FOLLOWING THE ENSEMBLE of the night before, Sierra’s afternoon outfit was simple, to say the least, and yet she felt as confident as if she wore a sash and crown.
In reality, she wore a cropped white cotton T-shirt with a left breast pocket and simple blue jean shorts.
She’d begun to pick up, however, on the pathway to Diablo’s heart, and casual was his kryptonite.
The fact that dressing to impress was one of her superpowers did nothing, though, to dilute the novelty of feeling the full power of it in nothing but jeans and a T-shirt.
Getting ready had been a shockingly straightforward matter of contacts, a little light makeup, pulling her hair into a ponytail and donning a denim baseball cap.
She had tossed a swimsuit into her day bag in case the urge to swim struck them—which one always had to be prepared for at the beach and was now standing in front of the carousel in Crandon Park, where she waited for Diablo.
As a Florida girl and one of three shopaholic daughters of a woman who herself loved to shop, Sierra had been to Miami more times than she could count throughout her life—enough that exploring the city itself was less interesting to her than taking advantage of the rare opportunity to get away from the bustle and prying eyes of the tour and recenter with a little time in nature.
At least, that was what she had been thinking before inviting Diablo along to join her.
So now, instead of solo trekking through her favorite beach trails, she waited at the carousel.
She was having second thoughts.
What had seemed urgent as recently as the night before—when she lay in bed replaying her personal highlight reel from Diablo’s performance in the challenge and thinking about today while she tossed and turned—felt more reckless by the light of day. She’d achieved a level of success she’d only dreamed was possible. Did she want to risk that for a fling? Did she want to put the job on the line?
She would be fired if they were caught, and it wouldn’t take much. Even this far from caravan and crew they could get outed—all that was required was a photo. Enough people tuned in to the show that it was feasible they could be recognized and snapped, even dressed down as she was.
There were people everywhere.
While it was an easy meeting spot in a massive park, she should have thought of something more subtle. Throngs of families and active photo shoots took place all around her.
What if they showed up in the background of someone’s vacation selfie?
She had planned to visit Crandon Park long before she’d known she would have company, though, and of all of the Miami area’s beaches and natural spaces, it was her favorite.
Encompassing eight hundred and eight acres, which included a surprising diversity of settings, from near-white sand beaches, to hiking paths through coconut palm groves, to the developed carousel area she stood in now, the park also had some of the best cheap food you could find in the city if you were willing to walk for it.
Crandon Park was a place that regular people went, as opposed to a place just for tourists and Miami’s wealthy to see and be seen and offered a laid-back experience that was hard to find elsewhere in the area.
It was the kind of place where you had to worry about sawgrass and whether or not your sunscreen was reef safe more than the thoroughness of your bikini wax and the depth of your tan.
When she had planned on a solo experience, she’d thought she would bring along a book, a towel, her wallet and a change of clothes—then she could swim or hike or simply read beside the beach should she so desire and according to her whim, but now she was going to spend the day with Diablo Sosa instead.
Which she could lose her job for.
If he showed up, which he hadn’t yet.
She’d never been stood up before. What if Diablo was her first?
Her palms clammed up in her pockets as she looked around.
In her romantic experience, he fell somewhere between the plethora of men she’d gone on casual and harmless one-off dates with, and the two more serious relationships she’d tried in the off-seasons between crowns. None of which, however, had prepared her at all for the idea of being stood up.
If he didn’t come, it would be a rejection of a kind she’d never experienced before, and as she scanned the crowd around the carousel once more, she was forced to acknowledge she might not handle it well.
At all.
“Come on, Diosa,” she said under her breath, watching another wave of transition as the carousel came to a stop and one set of riders disembarked so another could get on.
“You called, mi reina?” His voice wrapped around her from behind, like a pair of arms curving around and enveloping her in a warm embrace.
Jumping, she turned, her smile brighter with relief than it might otherwise have been.
“Careful there, queenie,” he added, a strange, somewhat stunned expression on his face. “Somebody might think you were waiting for me,” he continued, smiling easily now, the corners of his dark eyes crinkled with mirth as he took her in with an appreciative light in his eye.
She used the moment to peruse him, as well.
She didn’t know what she had expected but it had not been for him to show up looking every inch the fashionable south Floridian.
His apple-green shorts were crisp and slim fit, cutting off just above the knee, revealing his muscled and well-defined thighs and calves.
He had ditched his cowboy boots for the outing, and Sierra realized it was the first time she’d seen him in anything else—even the times he’d been wearing his suits. Today he wore slip-on canvas sneakers in a bright orange-yellow that was perfectly coordinated with the large hibiscus motif of his tropical-print button-up T-shirt. He’d managed to arrive appropriately dressed for their afternoon, as well as to look good doing it.
Uncommonly, Sierra could not say the same.
With her plain T-shirt and shorts and yellow daypack, it occurred to her she might look a bit like Dora the Explorer by comparison.
But when his eyes returned to her face from scanning her, his gaze heated in ways that said more than words, he said, “You look beautiful.” And she knew it was true.
And though it was by no means the first time that he had made it clear that he was attracted to her, the words ignited a new tension between them, because there was no ambiguity about it now. They were on a date.
“Thank you,” she said, lifting a hand up to pinch the bill of her hat between the thumb and finger and tip it at his compliment. “I was going for low profile and incognito, though.”
His own smile lifted one corner of his mouth, a new look coming to his eyes. “You did a good job disguising rodeo queen Sierra Quintanilla, but it would take a lot more than a casual outfit to make you incognito, queenie. You’ve got the kind of shine that resists hiding. However, perhaps with a prosthetic nose...”
She laughed like the light compliment was something she easily brushed off when, really, his words sank down into her to stoke embers that were already glowing with a healthy red heat.
She was never quite as in charge of the ways things went when she was with Diablo as she was around everyone else.
In fact, intentional or not, he had a way of throwing her off her plans like nothing ever had.
She was goal oriented and had big dreams and there wasn’t a man out there who could make her change her mind. And yet, he compelled her to drop the reins, without even having to try.
A natural blush warmed her cheeks, but Sierra waved his words off rather than reveal how much they’d impacted her. “Well, in that case, it’s a good thing there won’t be many people around once we get going. The last thing we need is for rising Closed Circuit star Diablo Sosa to be photographed tromping through the mangroves with a shiny woman at his side.”
A shadow crossed his eyes, but it passed like faint gray clouds across a clear and deep night sky, to be replaced with intrigue and more than a little surprise. “Tromping?” he asked.
Cocking her hip to one side and bringing a hand to it, she lifted the opposite eyebrow and asked, “You didn’t think I was the tromping type?”
Laughter dancing in his eyes, he shook his head. “I’ll admit that I did not,” he said.
Making a tsking sound, Sierra shook her head. “Diablo, Diablo,” she said, “when are you going to remember that underneath all of this pretty is a woman who’s never been afraid to muck out a few stalls?”
Bowing his head in the worst impression of contriteness that Sierra had ever seen, he said, the Texas heavy and loaded in his voice, “It might take some time, queenie, but I assure you, by the time I’m done with you, I will have thoroughly gotten to know every inch, nook and cranny hidden beneath that gorgeous shell.”
The combination of his tone and the promise in his eyes sent shivers dancing across her skin. Going a little breathless and shallow, her voice lifted to float airily in her upper chest as she said, “We’ve only got the afternoon.”
The intensity shifted in his eyes, deepening, darkening and thickening alongside his voice as he said, “We’d better get started, then.”
Swallowing, Sierra nodded before casting a furtive glance around, recalling for the first time since he had arrived that they were surrounded by people—children, families, couples—standing in the middle of one of the most crowded places in the park.
Diablo made her feel so safe and comfortable that it was all too easy to forget the constraints within which they were supposed to be operating.
If they were going to do this, they needed to keep it a secret. Her job depended on it.
But it was so hard to remember that when he looked at her with open laughter in his eyes and an easy smile on his lips.
“Let’s,” she agreed with a mildly dazzled smile of her own and reached out a hand for his.
He looked at it first, casting his eyes back up at her, a question in his gaze, before he took it, capturing her entire hand in his large calloused one.
Holding hands, she led him around the perimeter of the carousel pavilion, guiding them toward the entrance of the Osprey hiking trail, which would take them as far as they wanted to go up the near two-mile stretch of beach.
More importantly, though, it would take them away from the crowds where they needed to watch their behavior and into secluded areas where they’d find privacy for chatting...or whatever else they might get up to.
Neither spoke for a time, each simply walking and holding hands.
Sierra reveled in the normalcy of it all, the unexpectedly homey realness of it. It wasn’t a sensation she had expected to feel in a secret affair.
Walking together through the familiar terrain, with no passersby staring and no strangers approaching them for photos, it was a taste of what things might have been like if they had just been a pair of regular people, rather than rodeo people. Would this have been how her life might have turned out, had she never discovered rodeo and instead done something different with her life? Was this peace what investment bankers or architects experienced in their daily lives?
Is this what Diablo experienced?
He had a regular life, after all. His return to rodeo was merely a temporary blip before he returned to the kind of lifestyle where strolling hand in hand with a woman he was interested in would have been far less complicated and furtive.
The thought of him holding another woman’s hand tightened her stomach. Though she was the one committed to the rodeo lifestyle, he was the one who was just passing through.
When the season was over, she would stay with The Closed Circuit and he would go back to his regular life, a life in which he had every right to go on dates that he didn’t have to keep secret.
He had the right, and unlike herself, he had the freedom.
She had no right to keep him to herself.
But she wanted to.
And she couldn’t even regret that it was her fault that they couldn’t behave like normal adults, because if they could—if they’d been architects and investment bankers and able to take a stroll without fear of being seen—they wouldn’t have found each other. They’d be normal, but they wouldn’t be together; she wouldn’t have this specific man at her side.
And that made all the difference.
Diablo Sosa was a rising-star attorney and a fiercely determined Texan from a poor neighborhood.
She was a beloved and pampered daughter from an upper-middle-class business-owning immigrant family.
Rodeo was the bridge that connected them—the only one strong enough to cross the gap between their respective backgrounds and carry them over.
In a world without rodeo, they would have missed each other entirely, and so as good as it felt to be out with him like this, free from the pressure of being “on” for The Closed Circuit, and even though it meant a foraying into the torture of stolen moments and secret feelings, she couldn’t even bring herself to resent the ways her job hemmed her in.
Without it, how else would the two of them have ended up here?
“This is nice,” he said, his voice slipping into her thoughts as if he had heard them. “It wasn’t what I expected from a museum-loving rodeo queen, but I like it. Peaceful. Easy.”
Feeling a greater sense of accomplishment than was probably warranted, Sierra smiled. Foliage arched above over their heads, enclosing the sandy path they trod.
A narrow window of sky remained open directly above them, itself bright blue and illuminated by the Miami sun, which bathed everything in a warm golden glow. “I love it out here. It’s one of my favorite places,” she admitted.
It struck her that in New Orleans, he had gotten to show her his favorite place, and now here, in Miami, she got to show him hers.
“You didn’t by chance bring a swimsuit, did you?” she asked, eyeing his attire and lack of bag doubtfully.
Reading her thoughts in her eyes, he grinned, canines showing, and patted the small bulge in his back pocket with a nod. “Sure did,” he assured her.
Her mind raced with the possibilities implied by the fact that his swim trunks fit in the back of his pocket like that, offering her a number of intriguing images that once again revved the rumbling engine within. Hiding her reaction with a snort, she said, “Well, don’t worry, I brought enough sunblock for both of us,” mirroring his patting action with one of her own on her beach bag.
“I’ve got all the sunblock I need,” he drawled.
“Spoken like a true Texan,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Everyone needs sunblock. I don’t care how dark you are. SPF is the true key to everlasting beauty.”
Smiling with his eyes, he said, “given that the statement is coming from you, I’m willing to buy it.”
Another blush rising to her cheeks, Sierra looked away, filling her eyes instead with the beloved sights of tropical Florida, palms swaying in the breeze, the turquoise blue of the Atlantic and long stretches of sand broken up by patches of beach grass.
She hadn’t expected him to be so casually sweet. She had expected intelligence, yes, and courageousness, of course, considering he was brave enough to climb on top of bulls and broncs—but not sweetness.
Each time she encountered a new dimension of Diablo it triggered a nagging sensation in the back of her mind that he was the kind of man she could spend a lifetime with and never fully know.
She would never get bored talking with him.
And as much as she enjoyed cowboys, that most definitely was something that couldn’t be said about every one of them.
Walking with Diablo, sneaking glances at him when he wasn’t looking while a storm of sensations swirled within her, she wanted to put in the time exploring. In his presence everything she didn’t want became clear, because what she wanted was so obvious.
She didn’t want to live her life as a virginal paragon.
She didn’t want to be the greatest rodeo queen the world had ever seen but be lonely.
She wanted to go to museums, and hike at Crandon Park and ride horses with Diablo.
She wanted a man who respected her enough to engage with her intellectually, to challenge her whenever the situation called for it and to enjoy sharing time and enthusiasm with her.
All of this time these had been the invisible criteria guiding her selections—or more accurately, her rejections—and she hadn’t even consciously realized it.
She had been looking for Diablo the whole time.
No wonder, then, that she hadn’t put the effort in in the past, nor was it strange that her list of noes was so much longer than her list of yeses.
She had been searching for a one of a kind.
“So will there be any swimming on this excursion?” he asked, drawing her out of her thoughts and into noticing his lips.
She needed to get a handle on herself.
Shrugging, she said, “If the water is nice and the mood strikes. Otherwise, walking is great, and there’re a couple places to eat in the park if we want. Or we can head farther into Key Biscayne when we get hungry. The afternoon is ours.”
“Did you always plan to come here on your day off?”
Sierra nodded. “I did,” she said before a mischievous note came to her voice and she added, “I’ve already been to most of the museums.”
With a chuckle, Diablo said, “I was going to ask.”
“I don’t only go to museums, you know,” Sierra said. Gesturing around them with her open palm, she added, “I also enjoy long walks on the beach, Ovaltine with marshmallows and historical fiction.”
Laughter in his voice, he added, “And large meals, riding horses and rodeo.”
Snorting, Sierra entirely agreed, repeating, “And large meals, riding horses and rodeo.”
“What was it like?” he asked, a leading note in his tone.
Automatically hedging, Sierra asked, “What was what like?”, suspicion laden in her voice.
“Growing up spoiled,” he teased.
Lifting an eyebrow, Sierra asked, “Who says I was spoiled?”
Mirroring her expression, he raised his own eyebrow and asked, counting the points on his fingers along the way, “Do you mean besides the pony, and the feed, and the gear, and the entry fees and the sisters in pageants?”
Laughing, Sierra nodded and said with all seriousness, “Yes. I do.”
“Ovaltine with marshmallows,” he said. “Having either one in your house borders on fancy, but to have both?” Making a disapproving noise in the back of his throat he shook his head. “Mimada.”
“Solo un poquito,” she acknowledged without shame. Her family was comfortable enough to meet the needs of three daughters with expensive hobbies, but not so well-off that the answer to every request had always been a yes.
“You wear it well,” he said, a new heat coming to his eyes as he took her in.
Shrugging, she said, “One can’t help being loved,” tongue in cheek, and he laughed.
Shaking his head at her, he said, “I don’t imagine you can. I bet you’re loved everywhere you go.”
He was teasing, but there was also real observation in his statement, and so she felt compelled to respond truthfully. “And hated. Lasting friendship has a hard time rooting in the soil of ruthless competition,” she said, attempting to soften the reality of her words with a light laugh.
Eyeing her, Diablo said, “It’s a good thing you had your sisters, then.”
Agreeing, Sierra said, “It’s true. It might be lame to admit, but I don’t think I’d have any real friends without them.” She appreciated that he could accept what she said without pity or the urge to convince her otherwise. And that he was astute enough to pick up on the silver lining of it all.
Shrugging, he said, “Friends are overrated. There’s nothing wrong with having good relationships with your family. It’s clear yours is warm. That’s a good thing.”
“Thank you,” she said. “It is. Between their schedules and being on the tour and doing promos before and after, I don’t see them as much as I’d like anymore. Life is like that, though.”
He nodded. “The time passes before you realize it. My practice is located in Phoenix and between my caseload and the miles, it always shocks me how long I go between visits back to Houston. She wouldn’t ever admit it, but I know my nana gets lonely.” He looked away and Sierra could feel his inner tension and conflict.
She had no real sense of how old his nana was, but the woman was his grandmother and he was a grown man, which meant she couldn’t be that young.
It was hard to age alone.
“Would she move out to where you are?” Sierra asked.
Shaking his head in a short negative, he said, “She bought her house and said she’s going to die in it.”
Laughing, Sierra said, “It sounds like she knows her mind.”
Pausing to take in the scene around him, he smiled. “She does, if not her limits.”
“What are limits?” Sierra asked as if she’d never heard the word before, eliciting a full laugh out of him.
“You remind me of her in more ways than one,” he said, a warning in his voice.
“Oh?” she asked innocently. “She likes to hang upside down on horseback, too?”
“If you’d talked to her twenty years ago...” he said.
“Only twenty?” Sierra asked, eyebrow lifting again.
Side-eyeing her, he nodded, adding, “If only to remind me that I wasn’t the only one ballsy enough to rodeo beneath our roof.”
“It doesn’t sound like there was ever any doubt.”
Shaking his head, Diablo agreed. “Not from me at least. I know better than that.”
“So you’re broken in, then,” Sierra said with approval.
Shooting her a charming grin, he said, “She raised me right, if that’s what you mean.”
“I’ll be the judge of that, thank you very much.”
“Between the two of us, I’ll be the one to be the judge, thank you very much,” he sassed.
Frowning, she asked, “Do you really want to be a judge?”
For an instant he stilled, as if no one had ever asked him the question before. Then his fluid ease returned once again and he answered, “Since the day I heard the gavel fall.”
“But is it because of spite or genuine desire?” she pressed, urged on by a need to understand combined with an unfamiliar blend of concern and compassion that demanded she make sure he wasn’t acting from a place of pain.
His smile turned introspective. “Where does one end and the other begin? At first, I was angry and hungry for a kind of power that I’d been subject to but never had myself. Even then, though, what I was really concerned with was justice—or the lack thereof. Hell, that’s what put me in that courtroom in the first place. I’ve always been deeply concerned with justice. Though it’s what I do now, and I do it well, it has never been my dream to argue what is right and wrong in front of a bench. I know what’s right and wrong without arguing. I had to accept that my petty and my drive have always been two sides of the same coin. Growing up, I saw injustice all around me, in the addicts and unhoused whose gateway crimes had been being dyslexic or wild or born poor, and in the women I saw persecuted, by cops and members of the neighborhood alike. These women were just trying to survive and protect themselves. Watching the black and brown people work twice as hard for half as much only to be labeled as lazy and worse also took a toll. Injustice was everywhere I looked and I thought there was nothing to do but rage and rage until one day I snapped and all the rage boiled out. And even after that, I was still angry for a long time, but the difference was that after I walked out of that courtroom, I had learned that there was something that could be done about it all, which, for me, was a form of hope. That hope, and the old man, and AJ, and Nana and the bulls and everything else all conspired to get me here, so I’d have to say it’s both.”
“Desire born of spite,” she said.
“And spite born of desire,” he concluded with a self-recriminating half smile.
“It makes sense to me. It’s not that far off, really, from making a career out of being competitively pretty,” she said, giving him a light punch on the shoulder.
Eyeing her with a shrewd look, he said, “Excuse you. Rodeo queens are competitive horse riders who happen to be pretty, thank you very much.”
Letting out a bark of laughter that was not at all ladylike—and therefore against rodeo-queen rules—Sierra was still smiling, her eyes glistening, when she managed to get out, “Forgive my mistake.”
Her stomach chose that moment to gurgle loudly, and whether or not it was because of the existing levity of the situation or simply because no matter how evolved human beings might get, body noises would always be that unique combination of embarrassing and hilarious, it nearly threw her into another fit of laughter.
Observing her with humor in his eyes, Diablo lifted an eyebrow to ask, “Which direction to food?”
His practical question was enough to hold on to amid the wave of giddiness still swirling around her. Checking her watch, she was surprised to see that an hour and a half had already passed. Though she was famous among those who she knew well for her type A adherence to a schedule, it was all too easy to lose track of everything when she was in Diablo’s company.
They hadn’t made it as far as she typically did in the same time frame, and that, coupled with the early arrival of hunger, meant they were nowhere close to the place she normally went when she came here.
They weren’t, however, far from Jake O’Malley’s—the kind of generic beach restaurant that existed the world over.
This near to the lunch hour and on a sunny day, the patio was packed, without a single table free, and as they made their way inside, the situation was not much better.
It was certainly not the casually intimate and insanely delicious Cuban food that she had hoped to share with him. But as he grabbed and perused a menu, giving her a chance to simply observe him while not actively engaged in conversation, she realized it didn’t matter.
She didn’t care that circumstances had conspired to have them eating at a basic restaurant with mediocre food instead of the unique hole-in-the-wall that would have been her opportunity to return the favor of his introducing her to that amazing sandwich.
She was having too much fun with him to worry about things not going exactly to plan.
“Hi there! I’m so sorry about the wait. We’re slammed. It’s going to be about a forty-five-minute wait for a table and about twenty minutes for a couple seats at the bar,” the harried hostess said to them in a rush as she returned to the front booth.
Doing the mental math, Sierra frowned. If it was going to take that long to get some Jake’s, they might as well make the walk farther up the trail.
“What about takeout?” Diablo asked, face and voice overly serious.
He was a man on a mission, and he was the kind of man unwilling to accept anything less than success. That his mission was feeding her warmed her in a way that was more tender than any of the other fires he’d stoked in her thus far in their acquaintance.
Smiling, the hostess’s sense of relief at both lack of frustration and the idea of one less party to seat clear and obvious in the ease coming to her shoulders, she said, “No wait at all for that! I can take your order right here and have it out for you in about fifteen.”
Looking at Sierra, Diablo asked, “That sound good to you?” and when she nodded, he turned back to the hostess with “We’ll do that,” his voice all firm and decided and take-charge, and Sierra found herself holding back a smile.
This might be her planned date, but it was clear that when it came to caring for those around him, Diablo took orders from no one.
Infuriating though she could imagine it might be at times, she appreciated that he was as fierce and immovable as an unbeaten bull.
They ordered and, sure enough, fifteen minutes later were heading back down the narrow path of sand that connected back to the larger trail, a bag containing two entrees and silverware swinging from Diablo’s left hand.
“I know a spot where we can eat,” Sierra said.
“I follow where you lead,” Diablo replied.
Another ten minutes later they were once again leaving the main trail, this time headed east along a narrow path that was overgrown in multiple places and required a little creativity to navigate.
“You didn’t tell me we’d be cutting trail today,” he said in his characteristic dry tone.
A tad breathless from both the company and the bushwhacking, Sierra laughed airily. “Sometimes you have to deal with a little bush to get to the treasure on the other side.”
As soon as the words left her mouth it was as if the invisible thread that connected them stretched taut.
A naughty note coming to his voice, he said, “Never let it be said that Diablo Sosa was intimidated or turned off by a little bush.”
Heat coming to her cheeks, Sierra didn’t back off from their flirtation as she had been compelled to before.
On the key, it was just the two of them—no cameras, no fans, no one who even knew their names. “How do you feel about a bare landscape?” she asked wickedly.
Stopping in his tracks, Diablo’s eyes shot to hers, the intensity and focus of a hunter in them, and she couldn’t say that it didn’t thrill her to have thrown him.
“I wouldn’t know,” he said slowly, his voice thick and low, “but I’m always up for new experiences.”
Her bare landscape in question sparked to life at his words. The idea of being a first—any first—for a man like Diablo, a man she was certain had come out of the womb knowing and seeing too much, was one of the most powerful aphrodisiacs she had ever encountered.
Her moment to respond with something equally suggestive, however, was lost as they stepped into the secluded beach grove that Sierra had discovered years ago.
Ringed neatly by vegetation on one side and a long stretch of beach on the other, the sandy spot was tucked far enough back from the water and low enough that it was out of sight from the main beach, hidden by a small dune that was still just short enough to see the ocean over.
Thankful that the spot was unclaimed, Sierra dug into her bag and pulled out the blanket she had packed. Laying it out on the sand, she made quick work of setting up a small picnic area.
Eyeing her as she worked with a half smile, Diablo said, “What else you got in that bag?”
Grinning and incapable of being ashamed over being prepared, Sierra pulled his bottle of water out and tossed it to him. “That for starters.”
Catching it with the reflexes of a cowboy, he tipped an invisible hat to her and said, “Why, thank you, Ms. Poppins.”
Laughing, Sierra said, “I am supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”
Giving her a once-over, he said, “I think you mean bodacious.”
Pausing in her setup, she lifted an eyebrow and cocked her head to one side. “How old are you again?”
He threw his head back with a bark of laughter, his neck stretching long and thick, his Adam’s apple bobbing, and all traces of sauciness and silliness left her.
She remained where she was, completely arrested, while rays of sunlight kissed him with a freedom that set off spikes of jealousy within her.
She tried to swallow through a suddenly parched throat.
Did he know he was beautiful?
She didn’t think he did.
He led with his strength and intelligence and dared the world to challenge him, but did he know he was a work of art?
With his laughter dying down, he straightened his head, and as he did their eyes locked.
If she had been entranced by his glamour before, she knew she would never fully recover now—not after seeing his eyes so open and unguarded, filled with laughter as well as desire for her and an ease that only seemed to exist when it was just the two of them.
“Old enough to know what to do with a woman like you,” he said, his eyes filled with a light that sent shivers along her skin.
“Oh, yeah?” she challenged, filling her voice with bravado to cover the breathlessness in it. “And what’s that?”
With a wicked half grin, he lifted the takeout he held. “Feed her, of course.”
Snorting, she rolled her eyes at him and shook her head. “Well, then, come on over and get to it, Diosa.”
Leading by example, she plopped down on the blanket and patted the ground beside her.
Chuckling, he joined her on the blanket. “Your wish is my command, reinita.”
“Then get to giving me what I need,” she said, the slight catch and huskiness in her voice the only outward signs of the rushing sensation inside.
Moving with the easy grace of a cowboy, Diablo crossed the small patch of sand to join her on the blanket before taking out her order and handing it to her with aplomb.
She received it regally, which meant she gave him a cool nod in acceptance before laughing again.
As expected, the food wasn’t particularly remarkable—a straightforward burger and fries for her and a halibut entree for him—and yet she knew she would remember this meal for a long time to come.
She had wanted to impress him with food that she was proud of loving in order to repay him for introducing her to that divine sandwich in New Orleans. Their meal from Jake’s nowhere near met that bar.
It didn’t matter. The company did.
When Diablo was around, everything she put in her mouth tasted delicious—especially him.
After they’d finished eating, she leaned back on her arms, taking in the man beside her and their private grove.
Then she asked, “Ready for that swim?”
Checking his watch, he said facetiously, “It hasn’t been thirty minutes.”
“Old wives’ tale,” she challenged.
“I don’t see any old wives around here,” he observed.
“My point exactly,” she agreed. “The water looks just fine.”
In reality, it looked more than fine.
On a perfect day like it was, the water was sure to be fantastic, and Sierra was smitten enough to push the issue just for the chance to see exactly what kind of swimsuit Diablo had brought along with him.
Eyeing her as if he could read every prurient thought in her mind, he said, “You just want to see if I really brought a swimsuit.”
Rolling her eyes, although he was uncomfortably accurate in his assessment, Sierra denied it with, “You wish. I could care less whether you have one or not. I have mine and I’m going in.”
A light of interest entering his eyes, he asked, “Are you wearing it now?”
With a snort, Sierra shook her head and said, “No. It looks like we both need to change.”
Looking around them, noting the obvious lack of facilities, he said, “Public nudity is frowned upon.”
Laughing, she said, “Ever the lawman.”
“You know what they say,” he said with a smug shrug. “A law is not valuable because it is the law but because there is right in it.”
“Just turn around,” she said as she stood, her swimsuit balled up in her palm.
Obliging, he looked away, and she made quick work of disrobing and reclothing herself in the tangle of strings and triangles of fabric that constituted her teeny-weeny yellow-and-white polka-dot bikini.
Of all her entire swimsuit collection, it was her favorite. She assumed Diablo would enjoy it as much as she did.
“I’m decent again,” she said, and couldn’t hold back her laugh at the quick way his head snapped around to take her in.
Seeing herself in his face, noting his obvious appreciation, was better than any mirror she’d ever looked in.
His pupils dilated, turning his eyes into big black pools, and he swallowed, the muscles of his throat moving making the action obvious.
She’d hoped to look good. His gaze told her she looked better.
“You’re more than decent, queenie. I’d say you’re out of this world.”
Fielding compliments was part of her job and had been for so long that, like any addict, she’d built up a tolerance to them. But whether or not it was his way with words or the intensity with which his eyes devoured her, there was something different about them when they came from Diablo.
Or, she thought, as hooked into staring at him as he was with her, maybe it wasn’t either of those things, but the honesty with which he spoke?
In all the time she’d known him, not once had she heard him utter an empty word.
Unlike herself, Diablo didn’t appear to be impaired by the same social inhibitions that drove people to small talk and white lies.
When he spoke, he said what he thought, with no sugar coating, apparently impervious to concerns about what people would think.
Sierra cared all too much. She cared so much that she had crafted a life out of anticipating what people wanted to hear and delivering it, regardless of how it aligned with her inner truth. She was good at it, too—so good that she had become one of the most decorated rodeo queens of all time.
So good that these days she wasn’t entirely sure where what she wanted ended and what they wanted began.
But when she was with Diablo, exactly what she wanted became crystal clear—even if it was in direct opposition to what everyone else wanted from her. She wanted him, like this, in as many stolen moments and for as long as she could get, right up until the tour was over.
Just the thought of the word over cast a shadow over their sunny grove, filling her with a desperate urgency to hold on to as much of the brightness as she could, to magnify and increase it, for as long as she could.
“Your turn!” she demanded, a trace of overenthused panic edging her voice.
Eyeing her for a moment longer, Diablo was slow to nod, his own focus still clearly—and flatteringly—locked on her swimsuit.
When he made no move to change after another second had passed, however, Sierra snapped her fingers at him, saying, “Appurate, acere. We’re wasting daylight.”
Laughing at her impatience, but finally moving, he came to his feet and retrieved the tantalizingly small square of folded black fabric that had been tucked in the back pocket of his shorts.
When she made no move to turn, he cleared his throat, saying, “Ahem?” before making a little circular turning motion with his finger.
Feigning innocence, she said, “Oh? You want me to turn around?”
Casting her a knowing grin, he said, “I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise later on. What fun is a present if it’s not wrapped?”
Heat thrilled in her system at the confidence in his words, but she obliged his request, turning around to look at the foliage that provided them privacy, rather than impinge on his.
Like most cowboys, he was lacking in neither cocksureness nor the body to back it up. Unlike most cowboys, however, he seemed to know how to draw out the delicious torture of anticipation.
“You can turn around now,” he said. His voice, thick with both the Texas and Dominican in it, was its own form of seduction, but nothing compared to the broad expanse of his bare chest and the muscled trunks of his thighs.
He wore the simple pair of black swim trunks, which were fitted and shorter than most men dared to wear while not qualifying as a Speedo. Looking at the thin fabric she could understand how he’d managed to fit them into his back pocket.
He was every bit as sexy in them as she was in her own swimwear. It was a good thing she wasn’t intimidated by a little competition.
She didn’t know how long she stared, but when he cleared his own throat, she realized belatedly that it had been too long to be labeled anything but lust.
“Ready to swim?” she croaked, unable to disguise the hoarse irregularity of her voice but comforted by the fact that, as he swallowed again, he appeared as affected as she was.
“More than before,” he said cryptically, moving to close the distance between them.
As he neared, she could feel the heat that radiated from his body and smell the leather and spice scent of skin.
The man was sensory overload on legs.
But she wasn’t expecting him to suddenly dash past her and run straight into the ocean.
Nor did she anticipate that she would be filled with the urge to follow, screaming and laughing with glee like she was twelve years old again as she did.
They swam and splashed and body surfed and tried to dunk each other like they were teenagers dancing on the line between play and flirtation, eager for any excuse to touch each other, until they were both waterlogged, happily exhausted and ready to warm up in the sun.
“You’re a strong swimmer, queenie,” he noted as they made their way back to the blanket and towel that waited for them in their secluded grove.
As sensitized as her skin was from the water and salt and sun, and his company, her body alive from its many brushes with his, his words ran over her like a caress, even when they weren’t anything particularly poetic.
“Comes with the territory when you grow up in Florida,” she said. “Ocean safety and strong swimming.”
“And sunblock,” he added with a teasing smile.
“And sunblock, which reminds me...” she said, trailing off, though her implication was clear.
“Only if you rub it on my back for me,” he said wickedly, and she laughed, though the idea of getting her hands on him—even just to rub sunblock on him—was far more appealing than it should be.
True to her word, she dug her SPF out of her bag as soon as they’d both dried.
“Lay down,” she directed him, pointing toward the blanket.
Obliging her with a catlike smile and hooded-eyed expression, he all but purred in anticipation, and she found herself suddenly very aware that, in both of their cases, only thin fabric separated their bodies from each other.
He lay on a towel on his stomach, his incredibly muscled back still glistening with drops of the sea, and her mouth watered in anticipation, as if he was a meal waiting to be devoured.
Given how much she wanted him, the description wasn’t that far off.
His glutes were perfectly rounded and defined in a way that some people were willing to go under the knife to achieve, though she knew in his case the perfection wasn’t bought but the natural result of riding hard and not shirking leg day.
She had the sense that Diablo didn’t shirk in anything that he did, and the knowledge set off a wave of shivers along her skin.
But even the thrill of the idea was nothing compared to the sensation of placing her cool palms against his hot skin to rub in the thick mineral sunscreen.
As she massaged his back and rubbed it in, blending away the cast of the sunscreen in the process, he made sounds that sent her mind to the kinds of pleasure best not enjoyed in public settings.
Diablo lit the sensuality within her, driving her to make the first move—or second, or third, or fourth move—because in his company it was abruptly clear that games and ought-not-tos were a bad way to waste precious time.
“Other side,” she said, her voice hoarse but her command firm. Here was a test of sorts. He didn’t exactly need her help to put sunblock on his stomach. Would he turn?
He did, and what was more, he did it without callout or comment.
She supposed they were still playing some game of sorts. Theirs just wasn’t the game of pretending.
And if his back had been an experience, rubbing the sunblock across his corded and defined chest and abs was downright overstimulating—and watching his face while she did so? A simultaneous exercise in pleasure and pain.
His eyes were dark and endless and today was expressly and purposely about them, for this.
To be together, out loud and in the open, mutual feelings acknowledged between the two of them.
Sitting up with a contraction of his gorgeously defined muscles, Diablo leaned forward to brush the sand from her shoulder and once he was there, it was only a matter of closing the last few inches between them for their lips to meet.
She sighed into his kiss, eagerly surrendering to a sensation she was coming to crave.
This was mastery, utterly assured and confident—the same thrumming power that clung to him in the arena and, she guessed, in the courtroom.
And then he was everywhere at once—over her, his palms slipping her swimsuit bottoms down and over her hips, the calloused strength of his palm traveling the length of her leg in a rough caress against her hypersensitive skin as he pulled them down in an exquisite friction until he reached her ankle. Wrapping his hand around the delicate bones, with gentle pressure he pushed her leg up and slightly open, moving her body into the kind of wanton position she’d only seen online.
Cheeks hot, her breath caught, then released, and on it, his name slipped out.
He looked up, a crooked smile and wicked light in his eye, and she knew it was too late for her.
This was what mothers had been warning their daughters about since the dawn of time.
He knew it, and she knew it.
Then his hands were making quick work of the strings of her bikini top to bare and cup her breasts, and she didn’t know anything but the urge to cry out softly, the contact sweet relief against the heavy, tender weight she hadn’t realized had been so burdensome.
He rolled his thumbs over the hard buds of her nipples and she moaned, arching into his hands.
“Quieres eso?” he asked, leaning in close, brushing his lips against her neck, before trailing kisses along her jawline toward her ear. “Y eso?” he continued, his voice a low thrumming vibration entering her ear before shivering through the rest of her body like a sweet secret.
“Mmmmm.” The mumbled affirmation was all she could manage, her mind taxed enough, split between paying attention to what he was doing with his hands and mouth.
He still had his swimsuit on, though it had become more constricted as a result of their activity.
Greedy to do some exploring of her own, she brought her hands to his chest.
He was magnificent in the flesh. Deep brown and smooth as silk, she wanted to taste and touch every inch of him that she could see, the cannibalistic language of love making sense to her in a way it never had before.
He was...delicious. And that was just without a shirt on.
To her gratitude, he leaned back to let her have her fill of looking, though her breasts pouted at the loss of his attention.
He did his own studying as well, however, his eyes lighting on hers before lowering, lingering on her lips, her exposed breasts, and then his eyes trailed lower, down the soft swell of her stomach to the nuclear core of her.
When they landed there, the look in his eyes shifted, more intent, his energy pointed in a way it hadn’t been before.
Her breathing went short, and she froze, somehow resisting the urge to cover herself, grateful she was just high maintenance enough to shell out for professional grooming despite the fact that there hadn’t been anyone to see it in years.
Had it really been years? She wondered briefly with a kind of horrified awe at how that much time had passed since she’d been with a man, before circling back around to the reason.
The answer was the same as it always was: rodeo.
There was no time for men in a schedule like hers.
And yet, she had made time for Diablo. Forced it where it shouldn’t be and didn’t belong.
And what a reward she had gained.
Abruptly, the space between them disappeared again.
He cupped her mound with his palm, the warm, steady pressure of it teasing for all that it rested still.
And, as if he performed some titillating sexual magic rather than simply held her most sensitive core, she felt herself opening for him, her inner folds going slick, beckoning his fingers inside, even as her hips ground against his palm, driven by primal instinct.
He ran a finger along her most intimate crease and the world stilled. She welcomed him with joy, sending tremors in a wave from the epicenter, but he did not press, simply caressed, up and down, each stroke gentle and deliberate.
Her breath hitched with every pass, each one shorter than the last, as she watched him touch her, a somewhat out-of-body erotic experience almost for watching and feeling at the same time.
The air rang out with a series of strange whimpers and sobs and she was surprised to realize the sound was coming from her.
Her eyes screwed shut.
“No. Look at me, Sierra. I like it when you watch.” His voice was utterly commanding. He spoke with the authority of a man who not only knew his orders would be followed, but also expected his followers to be grateful for the direction.
She looked at him, cheeks flushed, eyes bright, moist and large. And she was grateful she did.
He was a masterpiece. Hard planes, shadows, velvet and steel—perfection, unmarred by the scars that marked so many rodeo cowboys.
But she knew he could still ride.
The thought struck her at the same moment his finger slipped inside her, and the combination thrust her over the edge she’d been skirting. Her body locked around him, clenching before releasing in waves of pleasure that radiated from her center outward, erasing everything in their wake.
They had not yet subsided when he slipped his shorts off, nor even when he aligned himself, hot and sheathed, against her still-pulsing entrance, though they both shuddered on contact, a strange fluttering of awareness sparkling through her veins before dissipating like stardust in the face of more earth pleasures.
He adjusted her ankle, angling her hips for that much more access, his eyes reading hers, the tendons in his neck as rigid as he was.
And then, in a single stroke, he thrust inside her on a growl and stopped. “Dios mio, Sierra, this is criminal.” His voice was strained, sexier for all of its leashed control, even as her body stiffened in reaction to the pain of stretching.
It had been a long time.
Neither of them moved.
His breathing came in ragged breaths, the sound harsh for all that she felt each one in her core.
Pleasure building again, growing more insistent the longer he remained within her—the more her body adjusted to the incredible size and length of him—she began to undulate her hips.
His muscles quivered, but he showed no signs of fatigue.
If he was indefatigable, however, she was feeling a growing sense of urgency, her hips moving faster according to instinct and primal design rather than any sort of control.
A strangled sound escaped his throat, but he held still, allowing her the freedom to explore him. When she experimented with lowering her hips, drawing him out before inching forward to slide back in, however, he took control of the reins.
Slowly, then with greater intensity, depth and speed, he thrust, drawing her nearer and nearer again to the gnawing edge of oblivion. She was eager to follow, eager to jump with him again.
As she kept his pace, her hips finding his rhythm, meeting him with each thrust, he spread her legs wider, the motion somehow possessive. And she was surprised by how much she wanted him to claim her, how each withdrawal brought a pinch of sadness and each return took her a step closer to bliss.
And then she was tumbling over the edge again, but this time, when she went down, she took the devil with her.