“What, you’ve never ridden before?”
I shake my head again. “I have ridden a bicycle.”
“And me,” he adds, speaking into his beer.
I throw my foot forward into his shin, earning an ‘ow!’ from him. “I hope you fall off.”
The woman on the bull finally drops off of the side once it picks up speed, leaving a window open, and I shove Eric off of his stool and toward the padded area. I don’t miss the confidence in his gait while he struts toward the bull, hopping over the wall of the pen. He grabs onto the handle of it and swings a leg over, shooting a two-finger salute in my direction with a wink as the bull starts to rock beneath him.
He plants his hands on his thighs while the machine warms up, making a big display of being bored; he fakes a yawn, pretends to fall asleep, the whole nine yards, until the operator kicks it up into gear. He chuckles as he grips the handle with one had, holding the other on his hip while he shifts his body in response to the movements of the machine. I hate to admit that I’m absolutely imagining him riding that thing without his shirt on.
And it ishot.
It feels like he’s showing off for me, and I am eating. It. Up.
As the bull spins and bucks, with Eric perfectly navigating each movement, an arm rests against the bar next to me. A man in a red flannel and a beige cowboy hat sits next tome. “How you doin’ tonight, sweetheart?” He asks, and I try not to shudder at his use of ‘sweetheart.’
I incline my head toward Eric, telling him, “I’m great, my boyfriend is putting on one hell of a show for me.”
“Ah, you’re with Davis?” He asks. “That guy doesn’t do the relationship thing.”
“He does now,” I say with a tight smile, bringing my attention back to Eric.
Even though I’m not looking at him anymore, I can feel the air shift as he moves closer to me.
Eric can feel it, too.
“Hey!” He shouts. He hops off of the still-moving bull and vaults over the padded wall, stalking toward me and the guy. “Back off her, Matthews.”
I let out a dramatic sigh, giving the guy next to me a smile that I know is way too smug, but I can’t help myself. “I tried to tell you.”
“What,” the guy says, “a guy can’t have a nice conversation with a pretty lady?”
“Not withmypretty lady.” Eric’s body presses against the guy’s, and heat rises to my cheeks in response. “Look, I’m sorry I never called your mom back,” he says, and I choke on my beer, clamping a hand over my mouth to hold in the coughing fit begging to start. “but you gotta let it go, man. We can always go another couple rounds, but you gotta be tired of wiping the floor by now.”
“You kiss your lady with that mouth?”
A smirk creeps across Eric’s face. “Do a lot more than that with it,” he answers.
“Alright.” I grab onto his bicep with both hands, bringing myself to a standing position, and I do my best to shove him away from the guy. “Help me onto the bull before you get yourself in trouble.” He lets me guide him away, staring the flannel guy down until we’re at least twenty feet away from him, and I let out a loud laugh. “Did you seriously? Hismom?”
“Twice.”
His hands clamp down on my sides as he hoists me over the tall barrier between the hard wood floor and the bull, following after to give me a boost onto the machine itself before he climbs back over to the other – safer – side.
“Don’t go easy on her,” he tells the operator with a wink.
I grip the handle like a vise between my hands as the bull whirs to life, slowly rocking side to side beneath me. As it picks up speed, it takes more muscle than I expected to stay on; my stomach tightens and my thighs clamp around it, my hand really only serving as support where I thought it would be doing most of the work. I angle my hips in response to the shifting and spinning of the bull, occasionally getting a quick glimpse of Eric watching me with a wide smile on his face.
The bull moves faster, bucking me back and forth, side to side, and I amterrified, but I hold on.
“Fuckin’ A right!” Eric’s voice booms through the bar. “That’s my girl!”
I last another ten or fifteen seconds as the machine speeds up again before I’m flung off of the side, landing on the padded flooring beneath me. I throw my arms up in victory as I push myself up to a standing position. “Woo!” I cheer. “Did you see that?! I kicked that bull’s ass!”
“Yeah, you fucking did, Sugar,” he laughs, grabbing me by the throat to pull me close to him. His lips fuse to mine, and my tongue slips into his mouth to flick at his jewelry. Without breaking contact with my lips, he pulls me over the wall of the ring. I’m met with suction as he gently sucks at my tongue, making me melt into a giant puddle as heat floods my veins.
We spend the next three hours on the dance floor, spinning, swaying and moving together to the music. Eric plucks someone’s cowboy hat from the bar and sets it on top of my head, and he tries to teach me a dance that he and his friends used to do to a twangy country song that plays through the soundsystem. I fumble over the steps and he can’t even remember all of them, so we wind up laughing a lot more than we do dancing for almost two entire songs.
