Their Ex's Redrock Dawn (Texas Alpha Biker) Read online

  He grabbed Carly and pulled her from the evidence of a bed she’d slept in with another man, and he knew he was being unreasonable, but he couldn’t seem to help it. It just rolled over him.

  “You’re never sleeping with that bastard again,” he snarled, with the raw edges of command.

  Carly was blinking at him wide-eyed as he grabbed the back of her head and hauled her mouth to his. No way was he nice or easy, but hard and driven. Driven to brand her and wipe the images of her ever in that bed with another man. He latched her back, pulling her up on him, and she took his intensity with a passionate moan, then gave him back as much heat and urgency.

  Carly gasped as Zeb thrust inside her, while pulling her to the edge of the kitchen table so he could do it so amazingly hard. Her legs were wrapped around his hips and her jean skirt was bunched between their bodies. Her panties were in his fist on the table beside her.

  “Tell me never again.” His light blue eyes seared into her. He withdrew and slammed home again.

  “Never. Never,” she whimpered, and his lip pulled up in a sneer as he pumped faster, rocking the kitchen table.

  “Rub your clit,” he ordered as he rocked her harder.

  She panted little screeches, digging for her clit, while he plunged into her.

  “Zeb!”

  She looked down at him entering her so fast it made slapping sounds as she rubbed her clit. Her legs rose higher on his sides and she squealed in her throat as the blast of a sweet freaking gut-curling climax blazed through her core.

  She heard Zeb grunting, and she latched his neck with her nails digging in. “Come on, baby,” she gasped. “Give me that hot cock. Oh! Oh!”

  He groaned, shook his head, and rammed into her. His gaze pierced her as if it was his thick shaft. Then he held with a heavy shudder going through him.

  Ohmygod, they’d just had sex on her kitchen table.

  Stunning.

  Zeb’s mouth came down over hers and they kissed passionately for long moments. It had not escaped her that Zeb had become intensely possessive being in her house. A place where she used to sleep with her husband. The second Zeb had seen her bed he’d gotten all growly and dominant. It actually wiped away the pain from the evidence of her husband’s unfaithfulness.

  She discovered hot, urgent, and rough sex could blow pretty much anything out of her mind but Zeb. In fact, she decided it was a perfect way to deal with it all. She would continue having consuming, intense, and hot sex with Zeb. She’d never known she was a “hot” sex kind of person. Whether it was her age or she’d been an unknown slut all this time, she was diving into it with a passion like she’d never felt before.

  “Man, I don’t know what’s going on with me,” Zeb muttered as he pulled away from her. “I keep meaning to go slower but—hell.” He grumbled to a stop.

  Carly closed her legs. She knew they were going really fast but she wasn’t sure she cared. Zeb turned further away from her and she saw her panties left beside her on the table. She reached her hand to the back of his neck and squeezed his tense muscles.

  “If I walked into your house and I’d seen the bed you and your skanky wife slept in, I’d have you on the floor in a second. Me on top.”

  Zeb’s gaze turned to her with his light blue eyes glittering. “On top?”

  “Hard,” she told him, then she got serious. “I know it’s fast, honey. But I feel this thing between us I’ve never ever felt before.”

  He took her hand from his neck and brought his lips to her palm. He kissed it then uttered, “Yeah.”

  He felt it too.

  Now her eyes glittered.

  “I’m selling this junk pile of a house,” she declared. His slow smile would have melted her panties if she’d had them on.

  “We’ll see,” he said, leaning in and kissing her mouth slowly.

  Ten minutes later, she had her panties back on and her suitcases outside as she complained, saying, “I better take my car, because he insisted and he might wonder if I don’t.”

  “I’ll follow you, sweetness, and we can drop off the truck you borrowed.”

  She wanted to kiss him, but maybe she shouldn’t in front of the neighbors. He seemed to telepathically get that, or maybe he just thought that too, as he gave her a long, slow, body-crawling look, then he tossed her suitcases in the back of her four-door sedan.

  “Follow me to the casino; we’ll be going around back like last night,” she told him.

  Carly made sure Zeb was following her, because she was taking the back way to get to the casino. She kept part of her concentration on Zeb, but she knew he’d be good at following her, and with the other part, she thought about how basically she wasn’t going back home again. At least not as long as Rick was there.

  The house was technically hers because she’d owned it before they married, but she didn’t care about the house, since she’d really bought it as an investment. To live in for a while, then rent out. The house she really cared about ... her house was out by the lake.

  Part of her property at the lake was used as a safe house for WTSF girls getting out of bad situations when they needed to hide off the radar and let things cool down. The other part was her big lake house, but it was further out from town and not very practical for trying to come into do her volunteer work at WTSF. Rick didn’t even know about the lake house.

  She wondered why she’d never told him. Was it some sixth sense that knew he was rotten even as he was trying to con her into believing he wasn’t?

  “Why did he come back to me?” she exclaimed, while angrily flipping back her hair.

  She stopped her car at the stop sign on top of Mustang Hill; looking in her rearview she saw Zeb right behind her. She waved at him and her anger melted. How amazing was it to find a man like Zeb, and right at this particularly screwed-up time in her life?

  Her mind wandered to all things Zeb as she drove and thought about the prospects of getting to know him better, until she put her foot on the brake to slow her speed on the hill. But the brake pedal went to the floor. A second later she screamed in panic, realizing she had no brakes.

  “Slow down, sweetness,” Zeb growled under his breath as he checked the speed, then he got more irritated mixed with concern.

  He honked his horn twice. Was she a speed demon? It was dangerous, even out on the back-country road. Suddenly, he watched Carly’s speeding car veer over into the oncoming lane, then back, then veer again.

  “Damn it, something’s wrong,” he muttered.

  Her hand waved out the window, and it wasn’t a nice wave, but frantic. Was it her steering? There was no one else on the road, and at the bottom of the hill it looked like there was a stop sign.

  Zeb sped up the truck he was driving, to get beside her. They were running out of time. One glance over at Carly’s panicked features told him something was wrong as she swerved toward him and he shot past their imminent collision.

  Brakes? Steering?

  “What the hell is it,” he expelled, and with only seconds left he hit the intersection and checked it both ways. “Clear!”

  It was the bottom of the hill, and the road flattened and straightened for as far as he could see.

  Carly’s car whizzed past him. She had to be doing seventy. Zeb gunned his engine and worked to get past her, then he whipped in front of her and he did a controlled slowing, until her bumper tapped his. It jolted him, but their speeds finally started slowing.

  Just before a hairy curve in the rode, he got her stopped. Zeb threw the truck into park and pulled up the emergency brake before he flung out of the truck. Carly was sobbing with her face in the steering wheel as he slammed open her car door.

  “Brakes!” she wailed, and he crouched and caught her as she pitched into his arms.

  “No brakes,” he expelled, just making certain he’d got it right. She nodded as she bawled against his neck. “Fuck,” he cursed, dragging her tighter, feeling the adrenalin pump through him.

  Maybe his quick and
sure reactions were from being ex-military. It wasn’t long ago he’d been eating sand and making life-and-death decisions every hour. To say he was hyper-alert was an understatement.

  “How did you know?” she sobbed.

  “Ex-military thing,” he grumbled. “Come on, I’m taking you to the truck, baby.”

  “’kay,” she whimpered into his neck; she was shaking and it took him a while to calm her down, while she sat in the passenger side of the truck. Two vehicles pulled past them, with the drivers slowing to ask if they needed help. One knew Carly, and Zeb asked them if they could call a tow truck.

  “I’m going to push your car out of the way, baby. Sit tight,” he told her.

  What he did first, though, was look under her car. The puddle he saw of pinkish liquid made him cuss.

  Just then a tow truck showed up; quick in a small town. He let the guy talk to Carly, but as the tow truck driver was hooking Carly’s car up, Zeb said, “Don’t try to fix it. Just drop it and I’ll be by in the morning. I want to look it over.”

  “Sure,” the tow truck driver said.

  Zeb gave him his cell number and he went back to Carly, carrying her suitcases.

  “You know they are going to wonder.” Carly sniffled. “About you and me being together. It’s a small town.”

  Zeb grabbed her hand across the seat and lifted her knuckles to his lips to kiss. “The first words out of my mouth is, let them damn well wonder,” he said, but then he edited it. “But it’s your small town.”

  “I don’t care if anyone knows,” she whispered. “But I know you want to wait.”

  “It’s best,” he said against her knuckles, and he was thinking it was becoming vitally important.

  “I’ll pass a rumor around that you are a new WTSF badass. That should hold everyone’s tongue, but get ladies flocking to you to introduce you to their assets.”

  Zeb chuckled, at a not-appropriate chuckling moment, but she was too cute. Then he sobered ... he’d nearly lost her. That was not happening again. “I’ve got the best assets right here, and what is a WTSF badass?”

  Her gaze grew heated with his comment on her voluptuous assets, as she said, “All the men at WTSF are badasses. It’s known around.”

  “I might fit in,” he muttered. “Right now, we’ll take your things to my motel room.”

  “I like that I don’t have to ask to stay with you,” she murmured. “You saved my life, Zeb.”

  “That’s in my job description from now on, sweetness.”

  EIGHT] Done For The Wrong Reasons

  They didn’t make it to the motel because Carly got a call from her boss. Then Zeb had to tell her—

  “Tula is in that beauty contest, Carly. I followed her into town because she’s following the beauty contest circuit.”

  “The contest my boss just demanded I go oversee the preparations for to-day,” Carly exclaimed. Zeb nodded, glancing at her as he drove. “I’m judging it too, damn it,” she muttered.

  “I know, baby,” Zeb muttered back. “I’d picked that up.”

  “Just great,” Carly whispered, tugging on the end of her ponytail. “I have to judge your wife.”

  “Ex-wife as fast as I can make it,” Zeb growled.

  Carly’s worried gaze looked at him. “They’re both likely there where we’re going, Zeb.”

  All he could do was sneer so he wouldn’t cuss sharply and scare her. “Yeah,” he uttered.

  But he had a plan by the time they pulled into the back of the fairgrounds.

  “So if they can hide and cheat, we can hide and cheat,” Carly said, repeating the important part of his plan.

  He nodded. “And when in trouble of maybe being caught, fucking lie.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’d be happy to lie to my asshole, but I sure hope I won’t see him.”

  “You said he should be at the rodeo side, not over on this side.”

  “Yes, this side is where Tula’s at,” Carly reminded him.

  He hooked her neck and pulled her in for a quick kiss. “Get in, get it done, and get out, sweetness. I’ll be around.”

  She patted his chest. “Okay, baby.”

  He gave her a heated look. “I like that as much as ‘honey.’”

  Carly walked toward the auditorium with a glance back to see Zeb’s big body moving off toward the rodeo rings. Well, he wouldn’t want his freaking wife to see him, she supposed, so he was going off to what? Spy on Rick? She didn’t know what she thought he’d be doing, while she did her job. Maybe she was just still shaking from that car thing, but she felt wrung tight.

  So when she bumped into all that was fine about Justice Walkinghorse—she didn’t just meet him, she ran right into him around a blind corner and she ended up against his chest. Wow. He was built as good as he looked. Every woman worth her salt in town watched Justice Walkinghorse. He was that fine. Unfortunately, he was that much younger than her, but a girl could look. Or feel, as she was doing, before Justice helped her step back without falling over.

  “Carly, you all right?”

  “Oh heck yeah, sorry about that, Justice,” she muttered, nervously. She noticed he was decked out officially in his marshal’s shirt with his jeans painted on him, and a wide-brimmed, light-colored cowboy hat. Her gaze stuck on the badge hanging off his belt in front of his hips.

  “I wasn’t looking,” she offered, and she looked up under his hat at him.

  She noticed he looked kind of disturbed, in a way men looked with etched and stony features. She was starting to think he was mad at her running into him.

  But he clasped his warm hand on her arm, and he muttered, “Cheaters damn well bust my ass.”

  Carly gasped inwardly, expecting Justice to hail retribution down on her for cheating with Zeb. Justice must have seen them together, and she cringed when he said, “Sweetheart, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but I cannot pretend I didn’t see what I damn well saw and I sure as hell am not pretending I don’t need to tell you about it.”

  Carly was so certain that she knew what Justice was going to say that she got stuck working out his words, then it dawned on her. “Tell me about what?” she asked, half exclaiming.

  Justice’s hand warmed up and down her arm as he tilted his head and leaned closer so the wide brim of his hat closed them in while his voice rumbled lowly. “You need anything, babe, anything at all, I’m here.”

  Carly felt a very inappropriate shiver course through her at Justice’s intimate words, then she consoled herself over her reaction because it was the beautiful Justice Walkinghorse she was shivering about.

  “I walked up on your husband, Carly, doing another woman in one of the fairground’s back offices. Fucking hate cheaters,” he finished on a male growl of anger.

  Carly was so surprised she must have looked the part of stunned and devastated, because Justice hauled her up and into his arms. Whoa.

  If she’d not just been in the best embraces God ever created with Zeb, she might be interested in how good it felt to be hugged by the younger and clearly rip-muscled Justice. She so wished she could at least brag about it around town, because every woman in town would be flaming jealous. They all knew Justice had been a one-woman man so far, and since he’d lost that girl he’d not set his whiskey-colored eyes on another young woman.

  Carly was kind of overwhelmed, but she did remember Zeb telling her when in doubt to lie. She took a couple healthy sniffs of Justice’s unique evergreen scent, and maybe a tiny feel up his hard body with her softer one to remember when she was eighty, and then she disengaged gently from him and stepped back. With space, she realized that what Justice had revealed cut her deeply. How could she not know Rick was such a lowlife?

  But to Justice, as calmly as she could, she said, “I have a private investigator trying to catch him so he can’t weasel out of claiming he’s not cheating on me, and I need you to keep it quiet that you told me about this.”

  “So you know,” Justice uttered, then he looked deeper into
her gaze as if he were pulling out information. “You’re hiding hurt, babe, and I get that. But you need backup, or just a beer with a man that appreciates your charms, you let me know.”

  Wow, he appreciated her charms? First she knew of that. She blushed a little, and smiled up at him, softly saying, “Thanks, Justice.”

  He lifted his chin to her. “Sweet as hell,” he muttered, then he stepped past her. “You got my number anytime you need anything, Carly.”

  Carly watched Justice’s broad shoulders and jean-clad ass stride away as she took a few moments to center her thoughts.

  “Damn bastard,” she muttered about her freaking husband screwing another woman, while he thought his wife was gone doing her job.

  It just made her skin crawl every time she thought about the fact that she’d taken Rick back. She knew she’d been reeling from Cabe hooking up with Rusty Harper. No one in town had seen that one coming. So maybe she’d had a little of the “why could Rusty get Cabe when she couldn’t” going on. Then to feel like less of a chump for pining after Cabe, she’d let Rick convince her to try their marriage again. To her it had been a big, blaring sign saying, “See, I can get a guy, everybody!”

  She’d done it for all the wrong reasons, so she wasn’t guiltless in her marriage woes. But she really hadn’t gotten married without believing it would work that first time. The second time ... not so much. Maybe she’d been curious to see what Rick would do, or likely it had been a way to have a man and not just be that dumped single gal. Either way, she hadn’t really been into it the second time around.

  In fact, just that weekend she had decided she needed to change that attitude, and she was trying to give her marriage a real effort. But Rick had shut her down and wouldn’t go out with her or notice how provocatively she had dressed.

  Carly got tears in her eyes and brushed at them angrily. “He wasn’t paying attention to me, because he was all tied up with Tula,” she muttered, saying Tula’s name like it was a nasty word. And it was.

  She was going to show them, though. She didn’t need Rick, and skanky Tula could have his rotten ass. In fact—