Page 8 of Cam
My woman, my sweet little red, was gone. I didn’t know her name and all I had was the scent and taste of her. My fingers were sticky. Lifting them up, her arousal coating them was the proof that I wasn’t losing my fucking mind.
I froze, staring at my raised hand. Because in the bright lights of the front of The Roadside, it wasn’t just her sticky cream that coated them, but blood, too.
Either Red was on her period, which I doubted, or… holy fucking hell… I popped her cherry.
5
TAYLOR
It had beena long day with both a morning and afternoon riding tour at Wild Wild Wilderness, one of the places I worked as a guide. One of the horses, Karl, had gone lame and I’d switched with a customer and let Amber lead the group along the rest of the ride while I walked him down the trail back to the stable.
Then, I volunteered for extra hours tending to the horses and getting them set for the night.
The company offered a variety of guided tours in the hills around Devil’s Ditch. Hikes, mountain bike rides, and horseback riding. I led the horseback ridingtours. But it was September and all of those would taper off in the next few weeks as the weather turned consistently cold and the last summer vacations were replaced with back-to-school. Once the snow fell, snowmobile, cross country skiing, and snowshoe tours would start up, except that wasn’t until close to the New Year, and that was if we got early snow. Because my job was tourist dependent, I also worked part time at the Feed and Seed.
Everyone had left for the day, the main office closed. I was in the stable behind the main building. I’d turned the radio on and I was brushing down Jerry, a fifteen hand Tennessee Walking Horse. My mind wandered as I worked, as it had all week, to Cam Wilder.
I didn’t know.
I didn’t know the hot guy from the bar Saturday night was aWilder.
I knew them. There were nine siblings. I’d gone to school with Shep and had seen him and his younger brother, Zeb, back in the day at high school events. I knew Shep was a mechanic now, his own shop was across from the fire station on Main. I heard Zeb was at college in Missoula and played football. The rest of the Wilder siblings were much older than me, including Cam.
I, of course, knew Lainey since we both competed in barrel racing competitions.
The rest of the guys, I didn’t know.
Like, I didn’t even know what they looked like.
Obviously, since I’d walked right up to Cam Wilder and I literally melted for him like a pat of butter on an oven-hot biscuit.
I groaned, remembering and Jerry knickered. I had the worst luck ever.
Rod Severs had been a shitty boyfriend, a complete user and gaslighter. He’d tricked me for months and strung me along. Lied. After I learned all that he’d done, I’d been upset for weeks. I still was.
But last Saturday? With Cam Wilder?
I felt worse–like I’d had a glimpse of something real and pure but it’d been snatched away, and I’d only known him for about fifteen minutes.
Sure, he’d had his mouth on my pussy on the side of The Roadside where anyone could have seen us, which meant there was a shit ton more connection and chemistry with Cam than the entire few months I’d sorta dated Rod.
But why did the perfect man have to be a Wilder?
It’d been my fault that his father had almost died.
I paused, my brush on Jerry’s flank as I took a deep breath and stared at the ceiling.
Rod had wanted the prize money I could make as a competitive barrel racer… if I won. Back in July, he’d ensured that happened at great expense to the Wilder family. Lainey, my biggest competitor, had been kidnapped and her horse drugged… orchestrated or done by Rod personally. Her father, Mr. Wilder, had been hurt because of it. Really hurt. He’d been in a medically induced coma for three days. I asked around–which was easy to do in a town as small as Devil’s Ditch–about how he was doing after I visited him the one time in the hospital, admitted what Rod had done and how I’d been involved to all of the Wilders who’d been in his room, including Colt, the town sheriff.
Thank God, he’d responded well to the treatment and was home. After two months, I heard he was back to his old self. No thanks to me.
Needless to say, I’d steered clear of the Wilders since.
I set my forehead on Jerry’s flank, the closest thing I was going to get to a hug these days.
“The fucker,” I muttered, but Jerry didn’t do anything but turn his head and give me the side eye. “I’m ashamed, Jer. Hurt. Embarrassed. Guilty.”
Now, I avoided the Wilders as best I could. I saw Lainey at the grocery store once and I’d ducked intothe cleaning aisle to avoid her. I hadn’t competed since the rodeo at the county fair where Rod had drugged her horse and hit Mr. Wilder on the head so she could feel safe after what happened.
