Saddles and Sin Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  All Rights Reserved

  Also by Jessie Evans

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  A Letter from the Author

  Please enjoy this excerpt from “Diamonds and Dust” Lonesome Point Book 3

  Saddles and Sin

  A Lonesome Point Novel

  By Jessie Evans

  All Rights Reserved

  Copyright Saddles and Sin © 2014 Jessie D. Evans www.jessieevansauthor.com

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. This contemporary western romance romance is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners. This ebook is licensed for your personal use only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with, especially if you enjoy hot, sexy, emotional novels featuring alpha cowboys. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work. Cover image by Rob Lang c. Rob Lang/Roblangimages.com 2014. Cover design © by Sarah Hansen for Okay Creations. Edited by Robin Leone Editorial.

  Also by Jessie Evans

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  Lonesome Point, Texas

  LEATHER AND LACE (Book One)

  SADDLES AND SIN (Book Two) September 2014

  DIAMONDS AND DUST (Book Three) Nov 2014

  GLITTER AND GRIT (Book Four) Dec 2014

  Always a Bridesmaid

  BETTING ON YOU (Book One)

  KEEPING YOU (Book Two)

  WILD FOR YOU (Book Three)

  CATCHING YOU (Four-Short Story)

  TAKING YOU (Five-Novella/Short Novel)

  Fire and Icing

  MELT WITH YOU (Book One)

  HOT FOR YOU (Book Two)

  SWEET TO YOU (Book Three)

  PERFECT FOR YOU (Four-Short Story)

  SAVING YOU (Five-Novella/Short Novel)

  Cupid Island Novellas (Short Novels)

  AUDITIONING YOU (Cupid Island Two)

  A Cupid Island Christmas Anthology by Jessie Evans, Lila Ashe, and Ruby Laska

  DARING YOU (Cupid Island Weddings)

  Edgy, New Adult Reads

  ONE WILD NIGHT-Wild Rush prequel

  THIS WICKED RUSH-Wild Rush Book One

  ONE PERFECT LOVE- Wild Rush Book Two

  THIS SWEET ESCAPE-Wild Rush Book Three (Danny and Sam’s story)-October 2014

  CHAPTER ONE

  Robert Lawson—Bubba to his friends, family, and about anyone else who’d known him for more than fifteen minutes—was not the kind of man who made women stop and stare when he walked down the street. He was tall and dark, with slightly wavy brown hair and warm brown eyes, but he’d missed the handsome part. He was…pleasant-looking. His was a face that made babies smile, and old women pat his cheek on their way out of church. He was a good old boy, with a good old boy’s face, and a good old boy’s grin that had gotten him out of more than his fair share of trouble growing up.

  If someone had told him two weeks ago that women would be screaming his name when he walked onstage, and tracking him down after the show to offer to take him home/follow him home/give him a blow job right there in the backstage hallway, he would have laughed his ass off and called them a liar.

  And then he would have apologized for the liar part.

  Bubba had been known to let his mouth run now and then, but he was always sorry after. He had been raised by people who insisted family came first, friends came second, and kindness came always. Those were lessons he’d taken to heart. He was a kind man, a good man, and he knew better than to take advantage of a woman who had fallen for the lights and the music more than the person beneath the fancy new cowboy hat and designer jeans.

  But damn, if the curvy little blonde who had been waiting by his truck when he came out of The Cadillac Club wasn’t making it hard to remember his manners.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said, forcing himself to look away from the blonde’s very generous, very bare breasts. “You’re a beautiful woman, but it’s late and I’m sure you’ve had something to drink, so…”

  “I’m not drunk,” she said, swaying her shoulders coyly back and forth, setting those killer breasts to bobbing gently. “I know what I want. So let’s take this party back to your hotel room, cowboy.”

  Bubba shook his head as he exhaled. “Probably not a good idea, though I appreciate the offer. Truly.”

  Just tell her, “Thanks, but no thanks,” idiot. This isn’t time for your Sunday school manners.

  But it was the first time a woman had ever greeted him by taking her shirt off, and he wasn’t sure how to handle himself—or the voice in his head that said he should reach out and take what was being freely offered. He hadn’t been with a woman in more months than he cared to admit, and he was already imagining how good it would feel to have this girl’s hot hands on his bare skin and those full breasts heavy in his palms. It had been so long since he’d touched a woman that way. So long, that for a crazy second he almost opened the door to the truck and told this complete stranger to climb on in.

  He might have done it, and had his first one-night stand, if Marisol hadn’t emerged from the club’s back door at that moment, and shifted immediately into talent protection mode.

  “Oh no, girl. No, no, no,” Marisol said, shaking her finger as she power-walked across the parking lot in her shiny black flats and skinny jeans, her long black hair bouncing around her shoulders. She had so much attitude packed into her slim frame that even her hair seemed to have a personality of its own. “Robert is not interested, sweetheart. He has to be up for a meeting at seven o’clock tomorrow morning, and he prefers women who keep their clothes on in public.”

  The blonde’s eyes narrowed and her heavily lined lips parted, but Marisol was already barreling on.

  “I want you to go home and think about where you misplaced your dignity, chica.” She clucked her tongue with concern as she grabbed the blonde’s tee shirt off the ground and tossed it at her chest. “You are better than this, girl! You deserve a man who will treat you like a princess. Look how pretty you are. So pretty! Way too good-looking to be this guy’s booty call.”

  Marisol jabbed a thumb at Bubba and wrinkled her nose. “I mean, take a good look at that good old boy face. He’s not even that attractive. Stage presence is all smoke and mirrors, sugar. Take it from someone who learned the hard way.”
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  The blonde blinked in confusion, her gaze shifting back and forth between Marisol and Bubba. She looked ready to speak, but after a moment, her lips closed and she backed away with a dazed nod.

  Either she’d gotten a good look at his face and agreed with Marisol’s less-than-flattering assessment, or she was simply too beer-buzzed at the end of a long night to keep up with Marisol’s rapid fire delivery. Whichever was to blame, moments later the girl and her tempting chest were gone, vanished to the front of The Cadillac Club, where the valet would slip her into a cab that would whisk her away into the Austin night.

  Cabs. They still seemed foreign to Bubba. Growing up in a town as small as Lonesome Point, Texas, he hadn’t seen a cab until he went to see Willie Nelson play in Dallas when he was sixteen years old. He was a small town boy, more comfortable alone in the desert than prowling the concrete jungle, and he should be grateful he had a big city girl like Marisol looking out for him.

  But right now, he wasn’t in a grateful frame of mind.

  “That could have been handled better,” he said, gruffly.

  Marisol rolled her eyes. “Whatever, it was handled.”

  “Could you have been more condescending?” He glared down at her, wondering if he should have signed with the greasy guy with the tattoos and the handlebar moustache after all.

  After his first industry open mic night, he’d taken one look into Marisol’s brown eyes—eyes that sparkled with energy and ambition—and decided she was the one for him. He was giving the music career one shot, and he wanted the fiercest ally he could get on his side. Marisol might not look fierce—she was tall, but slim, with delicate features and a sexy baby deer thing going on that club managers seemed to find irresistible—but Bubba had enough firecracker female friends in his life to know a live wire when he saw one.

  Live wire, he could handle. He could handle being bossed around, told what time he needed to go to bed, what he should wear on stage, and which of the new songs he and Marisol were writing he should work into his set, but he wasn’t going to put up with being treated like a dumb country bumpkin.

  “I’d prefer that doesn’t happen again,” he said, his voice hard.

  “I’m sorry.” Marisol let out a surprised laugh. “Did you want me to put on the kid gloves for a girl who took her shirt off in a parking lot?”

  “I wasn’t talking about the girl.” Bubba felt like a fool the moment the words were out of his mouth. He usually wouldn’t care if someone made fun of his face. He didn’t know why he let Marisol get to him. Maybe it was because she was supposed to be on his side, or because the past three weeks writing songs with her had been some of the best times of his life. Maybe it was because she felt like a friend, more than an employee, and Bubba wasn’t used to friends with edges as sharp as hers.

  Or maybe it was simply because he couldn’t quit thinking about how much he’d like to fist his hand in her wild hair and kiss her until she couldn’t think of a single thing to say with that pretty mouth. He couldn’t stop imagining the way she’d respond to his kiss, his touch, and how damned beautiful she’d look laid out on his bed, naked as the day she was born.

  He had a thing for his manager. A bad, bad thing. He wished he didn’t, but the truth was even the way she sighed and rolled her eyes at him made him a little thicker.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, batting her eyelashes as she slipped into pacify the talent mode. “You know I didn’t mean any of that. You’re the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. I’d take my shirt off for you in a parking lot, too, if I was a sex-starved drunk girl with no self-respect.”

  Bubba sighed. “You don’t have to butter me up.”

  “But I would.” Marisol grinned up at him. “Butter you up and lick you clean, if we didn’t have a strictly professional relationship, and you didn’t have a very important interview at seven o’clock tomorrow morning. You remember what we decided you should wear, right?”

  “I do,” Bubba said, the comment rubbing him the wrong way. “I may look like a dumb country boy, but I can hold information in my head for longer than five hours at a time.”

  Marisol’s easy-going façade cracked, and for the first time Bubba saw genuine worry creep into her expression. “Seriously, Robert,” she said, the lilt going out of her voice. “I didn’t mean to offend you. It’s late, and I said what I knew would get the job done. I didn’t even think, and if I had, I wouldn’t have imagined something like that was capable of hurting your feelings.”

  Bubba grunted. “Good old boys have feelings, too, you know.”

  “I-I know,” Marisol said, her usually direct gaze flicking from the pavement, to his truck, to the streetlight above their heads. “I just…” She shrugged and rolled her eyes again, but this time she seemed more rattled than irritated. “Seriously, Robert, I can’t tell if it’s an act with you, or you’ve just never looked in a mirror, but I don’t see how you’ve made it to twenty-six years old without realizing you’re good-looking. Like…stop-a-girl’s-heart good-looking.”

  Damn. Now, Bubba didn’t know what to say. His focus had been sideswiped by the realization that Marisol thought he was good-looking, and that maybe she hadn’t been completely joking about that butter comment. The possibility made it difficult to tear his eyes away from her lips, to keep from wondering what she would taste like, what she would sound like when he made her moan. It had been a while since he’d had a chance to practice his skills in the bedroom, but there were some things a man never forgot.

  Like how to ride a horse, how to change the oil in his truck, and how to drive a woman crazy.

  He was imagining all the ways he’d like to get Marisol worked up—with his tongue and his teeth and his hands between her long, smooth legs—when a matching pair of squeals sounded from the far side of the parking lot.

  “There he is! Robert Lawson!”

  Bubba looked up to see two new blondes jabbing dangerous-looking fingernails in his direction. Three-fourths of the population of Austin was composed of different shades of bottled blond, something else that was far different from Lonesome Point. A moment later, the two women started his way, jogging the painful-looking, mincing trot of women whose impractical footwear was on the verge of crippling them for life.

  Marisol propped her hands on her hips with a soft curse. “Hell, Robert. Women are literally throwing themselves at you. How can you have an ounce of insecurity in that big body of yours?”

  “I’m a sensitive soul,” he said, his eyes still glued to Marisol’s face, too intrigued by the flustered note in her voice to give the blondes skittering toward them a second glance.

  Marisol made a sound that was half laugh, half snort, and all sexy—at least to him. “Get going, sex god. I’ll make sure the lusty twins know you’re not interested, and call you in a few.”

  “I’d rather show them I’m not interested.” Bubba’s pulse spiked as he angled closer to Marisol, knowing this might be his only chance to see if the chemistry between them was more than smoke and mirrors.

  Her eyes widened. “How’s that?”

  “Like this.” Bubba reached for her, driving his fingers into her hair and tightening his hand into a fist as he pulled her close and took possession of her beautiful mouth.

  The moment their lips touched, Marisol’s breath rushed out and her neck went limp in his hand, making his cock swell until his jeans felt like they’d do him damage. He’d let himself dream that Marisol would enjoy being kissed like this—being taken, claimed, the way he’d been dying to do for weeks—but he’d never imagined she would respond this way. That she’d open for him, melt against him, giving in without a hint of resistance. That she’d twine her arms around his neck, press her curves against his chest, and gasp in pleasure when he swatted her bottom before cupping her ass in his hand and squeezing tight.

  God help him, he hadn’t intended to do anything but kiss her, but now he didn’t want to stop. He wanted to bundle Marisol into his truck, and bring her back to his hotel room
. He wanted to strip her sexy red tank top off with his teeth and discover the taste of her skin, make her squirm beneath him as he showed her what good old boys can do to a woman when they’re given permission to be bad.

  He was on the verge of proposing that they take this public display somewhere more private and reconsider the “just business” part of their relationship, when Marisol abruptly jerked out of his arms.

  He opened his eyes to see her swiping her arm across her mouth. A moment later, she was laughing.

  “Mierda,” she said, eyes sparkling. “You’re crazy.”

  Bubba managed to get his breathing under control, but he couldn’t work up a smile. “Why’s that?”

  “That! The dramatic kiss! But you were right, it got rid of the groupies,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. “But the macho shit was a bit much, don’t you think? Even for a fake kiss?”

  She was lying. Something deep inside of Bubba would bet his vocal chords on it. The way she’d responded to him hadn’t been an act. It had been real, as real as the erection doing its best to rip an escape hatch through his jeans, making him grateful for the relative darkness. If it were daylight, there would be no way to hide how aroused he was.

  The thought made him want to slip his hand down the front of Marisol’s black jeans, beneath whatever she was wearing under them, and slide his fingers between her legs. The instinctive part of him was certain she would be hot, wet, and every bit as turned on as he was. The uncertain part of him—the small town boy who had never met a girl as sophisticated as Marisol, let alone kissed one—wondered if she had been acting, and he was a pathetic, lonely idiot who had gone so long without a woman in his bed he couldn’t tell the difference between turned on and playing along.

  “I don’t know about the women you date,” Marisol continued. “But I’m not that kind of girl.”

  “What kind of girl are you?” Bubba aimed for a casual tone, but his voice came out strained.