

“I want you and me to travel and see some of this
beautiful world we live in together first.”

I couldn’t imagine anything better. He opened his
arms, and I folded in to them. Any thoughts of how differently the worlds we
came from were completely dissipated.

CHAPTER
EIGHT

MARK

We sat right there on the living room floor for a long
time, just holding each other as the sun went down and the apartment darkened
around us. Finally, Lexi pulled back and said, “Where’s my mom?”

“She said to tell you that she’d be spending the night
with her cousin Cara. I think she wanted to give us this night. She made dinner
and left it in the refrigerator and told me all we needed to do was heat it
up.”

“She helped you set this all up?”

I nodded. “And at the last minute.”

“She’s amazing.”

“Yes, she is. That explains why her daughter is
amazing, as well. Are you hungry?”

“Not for food,” she said with a grin. My kind of
answer. She shocked me then by reaching out and grabbing the waist of my jeans.
She pulled me towards her and pressed her lips to mine as she ran her fingers
along the length of my growing erection. I arched into her touch, nothing felt
better
.

“Maybe we should go to bed,” I said in a breathless
voice. “Lydia said she wouldn’t be back tonight, but just in case.” She was
licking my neck. My brain was quickly turning to mush.

“I don’t want to go to bed,” she whispered next to my
ear.

“You don’t?”

“No. I was thinking…the bathroom.”

Confused, I said, “What?”

“I want to see us make love.” Dear God, she’s going to
kill me. She stood up and reached her hand out to me. I took it and let her
lead me down the hall, through her room and into the big bathroom it was
connected to. There was a floor-to-ceiling mirror on one wall and the counter
sat across from that. She stood in front of the counter, facing the mirror and
as I watched, she stripped off all of her clothes. Damn! She’s so hot. When she
finished stripping, I was still standing there with my mouth wide open. “Are
you going to join me?” she asked with a giggle.

I started stripping as fast as I could. Meanwhile, I
saw her spread a towel on the counter and turn backwards and lift herself up so
her butt was sitting on the towel and her beautiful naked body was facing the
mirror. Once I was undressed, she crooked her finger at me. I stepped forward
and put my hands on her waist and kissed her. She ran her hands down my back
and the heat from her skin and the heat from the kiss erased the slight chill
of the cold tile room.

I pressed myself between her parted knees while we
kissed. Her hands made it down my back and now she was gripping my butt cheeks
and squeezing them. I shuddered. God, I love the way she touches me. A simple
touch from her
causes
pleasure to coil in the pit of
my stomach and moans to fall freely from my lips. I could get lost in her kiss
and her touch, and I craved nothing more than for our bodies to be joined
together. I didn’t wait for any foreplay tonight. Tonight was about two people
becoming
one.
I pressed myself in on her and buried my
now throbbing cock deep inside of her as we continued to kiss. Just that one
thrust caused my head to feel like it might explode and the thrill of ecstasy
flooded my body at once. Lexi moaned into my mouth. I love it when she does
that because I can both hear and feel how much she’s enjoying it.

She broke our kiss and suddenly her mouth was against
my ear again and she was whispering my name. I decided that this must be what
it felt like to do drugs. I don’t think that anything could feel better than
this, but I could already see that I was addicted and I would need more and
more of her to sustain me.

She began to roll her sexy hips forward as I plunged
in and out of her. I put my mouth down on her neck and covered it and her
shoulder with kisses. She wrapped her long, sexy legs around my waist and
pulled me in deeper. I loved the way her skin felt. She’s so soft, so sweet,
so
perfect.

As she locked her feet behind my back, I braced my
hands on the counter beside her. When I pushed back, our chests separated and
for a second, I was cold. Then I saw her looking behind us in the mirror,
watching me move in and out of her. I looked down between us at the place where
we were connected and felt my cock swell even more. I wasn’t cold anymore, and
I had to grab her hips to brace her because suddenly my movements were urgent
and frantic. I no longer wanted her…I needed her. She was a craving and the
only way to satisfy that craving was by having her like this – just her and I
with nothing between us and our future stretched out ahead. Each thrust of my
hips brought a delicious surge of energy that would shoot through my veins. I
looked into her sexy eyes as I pounded into her. What I saw there was love…and
fire. She had her eyes locked into mine for a long time, but then I saw her
glance at us in the mirror again. When she did, I looked down at her gorgeous
breasts and watched for a second how they bounced as I drove into her. I bent
forward and suckled one into my mouth, flicking the nipple hard with my tongue.
I moved over and did the same to the other and then brought my face back up to
look at her.

Lexi had closed her eyes and arched her back. She let
her body slide to the edge of the counter and ground into me with her hips. I
could feel the current beginning to build in my stomach. Her sweet, full lips
were parted and she was panting. I ran my tongue along her bottom lip and she
moaned and reached up to grab my hair. She used it to pull me in for a deep,
sexy kiss. I felt the orgasm coming now, like a freight train barreling through
me. I groaned and dug my fingers into her hips, pulling her harder into me as
it washed over, turning everything inside of me into liquid euphoria. Lexi
tensed at the same time and threw her pretty head back and let out a long, sexy
moan. I collapsed forward into her and could feel her body shudder and shake. I
loved that I did that to her. I fucking loved everything about being with her.
My body was still jerking and shaking and trying to come down from the high she
put me on. She still had her legs around me. I scooped my arms underneath her
bottom and lifted her up. She put her arms around my shoulders and folded into
my chest. I turned towards the mirror and saw us like that and felt the twitch
of my cock begin again. I kissed the side of her face and carried her into the
bedroom and lay her down on the bed. She scooted over and I climbed in next to
her. Tomorrow I had to head for Utah. Tonight, I was going to forget that
anything existed…even time…and I was going to hold and love this woman who
would be in my life from now until forever. It was an incredible feeling to
know that.

CHAPTER
TEN

LAS
VEGAS NEVADA—THREE MONTHS LATER

LEXI

I was so excited when we got to Las Vegas that I could
barely contain myself. We were staying at the Thomas & Mack Center where
the finals would be held. Mom stayed at Treasure Island because Thomas &
Mack was so booked, she couldn’t get a room. I‘m here for Mark and he’s here
for the National Finals Rodeo, but you can’t really be here and not be here for
Las Vegas. I’d heard so much about it my whole life. I’d seen it on television
and in movies. I’d read about it in books…but nothing does Vegas justice like
seeing Vegas.