HE NEVER SHOULD have stopped by her room. Diablo admitted it to himself as he walked back to his room, hot and hard, his body clamoring for him to go back and partake of the lovely thing she had offered.
She had literally asked him to stay.
Who was he to act as her conscience or moralizer?
No one, that was who.
But he did have to act as his own. And it had taken only one taste of Sierra to know that she was the kind of danger that could make him forget his principles.
He had promised himself long ago he would never again be anyone’s secret lover.
Sierra was a rodeo queen and the deal with rodeo queens was a deal breaker for him.
He wouldn’t sneak around with her, even if it was the only available pathway.
Even if she tasted as fresh as a peach and sweet as a cobbler.
He wouldn’t make an exception for this rule. Not even for her.
Christ, he should never have gone to her room.
He shouldn’t have even known they were staying in the same hotel, nor that they’d been given rooms on the same floor. He couldn’t help that he had been only a few patrons behind her in the line at check-in. She hadn’t seen him—hadn’t seen anyone, really, in her single-minded drive to get to her room. That she was frustrated and weary was clear without the all-business clip in her voice when she’d spoken to the concierge. Both rolled off her like waves, inspiring nurturing urges he rarely felt—to comfort her, to make her laugh, to help her unwind...
It was unfortunate, then, that after his evening out, which had coasted by on the adrenaline of a good ride, good food, top-shelf rum and excellent conversation with all of his favorite people in the world, that he’d been in a good mood, happy from a night that had been filled with the triumph of his first ride in over a decade.
If he’d been pissed and sore, he probably wouldn’t have stopped at her door.
But he hadn’t been.
Seeing his nana dressed to the nines at the restaurant, and Lil, in her simple little black dress, alongside AJ in his T-shirt and jeans, and the old man, in his cowboy go-to-towns of clean jeans and a crisp button-up—it drained the power and force from his general cynicism enough to leave him as close to peace as he ever came. And that was always when he got in trouble.
Good times cajoled him into giving his best to a world that more often than not gave him shit.
He recalled, as he returned to his room, that the last image he’d had of Sierra had been a glimpse of her red-and-white-clad behind stepping into the elevator, rooming on the same floor he was on.
When he’d noticed that her key box was lit green, signaling its unlocked status, he couldn’t, in good conscience, simply walk by without letting her know.
She was a beautiful, single woman.
It wasn’t safe.
He was honor bound to let her know.
It was the gentlemanly thing to do.
A questionable sense of chivalry didn’t explain why, though, rather than simply let her know about the door and move on, he’d stayed for a while.
In the solitude of his own mind, he blamed the glasses...and the sweatpants...and the freshly scrubbed face.
All of her untouchable sophistication had been scrubbed off to reveal the woman beneath, and that was apparently his kryptonite.
And here he was still lying to himself.
Sierra in all her iterations was his kryptonite. There was just something about her.
Without the shine, she lost none of the perfection. She’d merely set aside the armor that she used to subdue the world to her will.
In doing so, she had undone him.
But still, that was only part of the truth.
The other part was more dangerous.
He liked her. She was pretty and funny and tough.
Now, in addition to this absolutely ridiculous competition, he had a situation with Sierra Quintanilla to navigate.
And she was a beautiful kisser.
He had a suspicion that his odds of coming out on top had been better with all of the bulls and obstinate judges in the world than they were with Sierra.