Twisted Arrangement 4 (21 page)

Even Todd had to admit, it didn’t look good. He stood, stark naked, in the waist deep, brackish water of the little lake outside Haverston Arena. He was several sheets to the wind, the flush of alcohol hot in his cheeks, and Ray Combs’s equally naked girlfriend clung like a limpet to his neck. She was giggling.

Todd was pretty sure his ‘Hold on now, Ray, it’s not what it looks like,’ had gone completely ignored. But in all honesty, it wasn’t what it looked like. Todd gritted his teeth and unwound Peggy’s pale, slender arms from around his neck, pushing her firmly away. She pouted, her overly lipsticked mouth a dark red moué, and crossed her arms over her surgically-enhanced breasts.

Ray rolled his head on his massively broad shoulders, cracking his neck. Todd held up his hands, palms out. Ray wasn’t as tall as he was, but his body was thick with muscle. Todd had only been on the rodeo circuit a couple of months, but he’d seen Ray bronc riding enough to know the man was solid as a brick wall.

“Ray, listen to me...” He cut a quick glance at Peggy, begging her with his eyes to step in an help him explain. She gave a little ‘hmmph’ and clamped her lips together. Her mildly pretty face twisted mulishly. He obviously wasn’t going to get any help from that quarter.

His quickly sobering brain couldn’t help but wonder if she’d orchestrated this little scene. Or at least hoped for this outcome. The few times he’d run into her on the circuit, she’d been with a different guy, and she’d hit on him a number of times. He’d turned her down, of course. He didn’t poach other men’s women, and he wasn’t really into the whole buckle bunny scene.

Peggy, apparently, wasn’t the type to take no for an answer. Todd wasn’t sure she’d been the one to first bring up the idea of him swimming the lake. He’d had too much to drink to remember exactly. But he knew she’d been loudly egging him on when Terry bet him he couldn’t swim across the little lake and back in under three minutes.

Terry had made a good time in the calf-roping competition earlier, won a decent purse, and was celebrating by drinking a ridiculous amount of beer out of the cup-like trophy he’d received. Todd matched him drink for drink most of the night, and now his blood was thick and bubbling.

The liquor, coupled with his inability to ever say ‘no’ to a dare, had made the bet seem easy. And the first lap had been, in fact. He’d been winning when Peggy had stripped down too, declared he needed a handicap for the return lap, and tried to climb onto his back like he was a bull in the chute.

“You think I’d try something on with your girl? With everyone standing right here, watching?” Todd kept his eyes on Ray, but swept a hand at the crowd, mostly other cowboys and a handful of hangers-on, who sat or lounged around the small bonfire. There were maybe fifteen or twenty people in all, and they were all quiet, watching the drama unfold between Todd, Ray, and Peggy. A muscle in Ray’s jaw jumped and the acid burning in Todd’s stomach pitched. “Terry bet me I couldn’t make it across the lake and back, that’s all.”

He cut his eyes at Terry and he breathed a small sigh of relief as the beefy blond nodded his head vigorously.

“He’s telling you the truth, Ray. Peggy just... ahh...” Terry trailed off, dropping his glassy brown eyes down to his scuffed boots, apparently realizing that it wasn’t going to help matters to point out that it was Peggy’s idea to get naked and climb on top of another man in full view of all of Ray’s buddies.

Ray hadn’t spoken since he’d stalked into the circle of firelight, calling for Peggy, and found her wrestling with Todd in the water. Todd had only been trying to unhook her from his back at the time, but again, he knew it couldn’t have looked good to the other man.

Never should have taken the bet.

Or maybe that hadn’t been the mistake. Stripping, then. He’d known Peggy was in the audience, and that she’d been making a point of pursuing him. But, of course, the alcohol and the thrill of the dare had over-ridden whatever common sense he might normally have.

Getting naked in the presence of a determined buckle bunny whose current cowboy had a temper and ham-sized fists; that had been his mistake.

“You know I would never disrespect you like that, Ray.” Todd hoped his voice, rough and slurred with alcohol, conveyed his sincerity. He did respect Ray. The man was a master of horseflesh and a whirlwind in the saddle.

Ray’s nostrils flared and he took another step closer to the shoreline. Todd tensed. He didn’t want to fight Ray, but if the other man took a swing, he wasn’t about to stand by and let himself be pummeled for no reason.

Thankfully, Peggy seemed to finally realize the precariousness of the situation. Or maybe she’d just gotten what she wanted. She strode out of the water, reaching for Ray, heedless of the other men’s eyes on her naked body, and cooed at him. “Honeybun, you don’t really think I want anyone but you, do you? Why would I want a boy when I’ve got me a man?”

Todd felt a spark of anger in his gut at her reference to his age. He got razzed a lot by the older guys, since he’d only been able to drink legally for a couple of months. But he let it go. He’d learned at a young age that it was best to pick your battles. It was a lesson that stuck with him, taught at the end of Aunt Margaret’s strap.

Ray’s eyes had shifted from him to Peggy, and Todd mustered what he hoped was a firm but placating expression. He could live with slightly wounded pride in order to avoid having his face pounded in.

Peggy finally reached her current man and wrapped her wet body around him in the kind of embrace that belonged in the bedroom. There were hoots and hollers from the other occupants of the gathering as she laid a loud, wet kiss on Ray. After a moment, the big man kissed her back, wrapping his thick arms around her waist and hauling her away into the darkness. Presumably, the two were heading back to Ray’s trailer.

“Shit, was that some kind of weird foreplay for them, or what?” Todd’s flippant tone cracked through the last of the tension that lay thick over the scene. Terry guffawed and slapped one denim clad thigh.

“Well, that Peggy sure does like drama. Wouldn’t surprise me.”

Todd shoved fingers through his wet hair, feeling some of the tightness in his shoulders ease as the threat of Ray’s wrath subsided. “Man, I can’t stand chicks like that. The ones that stir up trouble just for fun.” He shook his head, but his lips quirked. He knew if his sister was here, she’d snort and roll her eyes at his pronouncement.

It was true, though. He didn’t mind random hook-ups with drama queens. They could be tigers in the sack. But he didn’t do relationships with them.

Not that he did relationships often at all. But when he did, he preferred the quiet, sweet girls who’d rather stay at home and watch a movie on Netflix over the kind of woman who wanted to go out to a bar and cause a ruckus. Emma said it was because those kind of women were too much like him and he wanted to be the most dramatic one in any relationship. He wanted to argue with that assessment, but he couldn’t.

“Right, because causing trouble is clearly
your
department,” a new voice snarked, oddly echoing his sister’s words.

Todd frowned into the firelit gloom, looking for the speaker. When his eyes met hers, he froze. Lightning crackled along his skin.

She was sitting beside a cowboy named Eric. Todd didn’t know the guy well, but it was clear from his body language that the woman was his, at least tonight. Eric’s arm was looped loosely around her waist, his lean body angled toward her. Todd’s eyes followed the curve of her waist easily, bared as it was by the shirt tied tightly beneath her ample breasts.

Her hips flared out, rounded softly beneath the worn denim of her shorts. Below the frayed hems, her legs were long and tan and smooth, disappearing into a pair of boots that had seen better days. Her hair was dark, brown or black, it was hard to tell in the dim light, and it fell in soft waves down her back. And her face... hell, her face was exquisite. Todd didn’t think he’d ever seen a woman as naturally beautiful as the one staring daggers at him from across the fire.

She had a strong chin and slightly rounded cheeks. Her eyes – he couldn’t tell their color from this distance – were tilted upward at the corners, giving her features an exotic air. Her nose was straight and thin, just a touch too long. Her mouth made his already heated blood boil.

“Do I know you?” He couldn’t take his eyes from that mouth, with its soft curves, the lower lip much plumper than the upper. Her mouth was small, and despite her acerbic words and the look she was still giving him, that mouth was turned upward at the corners as if a smile hovered there, just waiting to burst out.

“No.” She shook her head in emphasis and sipped her beer. What her mouth did to the  beer bottle was so sexy Todd was glad he was still waist deep in the lake. “But I know you. Or your type, anyway.”

Todd opened his mouth to protest that he wasn’t a ‘type’, but whoever she was, she wasn’t going to give him the chance. She pulled out of Eric’s hold and popped to her feet. With a quick brush of her lips against the other man’s cheek, and not another word, she too faded into the darkness.

“What the hell?” Todd scanned the rest of the crowd, wondering if any of them understood why the lush beauty had seemed so put out at him. His gaze rested on Eric finally. The redheaded cowboy had sharp features and cold blue eyes. When he caught Todd’s look, he shrugged.

“Dunno, man. Sometimes Carla’s just a fucking bitch.”

There was laughter at that, but Todd shook his head and trudged toward his discarded clothes. First Peggy, and now this Carla chick giving him grief. He’d better steer clear of women for the rest of the night. His luck was out in that department, apparently.

He caught the gleam in a tiny little blonde’s eye as she watched him tug up his boxer shorts. Todd flashed her a grin. It grew bigger when she giggled and ducked her head. He quickly reconsidered his stance on female companionship for the night.

Todd was, after all, all about taking risks.

***

The blonde’s name was Cami. ‘With an i’, she’d explained as she led him, still giggling, back to her motel room. Todd had wondered briefly is this was really an issue that came up so often she had to clarify it right out of the gate, but then the delightful Cami had begun doing things with her mouth other than giggling, and the thought had escaped him.

“Leaving already?” she mumbled sleepily now, trailing long-nailed fingers down his naked back. Todd gave her a crooked grin, yanking his jeans up his legs.

“Have to be up early, Cami. We roll out at five thirty.” Despite the late nights, the rodeo circuit, like the ranching that spawned it, meant a lot of early mornings. The horses didn’t much care if you spent the night celebrating your win.

Cami pouted, her lips thin and devoid of the candy pink gloss she’d worn earlier. He was pretty sure that was slicked over various parts of his body. The thought made him long for a shower, but he wasn’t lying about needing to get back. Hank was a stickler for departure times and Todd didn’t make enough money on the circuit yet to go off on his own.

“Will I see you in Athens?” Cami’s sleepy eyes slid down his torso, resting on the trail of hair disappearing into his jeans longingly, making it very clear which part of him she was most interested in seeing in Texas.

He snatched his shirt from the chair where she’d flung it earlier and shrugged it on. Todd didn’t even bother with the buttons. The eager blonde had yanked several of them off in her earlier haste to lick him.

The remembered huskiness of her voice as she’d moaned, ‘Oh god, I just have to lick every inch of you’ was almost enough to lure Todd back to her rumpled bed. Almost.

“Dunno, honestly. Hank’s the one who sets up the schedule. I just go with the flow, doll.” Todd winked, shoving his feet into his boots, and leaned down to give her a quick kiss. She tasted like beer and cigarettes, her thin lips a bit chapped. He thought briefly of fuller lips. He’d bet Carla didn’t smoke. Todd shoved the errant thought away. “If I don’t see you in Athens, I’m sure I’ll see you around somewhere else.”

Cami might look like the sweet, innocent types he normally went for, but she was obviously familiar with the realities of this life. She nodded, tugging the sheet back up over her bare breasts and rolling to her side. “Sure thing, handsome. Thanks for the ride.” She giggled again, smothering a yawn behind her hand.