Page 22 of The Bull Rider and the Bookworm
Caught in worry over the fact that he might be a novice priest or something I was bucked off harshly, but oh so very pleasantly, when he threw his arms around my neck then pulled my mouth to his.
The kiss was…hell, I had no words to describe it but it was the most wonderful thing I had ever experienced. I’d not kissed many men. None in years. Kissing was for lovers not fast fucks in grimy men’s rooms. His tongue found mine, slid over and around it, as he attempted to climb me like a coconut tree. Fingers sliding up into my hair he knocked my hat off, fisting my hair he hoisted himself from the floor. Cradling his ass in one hand, which threw him off a little sideways, head swimming in lust, cock hard as a corral post, I kissed him back with close to thirty years of pent-up passion.
“Will you take me to bed and fuck me?” He panted when the kiss broke so we could suck in gasping breaths. “Please?”
Rocked to my core, I spun from the sink, Aubrey hanging off me, and toted him to the bedroom as he made sweet little sounds of joy beside my ear.
“You sure?” I asked at a doorway. Hoped it was to his bedroom and not the bathroom although bending him over the sink then filling him with my cock while we watched in the mirror would be incredibly hot. Holy hell, this evening had taken a turn.
“Yes, yes, yes. So very sure.”
“Then yeah, I’d love to.”
I bumped the door open, saw the bed, and carried my darling bookseller over the threshold.
Chapter 9
Aubrey
The world as I had known it was spinning madly out of control.
Or maybe that was just my libido.
As I hung off Hoyt like some sort of ravenous cowboy-eating vine there were little bells ringing in my alarm command center. Tiny. Perhaps crystal bells being chimed by the abbot as he tried valiantly to remind me of my vow of chastity. With this gorgeous man holding me like a delicate Ming vase I burrowed into his thick neck to suck a mark on it that could have rivaled the fading bruises on his left shoulder and throat.
“Aubrey, shit…” he moaned, the deep resonance of his voice moving through him into me, coursing straight to my dick. I was so hard it was painful. I wanted him so badly. Needed to feel him deep inside me, emptying into me, crooning to me as he reached his own pinnacle of—“You’re so wriggly. Hard to…hold on.”
The tinkling of glass bells ceased to be replaced by an air raid siren. Panic, unjustified and totally irrational, overtook me. I pulled away from his neck as the room began to siphon down to just me and that fucking word. Wriggly. Hank used to say that to me when he was…when he was…
“Stop. Stop. Stop. Put me down. Down.”
Hoyt immediately released me. My knees folded. I went to the floor hard, trying my best to suck in enough air to not black out.
“Aubrey…” His voice was soft now, worried, as he knelt beside me on the floor. Something snapped inside me. A soft little whimper escaped before I started weeping like a child.
“Sorry, oh my stars…so sorry…my…please don’t…don’t hate me,” I choked out then buried my face into my hands. “So sorry. Sorry. This is…you hate me.”
“No, hey, no, I don’t hate you. I like you.”
I shook my head so hard my glasses flew off. The tears continued. The poor man must’ve thought he’d made friends with a lunatic. Obviously he had. I wassoembarrassed.
“I’m fretting. I’m fretting so big,” I cried out and bless his cotton socks, he slid his good arm around my shoulder. I rolled to the side slightly so I could hide my face in his shirt. Soft, flannel. Not like anything Hank would have worn. Holy Hannah what the hell was I doing here? “I’m fretting.” I curled into the smallest ball I could, tight to his side.
“Fret away,” he cooed, stretching his long legs out in front of him. “I’m really sorry for doing something that set off a fret.”
I lifted my face from his shirt. Met his sad, sad brown eyes, and felt even more badly.
“You didn’t do this,” I assured him around a gasp and a sniffle. I must’ve looked like hell. What was wrong with me? “This is…me. Me. Fretting. I get upset too easily. He always said so, told me to stop wriggling when he was…when we were…when he was…”
“Shh, hey, I think I get it. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have used that word.”
“No, no,” I wanted to stay tight to his side but he needed to see me saying this to him. So I sat up, swiped at my tears, and eased myself back on my heels. “That word is…I’m stupid.”
He cupped my face in his right hand, staring deep into my eyes. “You are the smartest man I have ever met. And I mean that. You are the farthest thing from stupid. Now me, I’m stupid. I never went to college, hell, I didn’t even graduate, so that makes me pretty damn dumb. Look at my poems. Four lines. About a horse. They’re dumb.”
That one made me a little angry. I put my skinny ass right on his thighs, took his face in my hands, and made him see what I was saying.
“A degree does not make a poet. You are either born with the gift of creative arts or you are not. Look at me.” He glanced toward the window over my shoulder then came back. “You are a wonderful poet. No, hey, no, trust me. Look at me. I know all kinds of technical things about what makes a poem a poem. I can quote great works and tell you when this poet released that collection. But I cannot create a poem. I’ve tried. I’ve wailed and wept and raged at the gods but what I scribble out lacks soul. It’s cold, academic, blasé. Your words. Oh, Hoyt, they are filled with so much emotion, life, yearning. It was beautiful. Do not ever let anyone tell you that your poetry is less.”
