Stepbrother Cowboy: A Western Romance (11 page)

“I told you boy-”

“I know, I know,” I held my hands up in surrender.

“Three beers tonight,” Jackson whistled softly, “I gotta bring Sandy around here more often.” He wagged his eyebrows at me.

Then I got it. Gross!!

“Over sharing man, over sharing!” I’d never get that image out of my mind now.

“Let me go collect my lady, and I’ll text you when I find out anything.”

“Sounds good. Boss.”

We all said our goodbyes and I sat down on the dining room table, a cup of coffee in hand and was soon joined by Ali. I’d already told her I was heading out in a couple of hours and why. She didn’t understand my want or need to get out into the middle of the field before sun up, but I wanted to see it for myself. I tried to explain to her the reasoning’s for starting at the dried river bed and following it back to see where the river started diverting and why. That is where things would get tricky.

I might have to crawl under some fences, or make a hole or two and patch them up behind me. What I’d planned was a little more than trespassing, but even with Tyler giving me some sort of grudging respect earlier, I didn’t want to get tangled up where he had me dead to rights, on anything. I knew we had the Bart ranch on the Southwest side of the fence line, but who owned the land after that? My head was starting to hurt and for a moment I cupped my face in my hands, trying to press the headache back and Ali put her hands on the back of my head, kneading the flesh of my neck and lower skull.

Her cold fingers startled me at first, but the feeling went from sheer agony to warmth as the muscles loosened up and the headache started to go away.

“Penny for your thoughts, cowboy?”

“I think I’m just worried about things too much. I’m not even sure if what I’m doing is going to do any good.”

“If nothing else, you can honestly say that you’ve been all over the ranch inspecting things. I know Dad would appreciate that. He’s always wanted you to work with us,” her hands were starting to distract me, and when she leaned in, her breasts brushed against my shoulders through the cotton of her shirt, distracting me.

“Yeah, I keep hearing that. Was I really that much of a stick in the mud? I must have had my head so far up my ass that I couldn’t see what was in front of me.”

“Not again, don’t keep beating yourself up. Now you know. What are you going to do about it?”

“Try to figure out what’s been going on, and if there’s anything I can do to help.”

“Oh?” Her voice was in my ear now, her hands rubbing the tops of my shoulder and down to my chest. “And what can I do to help?” She nipped at my ear, making my whole body shiver, making me pull my stomach muscles tight in reflex as goose bumps covered my body.

“Something like that,” I closed my eyes as her lips found a tender spot on my neck.

“Oh? Well that’s all I was going to offer,” she broke away and started walking towards the bedroom, her hips swaying. “Unless you want to do some more planning with me?” The last was over her shoulder as her pants rode down to her ankles, a black thong mesmerizing me.

“Yeah… Planning.”

We left a trail of clothes, turning off the lights as we went. I caught her as she swan dived onto my bed, her panties and bra still on, but not for log if I had anything to do with it. I’d cracked the curtain slightly this morning, so I had more moonlight and loved how the silvery glow lit up parts of her body, leaving the rest of her in shadow. I pulled the rest of my clothes off and watched her a moment longer, Ali chewing on her bottom lip in anticipation.

“Remember the rule from last night?”

“No 50 shades?”

“Doesn’t apply anymore.”

“Good.” I said, never having read it but knowing about it from some of the female officers in the service. I didn’t know what she wanted, the thought of being tied up or blindfolded, but I did know they also used 50 shades as an excuse to be a little kinky with the guys when they needed to blow off some steam, not that I know anything about that.

My hands cupped her calves as I trailed a kiss from the inside of her ankles and worked my way upwards. When I started pulling at her legs mid-thigh, she resisted, her legs shaking.

“Don’t, I’ve never had that-”

“Trust me.” I whispered, kissing her again and her resistance shattered, her hands playing in my hair, her hands trying to feel the rough surface of my stubbled cheek.

I kissed her gently again and pushed her legs open. She was ready for me, I could sense she would go whichever way I wanted at this point so I pushed her legs upward, pulling her panties free, leaving her bra in place before kneeling again. I pulled up on her legs to flop her on her back again as she had tried sitting up to see what I was doing and I pushed her legs apart. Once again I started with the kisses, my hands roaming over her body. When I got to her warm wet core, a lick and a kiss confirmed that she was close. I used my fingers to spread her open and when I started licking her wet slit her whole body tensed and a sound started escaping her mouth as if she was holding her breath and letting it out slowly.

“Relax.” I whispered, tasting her, plunging my tongue into her, my fingers working their magic on her nub.

Her body was shaking, her hips trembling and I reached up to squeeze a breast with my free hand. She pulled a pillow over her face and her whole body clenched. I moved my tongue up to her nub, taking it in my teeth, licking it without mercy, using my fingers in the place of my tongue had been a moment before. Her hips were rocking into me and quiet shrieks could be heard from under the pillow as every muscle in her body contracted and relaxed. I tried to push her over the edge, and it looked like that worked. I smiled and lay beside her on the bed, pulling the pillow off of her head, pulling it under my head. After a few long cleansing breaths she looked over to me.

“Promise me you won’t do that to me when I’m driving. I don’t think I can handle that.”

“Fair enough. I won’t make you make the same promise,” I said tucking a curl of hair behind her ear. She sat up a moment, unhooking her bra and laid back down.

“Now for the 50 shades stuff,” She said, pushing me on my back and playfully pulling the pillow over my face before starting to work on me, straddling me.

“No, now it’s my turn to have fun,” I rolled her off me and climbed on top of her. She leaned up to lock lips with me and I pushed her down flat.

“Oh?”

“Yeah,” I told her, sliding in, watching her eyes go wide as I buried myself deep inside of her.

The sexual tension had been high since yesterday and the blow job in the Jeep had only worked to relieve some pressure for a short time. Hell, even my dreams when I was napping had been about Alison. About protecting her, about keeping her, fucking her and loving her. Most of that would have scared me shitless a week ago, hell I might have run away screaming, but I was right where I wanted, I found. With her legs wrapped around me, her arms reaching back to the head boards to hold on, small gasps that were almost words trying to force their way out.

I could feel the pressure coming to a head, I knew I wasn’t going to last much longer, I could feel the muscles in Ali’s stomach contracting and when she started coming it pushed me over the edge as well. I planted myself deep inside and let the contractions pump, her hips and legs trying to pull me even deeper inside of her. I rested my body across hers as we both tried to catch our breath and both waited for the contractions of our lovemaking to stop. We both fell asleep that way, still joined together.

My alarm went off a few hours later. I pulled myself away from Alison reluctantly and got into the shower. I finished as quickly as I could, mostly to wash the sweat and scent of lovemaking off of me as much as to wake up. I got the coffee pot set after I dressed hurriedly and went outside to get in the Jeep and drove up to the big house.

We always called it the big house; it’s where the rancher and his family live. It’s also the same building where guests come when we have them, or if there’s a tour going on. That’s one side of the business that’s always free money, tourism. It doesn’t happen out here often, but often enough that a family could come out here for a couple of weeks and the ranch earns a few thousand dollars in money for basically showing some city folk how to ride a horse, what we do to separate out the cows for tagging, and give them a small taste of the ranching life. There wasn’t anybody here at the moment, but I knew there would be gear in the three car garage, gear I’d seen used a ton when I was a kid.

I pulled a small tent and sleeping bag from the supplies, along with some canteens. I wasn’t going to bring a ton of food with me and would probably find what I wanted on the trail, going true cowboy camping. I grabbed a couple flashlights and a mess kit. Other than that, it was all I needed and had the rest in my duffel back at the cabin. I took the jeep back, and when my headlights flashed across the living room window, I could make on a form sitting out the couch, hands wrapped around a coffee mug.

I dropped the gear off at the door and headed in. Alison was sitting on the couch, a comforter wrapped around her small body. She handed me a mug and patted the spot next to her. I sat down and marveled at Alison. Her hair was a mess, all over the place. She had on no makeup, yet she was still the most attractive woman I’d ever seen. I took a sip of the coffee, noting that it hadn’t been out of the pot for long, still scorching hot.

“You fixing to leave?”

“Yeah, I’m going to leave the Jeep here,” I tossed the keys on the coffee table and kicked my feet up.

Ali leaned into me, and I had to raise my arm. She snuggled into me and when I put my arm down around her, I thought she had drifted off again. I sipped my coffee in silence for a few minutes, mentally preparing myself to head out into the ranchland. In the army, no man ever works alone. There’s always a team mate to watch your back and what I was doing would have gotten me thumped if I was in a war zone. This should be less dangerous, hell it should be without danger unless I ran into rattlesnakes. I truly hoped that this was going to be a boring pain in the ass.

“Your phone isn’t going to stay charged more than a day or two. You won’t be gone that long will you?”

“No, I’m thinking two days, maybe come back on the third.”

“Do you really have to do this?”

“I don’t want to wait to see if it was Tim. I don’t know if I can hold still and just wait.”

“I know what you mean. You have to be safe out there. I feel like the past three days have been a dream.”

“I know what you mean,” I kissed the top of her head. “I know. It’s meant a lot for me too.”

“Are you sure you aren’t going out there to run from me? From us?”

I was treading deep water here. I hadn’t considered that consciously, but when I looked deep inside of myself, there was a touch of truth to the statement. Commitment wasn’t something that I’d ever looked for in a relationship. Shit, in the Army, I would find partners in the war zone not out of love, but out of a mutual need to be close to someone, a need that would drive you crazy if you didn’t listen to it. The ladies never had a problem finding somebody willing, but the first time I was asked I was surprised. The whole ordeal was over as quick as it started and we both went back to what we were doing before, a word not said about it again. But this… with Alison, maybe I was trying to stay busy, to put some distance between us to think about my feelings?

“No, not really,” I only half lied, I think she knew, but she let it go for now.

“Ok. I’ve programmed your phone, so keep it handy as long as it’s charged.”

“Yes dear,” I said dead pan, and I would have been slugged but she couldn’t pull her arm out from the comforter quick enough, her other hand still holding the cup.

“Give me a kiss before you go?”

I did, and although I wanted it to turn into more, much more, I let it stop after a couple seconds, pulling back before standing and stretching. I dumped the leftover coffee and rinsed my cup and got the duffel out of the bedroom. I pulled out my old duty combat knife and a small khaki satchel. The smallest pack of survival gear I had. It was probably overkill, but if I was taking a quad, it’d be easy to pack heavy and hike the rest of the way.

I took it out to the porch and remade the pack, getting things together. I went inside to fill the canteens, hoping to steal one more kiss, but Ali was out cold on the couch. I brushed the hair off of her face with my fingertips before kissing my fingers and putting it on her cheek. She made a soft sound when I opened the door but I only looked back once. She was still softly sleeping.

I carried the gear towards the big barn, kicking myself for not dropping half of it off when I had the Jeep. I rubbed the stubble on my cheek a moment and kept moving. Sure enough, Jackson had a red Honda FourTrax with two gas cans on the back luggage rack. There was enough room there for most of my gear, leaving the front rack free for my AR. I lashed it down on top of the sleeping bag, not wanting to wear it slung over my back. An all day ride with it there would kill my kidneys, besides; I had the Colt on my hip. I prayed neither would be needed.

When everything seemed set, I checked the straps a third time before using the start and turning the light on. The sound of a running motor at 4 a.m. cut through the silence, and I started off slowly, not wanting the sound of an insane chainsaw waking up more than I had to. The going was slow, and within a couple hours of daybreak I made it to the creek bed I remembered as a kid. It wasn’t a seasonal stream, it always had flowing water through it, but it didn’t look like any water had been here in a while. Water was funny out here, if a ranch didn’t have a steady supply of it, they didn’t stay in business long.

Water was everything out here; it determined things like how much land you could irrigate to grow grasses on or how many head of cattle could be watered here. The Masterson ranch had always been prime land with a year round river running through it, but now it’d gone dry and no one had been able to figure out why. I’d passed the construction equipment just as the sun rose, the new pipes stretching straight west. Jackson and Bill probably had to pay a premium because I knew the river snaked in that way, but it wasn’t a short distance by any means. A memory about the back of the property kept tickling my memory.

I’d never been back there, but I seemed to remember that the land was Bureau of Land Management property, or some mining company. I couldn’t remember for sure and I kept poking at that thought when I got a text from Ali. I pulled over, needing a stretch anyways and looked at my phone.

“Just Checking in. Problem with the backhoe this morning, Charlie says they will be out that way all day if you want to drop in and say hi.”

“Already passed there. Heading up riverbed to south east corner of property. Stay in Touch,” I replied as quickly as my thumbs could.

I looked around, the walls of the old riverbed a few feet higher than the dried cracked bottom I was standing on. I walked around a little bit, noticing how hard the surface was. I kicked at a rock when I looked behind me and realized that I wasn’t leaving any sort of tracks or trail. Interesting. I’d picked driving on the riverbed for ease as the random bumps lifts as the quad went over rocks or depressions on the ground was starting to get to my back. Ali might have been right that this was quicker, but there’s something to be said about the comfort of riding a horse compared to this torture… So when I found the flat smooth surface of the river bottom, I took advantage of the comparable comfort.

And there were no trails, not any time the fence was cut from what I was hearing. I opened the GPS application I had them put on and checked my location. I was almost 2/3 of the way there to the back corner of the property where the river came in. I had a few swallows from the canteen before firing up the quad again to continue riding.

The walls of the old riverbed probably muffled the sound of my motor to anybody outside, but it had deafened me as it rebounded into my ears. I was surprised when I saw a horse and rider startle as I went zooming through. They took off on a dead run more or less the direction I was going and I had no clue if it was one of our ranch hands or someone else. The fact that they ran at first was understandable. He might have been trying to stay on his horse that got startled badly, but he kept going, letting the reins slap as he kicked his horse to higher speeds. Despite being on a four wheel quad, a horse running full out was more than a match for me. He was pulling away when he lost his hat and I had to jam on the brakes and his horse jumped the barbed wire of our back boundary. I pulled up short before I’d run face first into the wire and just shook my head, my adrenaline still pumping from the chase.

“Shit.”

I got off the quad and climbed the riverbank, watching the rider make trails of dust, pushing the horse hard. I ducked under the wire and recovered the hat. Something about it looked familiar but I didn’t see anything on it that would indicate who the owner was. I put it in my pack between the gas cans and inspected the area. The back corner of the property was a fence post that had been wrapped with galvanized pipe tape to an old half dead tree. The metal was rusted and it was obvious to me that folks had been coming on and off the property from this point.

I knew starting a chase would be pointless, even though the horse would tire out but I needed to think. I unhooked a gas can and topped the tank off, then pulled my AR out, using the scope to look. I should have brought binoculars. I cursed myself and kept looking. I saw the dust cloud continue south east from the property line and picked out a landmark when I couldn’t see anything anymore. I’d go into town and look at the topography map, probably at the same place that Jackson was right now.

I pulled the phone out. Two bars. I thumbed in Jackson’s number and waited a couple of rings.

“Jackson,” His voice floated out of the phone.

“Hey, it’s Cam.”

“Have you found anything out there?”

“Jumped a rider. Him and the horse went over the fence and headed southwest.”

“Well, that could be the Bart ranch or the reservation land I imagine,” Jackson’s voice was quiet and thoughtful.

“There’s a jutting of rock, looks like a middle finger pointing at the sky.”

“Ahhh, so it is on the reservation then.”

“You know it?” I asked him, happy with my good luck.

“Yeah, rode there as a kid all the time. Was that guy doing anything?”

“No, not that I could find. You find anything there?”

“Not much that makes sense. Let’s have some coffee in the morning when you get back in,” he told me.

“Might not plan on being back by morning,” I mused aloud.

“Well, try your best. I may have something but if I do, it doesn’t make any sense to me.”

“It’s about the permit?” I asked him.

“Something like that. Just meet at my place in the morning. I’ll let Ms. Alison know.”

“Sounds good boss.”

I ended the call. I needed more answers, but I wanted to do this quiet now. Maybe I’d stash the quad and come in on foot, I thought to myself before driving it out of the river bottom and pulling some brush over it to conceal it near the corner boundary. I chipped off a flat patch of bark from the dead tree and backed up a hundred yards and went through the motions of bore sighting the rifle and trying to get the scope zeroed in. I took a few shots, adjusted it, made a few more and backed up further. The shots hadn’t been blowing through the thick gnarled trunk of the old tree and would stop anything but an all out miss. I was going to see how good of a job I’d done when I let the lead fly from 300 yards. I made minor adjustments, but I was pretty confident I could hit what I’d aim at in a pinch now.

I figured I made a weird sight if any outsider saw me. I was wearing traditional cowboy garb, but I had what looked like a beefy M16 in my hands as I slung a couple canteens over one shoulder and my emergency satchel over the other. I left everything else. I was more worried about kicking up dust and making noise more than I was worried about concealment. I knew how to move with the local growth, how to blend into shadows and I wasn’t wearing neon orange or yellow. The blues and blacks in my outfit would help me blend in.

I checked my phone one more time, but had no updates. I pocketed it and slipped under the fence and started walking. The terrain changed slowly over time. The back of the property was brushy scrub, but I was moving into a grassy plain. I kept the older riverbed on my right as I walked. Within an hour of walking past the fence I ran into the first signs of man’s work. Heavy machinery had flattened and scraped the land flat. I circled the area widely, keeping my eye on the riverbed and kept going, trying to puzzle out what they were planning on doing there. In another ten minutes I came to the blockage.

It was concrete pilings, placed there by crane like the ones they use for dividers during road construction. They made a base along the bottom of the river, stacked in such a way the water rose, it gave enough resistance to let the water first pool up and then flow in a new direction until a new channel was cut. One dusty two track dirt road led off towards the mountains. I pulled out my phone and made a waypoint on the GPS program. Then used it to take pictures of the blockage in the river, and attached the picture and the GPS coordinates and attached them to a text message to Alison. I couldn’t figure out how to do the multi person thing that Ali showed me, so then I did the same thing with Jackson and to the phone number she had programmed in for Bill.