He shakes his head and grins. “I’ll be shocked if you stay on for more than three seconds.”
I roll my eyes. “Thanks for the confidence.”
“Prove me wrong, sweetheart,” he says and heads back to the partition he sits behind. “You ready?” he calls out toward me, and all I can do is nod.
And swallow hard.
The bull jerks, startling me into action, and I try to follow Beard’s instructions, mentally chanting his words in my mind.
Strong grip. Loose torso. If the bull moves forward, you lean back. If the bull moves upward, you ... shit ... what the hell do I do?
The bull jerks some more, each movement getting more erratic and difficult for me to anticipate, and all the instructions that Beard gave me go straight out the flipping window when my body is catapulted forward as the bull’s big robotic head looks toward the ground.
I stay on him for a hot second, even though gravity wants to pull me to the ground, but the big bastard pulls a fast one on me and yanks his head straight up and then to the right and the left, and my body gives its best impression of a rag doll as I’m tossed in the air, straight off the bull’s back and toward the padded ground.
And when I look at the clock, I see the number four staring back at me in bright-red letters.
Four seconds?That was only four seconds?It felt like a freaking hour!
Dom jumps over the gate in one smooth motion and heads over to help me stand, and when his eyes lock with mine, all I see is acombination of worry and care sitting beneath the deep pools of blue and green. “You okay?”
I nod, my hands shaking with adrenaline and my legs acting like those of a newborn foal as I try to figure out how to walk again.
“You sure?”
I nod again, but this time, a peal of exhilarated laughter escapes my lungs. “That was incredible!”
“You were incredible,” he corrects me and presses a soft kiss to my lips.
“I only managed four seconds.” I roll my eyes. “Pretty sure that’s not incredible in the world of bulls.”
“You’re a badass, Hannah.” He kisses me again. “But now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go be slightly more badass.” He winks then, squeezing my butt cheeks mischievously as he does, and I swat a hand against his chest on a laugh.
“I’m worried that bull isn’t going to be strong enough to hold that big ego of yours, cowboy.”
As he laughs, my heart does a little flip. The way Dom looks at me, like I’m the only woman in the world, makes me feel things I’ve never let myself feel before. He makes me want more—of him, of life, of everything I’ve denied myself for so long.
Clearly, it’s time to stop denying it. It’s time to give in. It’s time to enjoy. It’s time to live.
Yeah. It is.
Dom heads straight for the bull, and I find a safe spot behind the gate to watch.
He hops up on the monstrosity like it’s no big thing and proceeds to grip the leather strap with one of his hands. Beard doesn’t spend nearly as much time with him as he did with me, and I silently wonder how many times Dominic Dunn has ridden this bull.
With a thumbs-up to Beard, Dom lifts his free hand in the air, and just before the bull starts to move, he flashes a smile and a wink in my direction.
I feel it all the way to my freaking toes.
The bull starts to move, but Dom doesn’t startle like I did. Nope. He’s cool, calm, and collected—the sexy bastard—and his body appears at ease, as though he knows exactly what to do.
At four seconds in, he’s still on the bull, and the way the thing is whipping up and down and side to side makes me realize Beard went easy on me.
At six seconds in, Dom takes his cowboy hat off his head and starts waving it around in the air with his free hand.
At seven seconds in, he’s still on the damn bull and a crowd of people has formed around the gate to watch.
And once the clock hits eight seconds, cheers and hoots and hollers erupt around the bar, and Dom hops off the bull with the kind of confident, cocky-as-hell smile that only he could pull off without looking like a dick.
