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“Just like that,” I murmur, reaching down to run my hands through her hair.
Then she positions her lips and my tip and slowly, slowly, presses down, until my tip slides between her lips into her mouth. She keeps the pressure up, lips clamped tight around my shaft, and it’s almost enough to make me wild just feeling her hot, wet little mouth tight around me.
“God, you have the hottest fucking mouth, Sheila,” I murmur through my teeth.
She grins at that, and swirls her tongue along the underside of my cock, still taking me deeper, deeper…
Then she stops, hesitant, eyes wide. I’m as far into her mouth as I can go before her throat, I realize. “Relax,” I tell her, voice soft. “Just trust me and relax.”
She nods as much as she can and lets her muscles relax all around me. I grip her head with both hands, my fists tight in her hair, and pull her down farther. Until the tip of my cock hits the back of her throat, when I inhale a sharp hiss of air, unable to stop myself. She moans a little in response, and the vibrations around my cock drive me wild.
“Just like that, baby,” I tell her, and thrust a little deeper, just until my tip slides an inch down her throat. Fuck. This woman is incredible. I pull back then, guiding her by the hair, and she sucks in a deep breath before she presses her tongue against me again, at it once more.
We move like that, slow at first, letting her get used to taking my whole cock into her pert little mouth. Then, as she loosens up, she starts to rock faster, and I arch my hips to accommodate it, thrusting up into her mouth again and again as we move in sync. Before long, I’m thrusting into her, fucking her face with abandon as we both groan, and every moan she makes just sends my pleasure rocketing higher, building until—
A phone goes off.
Not the normal buzz of a phone call but the harsh, jarring bell sound, like an urgent alarm.
“Fuck!” Sheila pulls back, slides off me, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand as she lunges for the phone.
“What’s going on?” I ask, trying not to let my disappointment show, ignoring the aching throb in my cock from the unfulfilled moment.
“That’s the emergency alarm I set. I forgot I snoozed the first three earlier. Dammit!” She flies off the bed and flings herself across the motel room, throwing open the closet and digging inside.
I lean up on one elbow and eye the clock beside the bed. Then my eyes widen too. Shit. It’s nearly 1pm. We were supposed to be on the road by 10am, 11:30 at the latest. “We’re late?” I ask, belated, pushing myself off the bed and forcing myself to ignore the painful throb in my between my legs.
“Really fucking late. Dammit, how could I let this happen?” She grimaces and yanks our suitcases out of the closet, then starts to toss everything in sight into hers, without rhyme or reason.
“Hey. Hey. Sheila.” I finally catch her with both hands and pin her into place for a second. “It’ll be fine. It’s just a show.” I know what’s important now. Where my priorities lie.
But her eyes are still wide and wild with panic. “We’re not going to make warm-ups. We’ll be lucky if they even let you compete. Argh. I’ll have to call from the road, see if we can work you into a later time slot.” She twists out of my arms and finishes tossing things into the suitcase, then wades into the bathroom. I hear cabinets slamming in there. “Get dressed, Ruckus,” she calls from the bathroom, and I recognize that voice.
Sheila my lover has taken a vacation. Sheila my hard-assed manager is back.
I cross the room and grab my jeans, still in a crumpled pile at the base of the bed. I yank those on, and root around in the half-packed suitcase for a T-shirt to drag on after. “Don’t panic,” I remind her a second time.
My response is just a frustrated growl. “Just make some coffee, would you?”
We arrive at the rodeo with not a minute to spare. We leave all our junk in the car for now and head straight in to the show, where luckily the stable hands have managed to saddle my horse and get him ready and waiting. I jump onto his back just in time to hear them announce my name, and I paste on a confident grin as I ride out into the arena.
It’s not hard to fake my confidence this time. All I have to do is remember Sheila’s body spread out under me on the bed, or the way she smiles at me, and I know I can do just about any damn thing.
I catch her eye in the stands halfway through the first performance and take a second to mouth See?
She narrows her eyes, then rolls them, but I know she understands what I mean. See, there was no need to panic. Still, it takes another two performances for her to finally relax in her front row seat and begin to enjoy the show with the rest of the audience.
The first couple rounds are easy pickings, and I’m tied with another show-runner for the lead, when the third round rolls around. Barrel racing, something my horse and I do all the time in practice. Should be easy. We line up with the rest of the competitors and I watch a couple guys wipe out on the first row of the course. Tough luck, partners.
Then it’s our turn.
“We got this, boy,” I tell him, patting his neck as we line up to go. When the gun goes off, we jolt forward, racing around the first barrel. But on the second turn, his hooves skid, and it takes all my balance just to keep upright and steer him back into motion. We fling far wide of the barrels we’re meant to be tightly weaving around, and it takes a whole other barrel for us to get that momentum back. We finish okay, but it’s not great. Sloppy, technically poor.
Not like me at all.
In the stands, I catch a glimpse of Sheila. Her mouth is pressed in a tight line, her eyes almost as wide as the time I took a face-plant off the bull. Shit. Still, it could be worse. I force a smile, wave a little to catch her eye as I join the row of competitors waiting for the next round.
She grimaces and turns away without waving back.
I’ll tell her after. Explain how this isn’t a big deal. The rodeo is just my day job. And this was just one little flub. It’s not the end of the world. Just like our being late today—things happen.
By the end of the show, the scores are up. I’m in third. Not the worst, but not my usual first place by a landslide either, I have to admit.
But when I finish brushing down my horse, showering off the dust and mud and sweat from the ring, and finally emerge from the stadium lights, it’s to find Sheila waiting for me at the entrance, arms crossed, and a set look in her jaw that I recognize. Her I mean business look.
“Should I be worried?” I greet her with a smile, and lean in for the kiss I’ve been hungering for ever since we parted this morning.
She leans away, and I notice something flash across her eyes before she turns them downward. Something that looks an awful lot like pain. “We need to talk.”
The four worst words in the history of mankind. “What happened?” I ask.
“What happened?” She finally looks up again, and this time, I can tell she’s conjured anger to replace the pain I spotted. But she doesn’t seem angry at me. She’s directing most of her scowl inward, clamping her arms tighter around herself, pursing her mouth like she hates it. “What happened was I broke my rules. I broke them, and your performance is suffering for it. I should’ve known this would happen. It was a mistake from the beginning.”
“Sheila, what we did was far from a mistake.” I reach for her, but she twists away. She barely even registers I’m here. I can tell her attention is way too focused on herself. Blaming herself for everything that’s happened.
“The rules exist for a reason. They keep things in order. Prevent distractions.” She lifts her chin, and her eyes shine a little too brightly in the stadium lights, damp with the tears she’s holding back. “We have to stop.”
“There’s no way I’m quitting you, Sheila,” I say.
But she’s already backing away from me, toward the truck. “My decision is final, Ruckus. We need you back at the top of your game. Which means we’re done.”
“Fuck my game. Fuck the
rodeo. Sheila!” I call out, but she slams the door over that last word. Revs the engine and reverses away from the stadium before I can get another word in. I chase her for half the driveway before I finally skid to a halt, panting, and watch her taillights fade down the road.
Fuck.
She’s all I ever wanted. My everything. And she’s leaving me in the dust.
The anonymous little dive bar I hole up in is familiar. Dim lights, a sticky floor and the smell of stale beer and old sick clinging to every surface. It’s the kind of place I’m used to. The place a guy like me belongs.
But as I toss back my fourth—or was it fifth?—whiskey since I stumbled into the place, a sense of wrongness settles over me. None of this feels right anymore. None of this sates the monster inside the way it used to. I look around me and all I can see are other washed up old men like me drinking their pains away, or rather, temporarily staving them off until tomorrow morning, when those pains will return tenfold, with a hangover to boot.
I watch them, and I stare into the amber liquid in my glass, and I feel wrong.
I don’t belong here. I don’t belong with them, with these other guys who have agreed to give up, to settle, to surrender their lives.
I belong with her.
So go and chase her, son. I can practically hear my father’s voice. The exact, exasperated tone in which he’d say those words. I shove out of my seat and grab my jacket, turning to head for the door.
That’s when a pair of hands shove my chest. Make me stumble back against the table where I’d been sitting.
“You Rudolph Ruckus?” A guy about three times my size scowls down at me. He’s off-balance, listing from a little too much drink. I could probably take him, despite his size.
“Yeah. What’s it to you?” I lift my chin, look him square in the eye.
“Heard you caused a mess back in San Antonio,” he says.
Shit. The town one of the guys who is currently in the process of suing me is from. Suing me, all because I threw a lucky punch and shattered his nose, after he’d thrown the first punch, I might add. “Maybe,” I reply, half an eye on the door.
“Well, that was a mess you started with one of my friends.” The man lifts his chin. Glowers at me. “I aim to even the score.”
I think about Sheila. About her rules. I’ve broken two already. No fucking, no drinking. Why not go for the hat trick?
But something inside me stills. I think about the disappointment on her face. I think about all her self-anger when she met me outside the stadium. I think about how much more she’ll blame herself—and me—if I break this one last rule. So then, thinking of her, I do something I have never done in my life before.
I drop my coat, spread my arms wide, and close my eyes. “Go for it,” I say.
After a beat, I hear only silence. I open my eyes again to find the guy scowling at me, suspicion written all over his face. “What’re you talking about?” he finally growls.
“You want to even the score, go for it. Hit me. I won’t fight back. You’re right; I made a mess back in San Antonio. Least I can do is let you make one here, if you’re so determined.”
His beady eyes narrow. He huffs out a breath through his curved nose, and for a second, I think he might make good. Throw that punch. I brace myself for it, and already, explanations run through my mind. How I can explain a black eye to Sheila.
Then, to my shock, he lowers his fists. Steps back, not by much, but enough I can walk past him. “Just get out of my damn bar,” he spits.
“Gladly,” I reply, grabbing my coat. Though I do pause to toss back the last of my whiskey before I go. I ain’t a saint.
The walk from that dive isn’t far to the motel where we’d been planning to stay. We’d talked about getting one room. I wonder now if Sheila reserved two for us. I don’t want to think about that. I sway along the street, practicing walking straight until I get to the check-in counter. When I ask for the keys to the Greyson room, the clerk hands them over without even checking my I.D. I gotta have a word with them about that tomorrow, when I’m in better shape.
Then I head to Sheila’s room. Make it to the doorstep before I try and slick back my hair, regain some semblance of normalcy. Fuck. The motel is spinning.
I overdid it on the drink, but still. I can explain this all. I can make her see sense. I put the key in the lock, and I turn it.
6
Sheila
I let the front desk at the motel know to expect another guest. I tell them to give him his own room key, but when I hear the crash at the door, I guess they disregarded that. I roll over in bed—not that I’d been able to sleep a damn wink anyway—and flick on the light just in time to see Ruckus crash over the couch in the living room, nearly tripping straight onto his face.
I can smell the whiskey on him from here. God.
“Sheila!” he roars, desperation in his tone.
I leap out of bed and make it to the living room in time to help him right himself on the couch. Then he clamps onto my wrist and drags me down beside him. Between the dim light in here and his drunkenness, I pray he won’t notice how red and bloodshot my eyes are. I’ve been crying ever since I drove away from the stadium. Crying ever since I realized what us being together means.
I was right. Drinking, fighting, fucking, it’s all a bad influence. I didn’t think of our sex as fucking, not in the same way as meaningless hookups, but it’s clear from his performance today that it affected him. It hurt his chances at making finals. It’ll ruin his whole career if we keep going—the one thing I came here to prevent.
I can’t do that to him.
But now, looking at the mess he’s become, I wonder if I only made it worse.
“Sheila, look at me,” he says. And I do. I meet his eyes, and find them just as red and swollen as mine. He focuses on me. Reaches up to cup my cheek between his hands, and leans forward until our foreheads touch. “I love you, Sheila,” he says.
My heart skips a beat. “You’re drunk,” I reply.
“Doesn’t make that any less true. I love you,” he repeats, slurring a little more this time. He hiccups, then laughs at it, and then shakes his head, as though remembering something. “We aren’t a mistake, Sheila. I love you and I want to marry you.”
“Then how do you explain everything that happened today? Your performance in the ring—”
“Fuck the ring!” he shouts, louder than he expected, and then he blinks and lowers his voice. “Fuck it.”
“That’s your job, Ruckus. Your whole career.”
“I don’t care. Sheila. It’s my job—it’s just… just a damn job. That ain’t what life’s about.” He taps his chest with a closed fist, right over his heart. Right where his tattoo is. “Life’s about family. About love. I love you—that’s what matters. Everything else… just background noise.”
He leans back at that, swaying a little, eyes shut.
“Ruckus,” I murmur. Before I can say another word, he slips sideways onto the couch and starts to snore.
For a long moment, I just sit there gazing down at him. At this man who declared his love for me. The first man I ever slept with. The man who’s stolen my heart. Because, I realize in that moment, drunk or not, he’s telling the truth. He loves me… And I love him too.
There’s just one question left to answer, I think as I watch him sleep off the whiskey. Are he and I the mistake? Or maybe… are my rules the mistake in the first place?
7
Ruckus
I wake up at the crack of noon to find the motel empty. Second show tonight, same town, I remember. A chance to right my wrongs from last night.
So many wrongs.
I hold my throbbing head as I stumble to the kitchen and brew some coffee. To judge by the rumpled sheets in the bedroom, Sheila slept there. I don’t remember anything that happened after I got the key from the motel clerk—as though I saved my last drops of sobriety for that task. I barely remember the walk home from the bar, even. It’s a mira
cle I found this place.
Still, I hope I didn’t freak Sheila out last night. Or say anything I might regret.
I stand in the kitchen, letting the coffee clear my head until I can move enough to get my ass in gear. I know one thing—if I’m going to prove to Sheila that we aren’t a mistake, then I need to clean my act up. Starting by being on time for the show tonight and dominating the ring, if I’m able.
My head isn’t quite sure, but my heart tells me I’ve powered through far worse hangovers in my day. At least I don’t have a broken nose or any black eyes to contend with this time.
I manage to shower, get ready, put some food in my stomach and make it to the ring just in time for warm-ups to begin. I don’t see Sheila there, at least not during practice. That’s okay. If she wants space, fine by me.
After all, I did break even more of her rules last night. My head throbs with the reminder of it every time my horse jolts under me.
By the time we’re about ready to go into the ring and start the show, I’m at least recovered enough that I can sit comfortably in the saddle without worrying about the ensuing headache. But then I catch a familiar shock of hair moving through the pre-rodeo crowd toward me, and my gut starts to churn all over again, this time with anticipation.
Look, I know I broke your rules, Sheila, but I swear, I still think we’re the right thing.
No, maybe don’t lead with that? Or lead with I’m sorry for the drinking, but I don’t regret a moment of the fucking.
Still no.
I’m running through the words I want to say when Sheila steps up to my side. Before I can open with any of the half-thought-out speeches, she flings her arms around me. I hesitate, but only for a second, before I wrap mine around her, crush her small body to mine and savor the feeling of her in my arms.
“Sheila, I’m sorry about last night—” I start.
