Full Throttle

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“OH, no. No. Absolutely not. As in hell no,” Shawn said, in case there was any doubt in anyone’s mind. She was not going to ride the mechanical bull. “This isn’t a real bachelorette party because I’m already married, so I do not need to act like an idiot.”

She was perfectly content to sit at the sticky table in the country western–themed bar and drink her beer while she moved her feet to some Tim McGraw tunes. Simple. Worked for her.

Charity had other ideas. She was dressed in nothing but a denim vest with fringe dangling at her ta-tas, a tiny denim skirt, and hot pink cowboy boots. “Don’t be a spoilsport!” she said, wetting her lips with yet more lip gloss and fluffing her blond hair. “Cut loose a little.”

“I think you’re being loose enough for all of us,” Eve told her with a grin.

“Bitch.” Though Charity didn’t look particularly hurt. “I want to dance! You old ladies can sit here like a bunch of lame-os, but I’m going to dust off my two-step. Harley, you coming?”

Her twin shook her head rapidly. “No.” She looked like she would prefer to paint her naked body with honey and go strolling through a bear’s den than dance on the floor with a multitude of skimpily dressed women and one drunk fifty-year-old man who was aiming too high with his flirtations.

Shawn was with Harley on this one.

Eve shook her head when Charity asked her. “I can’t dance. I look like I’m being electrocuted.” She sipped her beer and glanced around. “Man, I do not miss being single. This is a meat market, and not the freshest cuts, I have to say.”

“Thanks,” Harley said with a frown, pumping her straw furiously up and down in her fruity drink. “That’s very helpful to those of us who are single.”

Oops. “You don’t want anyone here anyways,” Shawn protested. “There isn’t a guy here worthy of you.”

“That argument gets stale when you haven’t been on a date in a year.”

“I can sympathize with that,” Shawn said. “Before Rhett I was on a dry spell that had the trees begging the dogs to lift a leg. When you least expect it, you’ll meet someone.”

“I doubt it,” Harley said. Then she smiled, “But this is your night anyway. Though I have to admit, I’m having trouble keeping track of Rhett and Nolan’s sisters. There’s just so many of them, and their names all seem to end in ‘y.’”

“Tell me about it,” Shawn agreed. Five of Rhett’s sisters had come and were at the bar ordering drinks. “They all look similar, too, and the only one with a stand-out name, Rachel, is the one who lives in California. The rebel.”

Eve snorted. “Yeah, she’s so rebellious that she works as a CPA.”

“You know, to people like Sandy and Nolan Senior, and my grandparents, and your parents, leaving the Carolinas is akin to seceding from the South. Unless you move to Georgia.”

“Then they just think you’re being stubborn.” Eve grinned.

Danny, Sammy, Andy, Melissa, and Dawn, the Ford sisters, came back to the table, various drinks in hand.

“It’s too bad Jeannie couldn’t make it,” Andy said. “But Asher was projectile vomiting.” Given the way she was swaying her hips to the music and grinning, the sympathy seemed more like relief that it wasn’t her stuck at home with a sweaty kid.

“So tell us gossip about Rhett as a kid,” Eve said. “So we can shame him tomorrow.”

Danny laughed. “He was spoiled, I can tell you that. Dad wanted another son, which is why half of us girls have male nicknames. I don’t think Mom cared one way or the other, but there is no question he was her baby. And ours. We used to put him in our old dresses.”

The image of Rhett dolled up made Shawn snort. “That must have been a sight to behold. He’s so . . . masculine.” Immediately, she felt the heat in her cheeks. That didn’t sound right. It sounded very smitten and girly. Yikes.

Melissa rolled her eyes, lifting her drink, which looked an awful lot like straight bourbon. “He wasn’t born six two with rock-solid biceps, you know. He was a scrawny enough little kid. With a freakish ability to never blink. For a while we were sure he was Damian from The Omen reincarnated. Mom was a little pissed about that when we started calling him JB, for Jackal Baby.”

Eve laughed. “That sounds like something I would have done. I love it.”

“Would have done?” Shawn asked. “Hell, you still would.”

“True.”

Danny set down her drink and stripped off her hoodie. “Okay, I never get out of the house. Ever. I am going to dance. I may be too old for this shit, and I may be happily married, but sometimes a woman still needs to shake what the good Lord gave her.”

“Charity is already out there. She’s the one surrounded by a cloud of White Diamonds. She thinks wearing an Elizabeth Taylor scent will attract older men with money.”

All the sisters went out to the dance floor. They didn’t try to drag Eve, obviously knowing their sister-in-law well enough to realize she couldn’t be dragged anywhere, not even out of a burning fire if she had decided she wanted to stay and get a tan. Harley was no match for them, though. One tug, and they had her. Shawn bailed by saying she wanted to talk to Eve. Which she did, so it wasn’t a total lie.

“Do you really want to talk to me?” Eve asked, shifting her chair closer to Shawn’s to be heard over the music. “Or were you just trying to get out of dancing?”

“I wanted to ask you something.” It was a weird thing to ask, but hell, Shawn was curious. She’d never been married before. “How often do you and Nolan have sex?”

Eve spit out the beer she’d been sipping and choked. “Goddammit, Shawn! Will you fucking warn me if you’re going to ask something like that? I almost drowned from my Heineken.”

“Sorry. But I am serious. Like, what is normal when you’re married?”

“Well.” Eve wiped her mouth with a cocktail napkin and then rubbed it down the front of her tight shirt. “I would say on average, it’s three times a week. It would probably be more like four or five if our schedules didn’t keep us apart. Why? Is Rhett falling asleep watching TV instead of banging you? He’s only twenty-five, for crying out loud.”

Shawn coughed. “No. Um, it’s kind of the opposite. We’ve had sex every day for the last ten days. I was just wondering if, you know, that’s normal. And if, maybe at some point, it’s going to slow down.”

Eve’s jaw dropped. “Ten days in a row? Are you serious?”

Shawn nodded.

“Are they quickies, or are they like actual sexual events?”

Oh, they were not quickies. “Actual events. Usually at least an hour, most closer to two.” And every day had been a little more freeing, a little more arousing, a little more all-encompassing. She’d never been so in tune with her body, never had so many orgasms in such a short span of time. It was amazing and wonderful and, frankly, scary as hell.

“Holy crap. I think I need to have a word with my husband.” Eve laughed. “Though, honestly, at some point I think that would just be overkill for me. Nolan and I have a rocking sex life and that would just cut into my sleep schedule. So, how do you feel about it? Is it boring or something? Is that why you’re asking?”

That most definitely was not the problem. “No, it’s not boring at all. I love it. It makes all the sex I’ve had before look like child’s play. I was just wondering if at some point we’re going to have a sexual crash, and then it will be nothing. Or if I might be doing harm, you know, like wrecking my vagina or something. I would think it needs a break at some point.”

“It’s not a Walmart worker. It doesn’t need an hour for lunch.” Eve made a face at her.

“I know.” Shawn laughed. “It just seems like it can’t be good for it.”

“Well, ask it. Like ‘Hey, vag, how are you feeling today?’ If it feels beat up, tell Rhett to give it a rest for twenty-four. Otherwise, I think you’re good. I mean, isn’t that what it was designed for?”

“True.” Sucking down her Guinness, she shook her head. “Who would have thought I would be worried about getting laid too frequently? Sam and I had sex once every two weeks.”

“That’s because he was banging random chicks the other thirteen days.”

“Thanks for the reminder. See? This is why I question Rhett’s behavior. It’s out of my realm of experience.”

Eve laughed. “I think you just need to enjoy the fact that your husband is so into you. Though now when I look at him I’m going to be watching to see if he’s popping Viagra or something. Two hours? What the hell?”

“He’s twenty-five,” Shawn reminded her. “He is erect or semi-erect on average eighteen hours a day.”

“I’m going to puke,” was Eve’s opinion.

Harley came rushing back to the table and dropped into a chair, her eyes wide.

“What’s wrong?” Shawn asked her.

“Cooper’s here.”

Uh-oh. “Your boss?”

“Yes. He’s dancing.”

Cooper Brickman was a man-whore driver who Harley had just started working for as a nanny/prison guard for his obnoxious twelve-year-old niece. It was safe to say Harley had a King Kong–size crush on him, though he seemed like the last person on earth she would be interested in. But there was no accounting for attraction. Shawn was just worried she was doomed to unrequited lust.

“So dance with him,” was Eve’s suggestion.

“He’s my boss!” Harley looked aghast and downed half her rum runner in one gulp. “I can’t dance with him! Besides, he’s dancing with Charity. I need another drink.”

“You might want to sip the next one,” Shawn suggested. “And tell Charity you have a thing for him so she isn’t horning in. You shouldn’t have to sit here and watch them dancing together.” She could see them out there on the crowded dance floor. Charity was engulfed in Cooper’s octopus grip, his hands lower on her back than was strictly appropriate.

“You’re identical twins and he’s hitting on Charity. Don’t you think that means he’s actually interested in you?” Eve asked.

“No! There is nothing identical about Charity and me.” And she crossed her arms over her chest in a clear signal that she wanted to pout about it, not talk about it.

Danny and Sammy came back over, tossing back their hair and laughing. “Come on, we’re riding the mechanical bull! Who’s in?”

“I’ll do it,” Eve said, tossing a smirk her way. “And I dare Shawn to do it.”

Damn it. One of these days she was going to pass on a dare. She was going to be mature enough to realize it didn’t matter in the slightest if she didn’t rise to the bait. That her worth as a human being was not based on how many challenges she could accept and accomplish.

That day was not today.

This was her bachelorette party and she was not going to be shown up. So she shrugged in total nonchalance. “I’ll do it. It looks easy.”

Eve laughed. “Talking smack, huh? Twenty bucks says you can’t stay on for forty-five seconds.”

Shawn tried to remember her previous experiences watching other women ride the bull at various bars around town. Usually they took it easy on them, preferring the setting that bounced the bull up and down, creating a crowd-pleasing breast jiggle. Once she’d had the misfortune to see a woman get tossed off in a miniskirt, flashing the whole bar her girl bits. Shawn was wearing jeans, and she had enough strength in her thighs from playing volleyball and doing yoga that she was confident she could hang for forty-five seconds.

“No problem.” She turned to her sisters-in-law. “Who wants to lay down their money? Me or Eve, who can stay on the bull longer?”

“Oh, Lord,” Harley mumbled.

Purses were flung open and money was waved around.

Shawn eyed the bull from across the room and sized up her competition. Eve had the advantage of wearing jeans with some spandex in them. Otherwise, it was a level field.

She cracked her knuckles and strode over to sign the waiver.

RHETT watched his brother-in-law going for some kind of basketball shooting record and decided he was bored out of his mind. He didn’t want a bachelor party with strippers or to wind up puking in the backseat of Jared’s car, but hell, he wanted something a little more exciting than an adult-oriented arcade. His sister’s husbands all had kids and didn’t get a night to themselves very often, so they were all pumped to be drinking beer and playing Skee-Ball, but Rhett was feeling understimulated. Nolan didn’t look to be having that great of a time either, though he had managed to score a boatload of tickets off the water pistol game.

“What do you think the girls are doing?” he asked Nolan, when his brother came strolling over to him, tickets dangling out of his back pocket like paper sausages.

“I think they’re getting drunk at the bar and egging each other on to see who can dance the most like a stripper.”

“I wish we were there to see that.” He did. Most sincerely. He missed Shawn. He didn’t want to deny her the fun of a girl’s night, but he thought they would both have more fun if they were together. “We should crash their party.”

“Are you crazy? Do you want to lose your nuts the day before you get married? Or celebrate being married, since you are already married?” Nolan shook his head. “You’ll just piss Shawn off, you know.”

“I don’t think so.” He didn’t. “She’ll think it’s funny. The guys did it in Mamma Mia and every woman in existence loves that movie.”

“Mamma Mia?”

“The musical. The dudes crash the bachelorette party.”

Nolan gave him a long sidelong glance. “I’ve never seen it. And it scares me that you have.”

“That’s because you’re like a hundred years older than me. When I was a kid, I had a pack of sisters who wanted to see every chick flick in existence. I saw Bridget Jones’s Diary at ten years old. Pretty Woman at five. Five years old.” He held one hand up to make his point. “That ain’t right. And they conned me into A League of Their Own by telling me it was a baseball movie.”

Nolan snorted. “Well, why did you go?”

“Because I didn’t have a choice. The girls were babysitting me.”

“Where was I? I feel kind of bad, little brother. I should have tried to save you from time to time.”

“You were always at the track or chasing tail.”

Nolan grunted in acknowledgment of the truth behind that. “Where was Mom?”

“I don’t know. Nailing Dad?” They looked at each other and cracked up. “That was their Saturday afternoon thing, you know.”

“Oh, I know.” Nolan watched Mark throw his arms up in triumph. “And I wouldn’t call me old around your wife, you know. She and I were born the same year. You’ll have your ass handed to you on a platter if you’re not careful.”

“Good point. But come on, let’s go to the bar they’re at. You want to see Eve drunk, don’t you?”

“I’ve seen it. It’s highly entertaining.”

“I can’t say as I’ve seen Shawn drunk.”

Nolan glanced at his cell phone. “By now, they’re probably challenging each other to a drinking contest or who can deep throat the penis straw. You know how they are.”

“And you don’t want to see that? Because I do.” Rhett was hard just thinking about it. He loved the competitive side of Shawn. And deep throating a penis straw? He was in.

“You make a solid case.” Nolan finished his beer. “You okay with it if Shawn gets mad at you?”

“Yeah.” Rhett gave him a smug look. “I know how to handle her.”

“Oh, big words, little man. We’ll see.” Nolan clapped him on the back. “Hey, guys!” he called to the rest of the group. “Let’s roll!”

There was resistance from the others, who were envisioning very pissed off wives waiting for them, but in the end, since Rhett was the new groom, he made the decision.

Which is how he wound up walking into the Silver Buckle just in time to see his wife throw one leg over the mechanical bull and hoist her sexy ass up onto it.

His sisters were hooting and hollering, and Eve was standing on the edge of the pen, arms crossed.

“Uh-oh,” Nolan said, coming up beside him. “Eve has her psyche-out-the-opponent look on her face. Twenty bucks says the girls have a bet going already.”

“You want me to bet you that they’re in the middle of a bet? That’s stupid.” All Rhett wanted to do was grab a seat and watch the action unfold for a while, unnoticed by the women. “Hold back for a minute. Let’s not let them know we’re here yet.”

Considering there were six of them, it wasn’t going to be easy to stay incognito, but they could manage five minutes.

“I hope to God my wife isn’t planning on riding that bull,” Dave said. “I can see it now—she’ll throw out her back, and that will be the end of life as I know it for the next two weeks.” He shook his head, glum.

Rhett nudged him. “Come on. She’s not that stupid. She knows her limits. Unlike my wife.”

“Your wife is riding like she was born with a bull between her legs.”

“Excuse me?” Rhett glared at him before swiveling his gaze quickly to see Shawn, her slim thighs straddling the bull as it slowly reared up and then back down. Her posture was loose, her body fluid, moving in harmony with the mechanism. She looked relaxed and hot as hell.

“Sorry, that didn’t sound right.”

“No, it sure in the hell didn’t.” Rhett unzipped his athletic jacket and put his hands in his front pockets. “You can go get me a beer to make up for it.” He was too busy watching his wife to hit the bar himself.

The bar employee had turned up the bull, much to everyone’s delight, and Shawn was working harder now to stay on, her thighs clamping in a way that made his tongue thick, her breasts bouncing with a vigor that got his blood pumping.

“Fine,” Dave grumbled.

“Dawn. Straight ahead,” Nolan told him.

Their middle sister had spotted them, and she was picking her way through the crowd. “What the hell are you guys doing here?” She glared at her husband. “You guys can’t crash a bachelorette party!”

Rhett didn’t respond, mesmerized by Shawn as she held on but then lost control and sailed off the bull in a graceful dismount, landing on her perfect bottom. She bounced up immediately, and there seemed to be some haggling going on between her, Eve, and Charity.

“It’s a free country,” Nolan told her. “Hey, what are they doing, besides the obvious? Do they have a bet going on? Eve has her serious face on.”

“How can you tell the difference?” Rhett asked.

Nolan punched him in the arm.

“They have a bet to see who can stay on the bull longer. Best combined total time out of three runs.”

“Seriously? Leave it to them to not be satisfied with just a sudden-death one-shot ride.” Nolan grinned. “God, I love my wife.”

Rhett had to say he loved his as well.

He started. He loved her?

God, he did. He wasn’t sure when it had happened, maybe gradually, one laugh, one orgasm at a time, but over the last ten days, he had fallen hard for her. He admired her gumption, her strength, her sweetness. He took immense pleasure in giving her pleasure night after night, in making her more and more his.

“Shawn will win, I can guarantee it,” Rhett told his brother.

Nolan’s eyebrow shot up. “What makes you so certain? Eve is as stubborn as they come. If anyone can make a mechanical bull her bitch, it’s her.”

“Oh, good grief,” Dawn snapped. “You’re going to turn their competition into a secondary competition? You’re worse than my kids, I swear.”

Eve was up on the bull now, and she pulled an impressive ride, one that was arguably the same length, if not longer than Shawn’s. When she fell off, she leaned over and mimicked “Call me” to the bull with her thumb and pinky up to her ear.

Nolan let out a laugh. “That’s my girl.”

“This is Shawn’s last run,” Dawn said.

While Rhett’s cock grew harder and harder with each bounce and jolt of Shawn on the bull, her thighs clamped on like she was riding him the way he had instructed her to the night before, hands behind her back. Damn. He loved his sexy wife.

“You look feral,” Nolan told him. “Ease up, brother.”

“What? Shawn is hot, I can’t help it.”

She lost control and flew off the bull. There was haggling and an intense discussion to the side, with Sammy clearly the timekeeper. She raised Shawn’s arm, declaring her the winner, as Shawn whooped in triumph. Eve didn’t look pissed. She was grinning.

“Should we announce our illustrious presence?” Nolan asked him.

It appeared Dawn already had. She’d rejoined the girls, and there was finger-pointing in their direction. Eight sets of female eyes swung their way.

“We’re in for a world of hurt,” was Jared’s opinion.

“If this were a musical, this would signal the start of a dance number,” Rhett said, amused by the thought. “Angry girls sexy dance in unison around the bull pen. Men stride up and grab a partner to a choreographed tango.”

Nolan held his hand out. “Give me your man card. You have never sounded more like a girl than right now.”

“Screw you,” Rhett told him. “It’s a joke. It’s funny. Now you bitches can stand here quaking in your boots about what your women might do to you. I’m going to get my woman.”

He started to walk, moving toward his wife.

He heard Jared ask Nolan, “How does he get that caveman shit to work for him? I would get my balls ripped off and stuffed in my mouth if I pulled what he does.”

“Beats the hell out of me.”

Rhett smiled. He knew exactly how he got away with it.

Shawn knew he respected her above all things. Shawn trusted him.

And it was time to tell her that he had fallen in love with her and wanted their temporary marriage to become a very real one.