Cowboy Heat Read online

  COWBOY HEAT

  WESTERN ROMANCE

  FOR WOMEN

  EDITED BY

  DELILAH DEVLIN

  FOREWORD BY

  BETH WILLIAMSON

  Copyright © 2014 by Delilah Devlin.

  All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or online reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published in the United States by Cleis Press, Inc.,

  2246 Sixth Street, Berkeley, California 94710.

  Cover design: Scott Idleman/Blink

  Cover photograph: Rob Lang/Getty Images

  Text design: Frank Wiedemann

  First Edition.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-62778-050-6

  Contents

  Foreword • BETH WILLIAMSON

  Introduction

  Mrs. Morgan and the Marshal • EMMA JAY

  Remember • MIA HOPKINS

  Cowboy Downtime • CHEYENNE BLUE

  Coming Home • MEGAN MITCHAM

  Her Captured Cowboy • LAYLA CHASE

  Backstage Pass • CYNTHIA D’ALBA

  Unfinished Business • CAT JOHNSON

  At the Mercy of the Cowboy • AMBER LIN

  Cowboy Adonis • MICHAEL BRACKEN

  Denim and Lace • ROBIE MADISON

  One-Track Cowboy • DELILAH DEVLIN

  Skin Deep • RANDI ALEXANDER

  Drop Two Tears in a Bucket • SHOSHANNA EVERS

  A Cowboy for Delilah • SABRINA YORK

  Shall We Dance? • MYLA JACKSON

  About the Authors

  About the Editor

  FOREWORD

  One of the enduring genres in television, films and books is the Western. People have always been fascinated with cowboys. That has not changed in over 150 years, and I don’t expect it will anytime soon.

  Personally, I have been in love with cowboys since I saw my first Western about forty years ago as a little girl. And when I read my first Western romance? I was HOOKED. Utterly hooked.

  One of the questions people often ask me is, “Why do you write Westerns? There are better genres out there.”

  No, there aren’t any better than Westerns! The reason I write them? Because cowboys are my kinda men. Being a cowboy in the nineteenth century was different from being a cowboy today. Yet, the core of the cowboy remains constant. That’s what appeals to me, calls to my inner feminine side.

  Calloused hands, well-worn jeans, broad shoulders, powerful thighs and the lean-hipped swagger. It’s like the secret formula to an addiction I can’t control.

  What else defines a cowboy? For me, they are like modern-day knights. I know that sounds a bit corny, but let me ’splain. Knights were fierce warriors, but they had a code that set them apart from other men—honor, integrity, dignity and balls of steel.

  Cowboys have to be hard, inside and out, but at the same time they feel as deeply as anyone. If not deeper. How could I not write and read stories about cowboys? I fall in love with them from the moment I type their names, feel their hands and hold their hearts in mine.

  The stories in this anthology bring you, the reader, on a wild ride. So grab a glass of ice water, settle back and get ready for some cowboy heat.

  Beth Williamson

  Bestselling author of Unbridled and Hell for Leather

  INTRODUCTION

  For years, I lived in the Texas Hill Country, where my ranchstyle house was one of many look-alikes in a rural subdivision, with my backyard butted up against a working ranch. After I woke to the insistent mooing of a cow at my bedroom window and her moist breaths fogging the glass, I put up a chain-link fence, which gave me a unique vantage.

  My view was panoramic—grassy fields, clumps of wild-flowers, rolling hills, a tall, rugged escarpment in the distance and cowboys riding horses and motorized mules as they herded cattle.

  Those cowboys came in all sizes and shapes, but wore “the uniform” well—chambray shirts year round, occasionally torso-hugging T-shirts, if they didn’t expect to be in the sun too long, Wranglers (do cowboys wear anything else?) and scuffed, broken-in boots.

  And then there was the hat. Those cowboys I watched from my backyard might have worn the same brand of pale, straw cowboy hat, but the brims were shaped according to their individual preferences—some draped low over deep-set eyes, some brims curled tight at the sides to tell you the man wearing it was a little wild and likely playful. If I’d known what I was going to be when I “grew up,” I would have learned the language of those hats.

  What I did learn was that their muscled frames weren’t honed in any gym—cowboys work damn hard. And they take pride in what they are—a living, American icon. Honest, protective and on the side of justice, they walk the walk.

  My favorite memories are of strolling down the sidewalk in the small nearby town and passing a tall, lean cowboy coming the other way. Without fail, he’d touch his hat and give me a nod. More often than not, he’d say, “Howdy, ma’am.” As corny as that scenario might be, that greeting never failed to make me blush and smile. Back when I wasn’t free to act on my attraction, I had my little fantasies. Maybe cowboys made me what I am.

  Seems plenty of writers love a sexy cowboy, too. Narrowing down the choices from the deluge of sexy stories I received for this collection was tough. In the end, I selected the stories that turned me on and made me wish I was the girl enjoying her first cowboy. You’ll meet rodeo cowboys, Outback jackaroos, cowboys from all over the Western states—all of them turning up the heat on the one girl they can’t let go. Enjoy the slow burn.

  Delilah Devlin

  Central Arkansas

  MRS. MORGAN AND THE MARSHAL

  Emma Jay

  Sybil Morgan swung down from the wagon, her skirt and petticoat trailing in the stirred-up dirt of the road outside the general store. She looped the reins over the hitching post and tugged at the waist of her bodice. Wearing a dress was only one reason she hated coming to town. Out on her ranch, she could wear britches and move around with ease, not worrying about getting dirty, getting snagged, being so damned hot.

  But a respectable widow had to keep up appearances. She straightened her bonnet and measured her steps so she didn’t trip on her skirts as she walked into the general store.

  A few townspeople were in the store, which was stifling despite the open doors and windows. Determined to get this chore over with as quickly as possible, she pulled her list out of the pocket in her bodice and waited for the shopkeeper to finish with the other customers. Unaccustomed to standing still, she shifted from one foot to the other.

  The air changed and she turned her head to see the town’s marshal, Addison Taylor, in the doorway, removing his hat. He nodded in her direction and she inclined her head in response before turning her attention back to the shopkeeper, who now stood behind the counter with his hand outstretched for her list.

  She passed it over. “I’ll be back for the supplies in a few hours. I have other errands to attend.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Morgan.”

  She turned, head high, and sailed past the marshal, who stepped aside to let her pass before turning to follow her.

  “Mrs. Morgan,” he said, his voice a low rumble, barely heard above the sound of his boots on the boardwalk. “I’d like to have a word about the recent incidence of rustling on your ranch. Would you mind stepping across the street into my office?”

  “Of course,” she said, her nipples hardening beneath her confining bodice when he curved his hand beneath her forearm and guided her from boardwalk to dirt
street, past riders and other pedestrians. He released her to step ahead and open the door to his office, letting her precede him. When she paused in front of his desk in the empty office, he locked the door behind them, took her hand again and led her into the back and up the stairs to his rooms.

  Her heart thundered harder as she absorbed the feel of his rough palm against her bare hand, as she tried to match his determined stride, stumbling on her skirts, damn it.

  He tugged her into his apartment over the office, closed the door and latched it in a flurry of movements before he turned to her and loosened her bonnet. He pushed it back from her face so it tumbled to the floor, and curved his hand over her cheek.

  “It’s been too long,” he said softly, and covered her mouth with his.

  She bowed into the heat, into the strength of him. She curled her fingers into his shoulders, those broad shoulders she loved to hold. He hadn’t shaved, and the prickles of his beard scratched her lips. Instead of pulling back, she pressed closer, parting her lips, welcoming his tongue.

  She loved the taste of him, coffee and whiskey and male, loved the slide of his tongue along hers, the intimacy of it. He was skilled at kissing, her marshal, his tongue clever in its knowledge of her mouth, knowing if he touched her there her nipples would ache, and her sex—he called it her pussy, but she had trouble even thinking the word—would grow hot and damp. She could stand here and kiss him all day, savoring the roughness of his unshaven flesh against her tender skin.

  He reached between them as he kissed her, and unfastened her bodice, starting at the bottom. She held her breath as if that would help him, but that made kissing difficult.

  Her husband had never undressed her, had always waited in the bed for her to join him. They’d never kissed outside of bed, had never touched, not even in the most casual of ways. That her marshal seemed to delight in it delighted her. She stepped back just a bit to let him push the stiff fabric of her bodice off her shoulders, then he closed his hands around her corseted waist. He didn’t kiss her again right away, just looked at the way his fingers circled her, almost touching, his hands rough against the silky fabric.

  “You don’t need this,” he murmured in that rough drawl of his.

  “Proper ladies wear them whether they need them or not.”

  His gaze flicked to hers, brown eyes amused. “Is there a proper lady I don’t know about under all those clothes?”

  She blushed and took a step backward, but he hauled her against him. She’d tried to resist, she had. But one look from him and she lost all sense of propriety, needing only to be in his arms, held by him.

  So strange, because she ran her ranch herself since her husband died, and needed no man. But being with her marshal made her feel safe and secure and cherished—things she hadn’t known she needed to feel.

  He unlaced the corset, which fastened in front since she had no one to dress her. His movements, combined with the way he looked into her eyes as he loosened the garment and let it fall away, heated her blood. Then his hands slid up her sides, over the damp wrinkled fabric of her chemise, and he stroked his thumbs over her breasts.

  She let her eyes flutter shut as he circled her nipples. Her favorite thing, the way he touched her like that, his movements easy and unhurried, as if he didn’t know the caresses sent arrows of heat straight to her sex.

  He lowered his head and his breath gusted against her skin a moment before he brushed his mouth lightly over her chin, following the line of her jaw back to nuzzle the soft spot beneath her ear.

  She whimpered—a sound she only made with him, only made when he was touching her.

  He chuckled and brought her closer, his hands spanning her back, her breasts crushed to his chest. She curled her fingers into his hair, holding him to her, guiding him where she wanted his mouth.

  He allowed her control for a moment before breaking free and drawing her shimmy off her shoulders, baring her breasts, staring for a long moment before lowering his head to take one dark nipple between his lips.

  No, this was her favorite thing, she remembered, as her knees buckled, as her sex swelled and throbbed with need.

  “Please, please,” she whispered.

  He released her nipple with a pop and looked up at her. “Please what?”

  She didn’t know. Well, she did—she wanted him to touch her sex, to take this horrible hunger for him down to a more manageable level—but at the same time, the anticipation was delicious.

  “Don’t stop,” was all she managed.

  He bent his head again and blew a cool breath over her damp nipple. It tightened so much it ached, but instead of appeasing her, he turned his head to her other breast.

  As he suckled her, he reached up and pulled the pins from her hair, letting the heavy mass fall down her back. The cool sensation of it against her naked shoulders and back was almost as arousing as his mouth at her breast, because she knew soon it would be the only thing she was wearing.

  He unfastened her skirt with one twist of his fingers. The garment caught on the width of her petticoats, which he untied without looking. The fabric pooled at her feet, leaving her in her shimmy, stockings and boots. He lifted her from amid the puddle and carried her to his bed, lowering her to the mattress and sliding down her body to push her shimmy up and unfasten her cotton stockings. He held her gaze as he rolled them down, his hands rough on the sensitive skin of her thigh. Her shallow breathing only made him take his time, caressing every inch of her leg before disposing of one stocking and turning his attention to the other one.

  “Aren’t you a picture?” he murmured once the garments were tossed aside. He slid his hands up her legs, pushing the shimmy so it bunched at her middle. His fingers rested lightly on her hips as he looked at her sex, then pressed a light kiss to the inside of her knee.

  Everything in her began to quiver. The last time they’d been together, he’d coaxed her legs apart and kissed her there, shaming her, initially, but in the days that followed, she could think of nothing but the pleasure he’d given her with his mouth, his tongue. And he’d taken pleasure in it, too. That had surprised her as much as anything.

  Feeling a little bold, she parted her legs in invitation. He chuckled and glided his hand across her belly to stroke the curls cloaking her sex. She pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth as heat flooded her channel. She could feel her wetness in her folds.

  “Ah, god, Sybil.” His voice was choked and his eyes were hot.

  She parted her thighs wider and could smell her own musk. Her head swam with desire, and she had to ask. “Will you kiss me there again?”

  “Kiss you where?” His smile canted, so handsome he made her heart hurt. “Here?” He pressed his lips to the inside of her knee, in the same spot he’d kissed before.

  “Higher.”

  He slid between her parted knees, his body hot and hard, and kissed her inner thigh, letting his stubble rasp the tender skin. She bit her lower lip against a keening cry.

  “Higher.”

  He lifted himself over her and kissed below her navel. She twisted in frustration, hooking her feet on his belt to push him down.

  “Lower.”

  His lips slid over her belly, just above her curls. “Tell me what you want, Sybil.”

  No one called her Sybil anymore. Even her husband hadn’t. And she loved the way it sounded on his lips, gentle despite the roughness of his voice. Tender.

  Dear heaven, was she falling in love with this man? That wasn’t supposed to happen. This was an arrangement for two independent people who didn’t need love, didn’t need marriage.

  “Kiss me. Between my legs.”

  “On your…” He trailed his voice off, leading her.

  “On my…puss.” She thought her face would burst into flames as she said the word, looking into his eyes.

  He smiled and lowered his head, his thumbs parting her, and then a flick of his tongue over her tender flesh sent her bowing into him. He repeated the caress, sliding one hand
under her bottom to hold her still. Her entire being focused on the movement of his mouth on her slick petals, the circling of his tongue, the heat of his breath, each caress building, building, winding around in her. She didn’t realize her hands were twisted in his hair, holding him to her, until he reached up to loosen them. Then he pressed her legs open farther, focusing on the little nub he’d helped her discover, flicking and sucking until she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see.

  She climaxed with a cry that might have been heard all the way down Main Street, but she didn’t care as waves of pleasure rolled through her, loosening her muscles, her inhibitions.

  He lifted his head and looked at her. “I love to watch you come.”

  Come. That was what he called her climax. Orgasm, too, was another word he’d taught her. And fuck. She’d been so sheltered until she met him, until she’d allowed him into her bed. She hadn’t known she was made like this, made for passion, until she met him.

  She closed her legs when he shifted to lie on his side, fully dressed beside her. “Is there something I can do to you that brings the same pleasure?”

  His eyes darkened, the passion in them almost frightening. “You can lick my cock.”

  She frowned. “And that feels as good to you?”

  “It can. Or you can put it in your mouth.”

  She mentally recoiled. How could she…oh, no. No, no, no, no, no. But twice he’d put his mouth where she’d never expected, and she owed it to him to try. She rose on her elbow and began unbuttoning his shirt.

  He allowed it, watching her face, which meant she kept her gaze on the buttons, and on the skin she bared. She ran her palm over the light fur covering his chest, a delicious sensation. Then with his help, she pushed the garment from his shoulders. Regaining some of her boldness, she kissed his shoulder, brushing her lips back and forth over the cap of muscle, feeling it bunch beneath her mouth. She followed her instincts, her own pleasure, and trailed her lips across his collarbone, down the center of his chest, feeling his breath hitch with each inch she moved.