Read 02 Buck Naked for Free Online Page B

away from it. It had taken all he had not to strip her clothes off there in the parking lot of her home. He was only glad the kitchen was on the other side of the house so they were away from curious eyes.
    His cock was still hard enough to hammer nails. What he really wanted was to hammer inside her luscious body, but not out there like some berserker. She deserved candles and seduction, and he was damned determined to give them to her. That way if they clicked and she ever heard about his background, she’d have something to balance it.
    It was the alcohol, he kept reminding himself. The alcohol and a hot temper. And a need to prove himself to his own people and to others. At twenty, he’d finally broken away from his family on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming to compete on the rodeo circuit. The parting had been painful. His mother, a full-blooded Arapaho, and the elders had warned him of the rampant bigotry on the circuit and the ridicule he’d be subjected to. In the Arapaho tribe it was a bad thing to disrespect and ignore the wisdom of the elders, so his leaving had put him outside the tribe. Outside his family. He hadn’t given much credence to their warnings, anyway. Or cared. He was young and a wicked rider and thought he had the world in the palm of his hand.
    But the elders had been right about the prejudice. He had to fight, literally, for every place in the competition. And once there, he’d had to be better than everyone else. Each year his skills had improved until he was winning nearly every event he entered. People came from everywhere to watch the rider who was one with the horse, who rode the baddest bulls, who tamed the horses that bucked the most. He rode as Narsimha, Lion Among Men, for that was how he saw himself. The atmosphere was heady. The smell of sawdust and horseflesh, the cheers of the crowds, the beautiful young women who hung around for him because he was a winner. Maybe they thought it would be an adventure to fuck an Indian. Whatever. He took what was his and kept on taking.
    The resentment against him grew with each win, until fistfights and a night in jail became common occurrences for him. His courage came from the alcohol he drank, but it also stoked his temper.
    Until one night when, as usual, he was drunk out of his mind. The rodeo he’d competed in had been comparatively small but with a very rich purse. For the previous five years he’d come in second overall to a local hero, but that night he took everything, including the belt buckle. The local hero and his friends hadn’t taken too kindly to that. He’d gotten in a bloody bar brawl with other riders who were angry and resented him. They’d built a frame around him he almost couldn’t get out of. When he woke up in the morning with a hangover bigger than the Grand Canyon, the charge of rape he was faced with shocked him senseless. He’d done a lot of things since leaving home, but that wasn’t one of them.
    The people in the town had been ready to string him up. The sheriff had had to send deputies out to disperse an angry mob. Gossip had blackened his name everywhere. But the men who’d set him up hadn’t counted on him having an alibi. A sheriff’s deputy had found him passed out behind one of the local bars and hauled his ass to jail. When the supposed rape had taken place, Buck had been locked up good and tight.
    He couldn’t seem to avoid the stink of the rape, even when the charge was proven to be bogus. There were many—too many—who thought he’d just wiggled out from under it. He knew it would follow him on the circuit, so he paid attention to his wakeup call and quit. Made himself disappear. And stopped drinking altogether.
    That had been a hard one, especially since the rage at what had been done to him still lingered. He’d wished for better relationships with his family and the ancient cure of the sweat lodge, but he’d made his choices and was stuck with them. He’d done one thing right