Prologue
“You’re not supposed to be here, Nugget.”
My fluro pink Chucks were covered in dust, but I had my boots in my backpack. I wondered if I had time to put them on so when I kicked Branch Watson in the nuts, it’d hurt more.
“My name isn't Nugget, asshole,” I replied through gritted teeth. Branch grinned, flashing perfectly straight white teeth that looked like they’d been selected from a catalogue. I hoped a horse kicked him in his perfect face so he wouldn’t be so distractingly pretty anymore.
Me and Branch’s teeth had a long history. In the third grade, he’d lost his two top front teeth because CJ Dempsey had called me a bitch. Branch hadn’t liked that, because apparently he was the only one who was allowed to be an asshole to me. So they’d gotten in a fight and CJ had landed a good hit. A year later, I’d knocked his bottom two out with a rock.
Much like his teeth, me and Branch had a long and complicated history that was basically intertwined since birth.
“I know your name, Tessa, but it doesn’t change the fact that your daddy will kick your ass all the way to the border if he catches you back here. This is no place for girls and ‘specially not you.”
I shifted my duffle bag and glared. “Fuck you, Branch. I deserve to be here just as much as you. Maybe more. This,” I waved a hand at the area behind the chutes. “This shit is in my blood.”
“You shouldn’t swear.”
I flipped him the bird. “Eat a dick.”
Finally the stupidly handsome boy in front of me lost his cocky grin, the frown on his brow chasing away his disarming dimples. “It’s dangerous, Nugget.”
I sighed at his use of my nickname again. I was never going to escape it. My dad had called me Nugget ever since I was a kid, because my hair was the distinct color of gold, and back then it had sat on top of my head in a riot of barely tamed curls. In the sun, it had looked like a, yep you guessed it, gold nugget. So Nugget had stuck.
It didn’t help that Branch’s dad and mine were best friends and business partners, so he’d always called me Nugget. I hadn’t even minded until middle school, when I started to grow boobs and Branch and his friends had started calling them chicken nuggets. I hated him and his gorgeous damn face.
“You need to leave,” he repeated like I hadn’t heard him the first three times.
I clenched my jaw. “And you need to get the hell outta my way.”
The atmosphere around us started to penetrate the red haze of my anger. The distinct scent of dust, sweat, and cow shit, so thick you could taste it on the air. The booming roar of the crowd and the slow drawl of the announcers were all drowned out by the snorts and grunts of the thousand pound beasts in the pens beside me. It was a symphony that I loved.
The rodeo. There was no other place like it.
I was born and raised at these events; took my first steps on this muck colored dirt. My first pet had been an eighty pound bull calf. It wasn’t such a weird pet to have when your daddy bred bulls for the rodeo. Once he even had a bull that ranked in the WBRP, that was the World Bull Riding Professionals circuit. That bull’s name had been Dark Storm, and he had been a beast in the ring. Outside the ring? Total softie. It happened like that sometimes though. Some of the animals just knew that they were there to perform and they stepped into the ring to play their parts like Oscar winning actors.
I’d been a kid when Dark Storm had made it big in the WBRP. I’d watched guys try to ride him, not even conquer him, but be one with him for all of eight seconds. That was when I knew that I wanted to be a bull rider. In the middle of the ring, just me and a beast made of nothing but pure muscle.
I’d been nine at the time.
Now, eight years later, stupid Branch Watson stood between me and my dream. I stepped around him, but he caught me by my waist. “The ring is no place for a woman. Turn that cute ass around and head back to the stands. You don’t belong here.” If he’d sounded smug or condescending, I’d have elbowed him in the balls and then stomped his pretty face. But his voice was full of concern, and that stilled my temper, just a little.
I gritted my teeth and jerked away hard, but Branch was strong. You had to be, to be a bull rider. He wrenched me back and not-so-gently slammed me into the wall of the pit beside me, pressing his whole body right along mine to keep me still. He may only have been 18 to my 17, but he had raw strength that I lacked, and I’d be damned if that didn’t make me mad as hell.
It was better to be mad than the other emotion that was flowing through my veins right now. Fire burned in my belly that had nothing to do with my rage and everything to do with the fact that Branch Watson had his delicious body pressed against mine.
I didn’t even have the good sense that God gave me to be fearful of the fact that a much larger, much stronger man had me trapped. Because I knew him as well as I knew myself. Branch was many things; arrogant, cocksure and sometimes a bit of a bully, but he would never raise a hand in violence to a woman, and especially not to me. His mother would castrate him publicly, his own father would kick his ass and mine would finish the job.
“If Daddy catches you pressed against me like this, me wanting to ride will be the last thing on his mind.” My voice was unintentionally husky, and I watched Branch’s eyes hood. This was no longer Branch, the gapped toothed kid who’d chase me around with sticks when we were kids. No, this was Branch the man, and I wanted to simultaneously climb him like the tree he was named after, and run away screaming.
“Branch! Leeroy is callin’ for you. You’re almost up,” someone yelled, and I subtly hid myself behind Branch’s shoulders. If anyone else knew I was down here to ride, they’d share Branch’s opinion on the matter. His eyes didn’t leave mine, their normal sparkling blue now as dark and ominous as the sea. The look didn’t scare me. I quirked an eyebrow at him and he made a frustrated sound deep in his throat.
Then he kissed me. A hard, punishing kind of kiss. No tenderness, just a shit load of frustration. He whirled away on his boots and left, striding down the path between the pens. I stood there gaping after him like a catfish out of water.
I don’t know how long I stood there, staring in the direction I’d last seen him before Mickey stood beside me, clearing his throat. “Nugget,” he hissed. “I did what you asked. You drew Black Hurricane. I mean, I drew Black Hurricane.”
Fuck.
I shook my head, shaking away the fog of that damn kiss and looked over at Mickey. He was the same height as me, and he was weedy. I knew he was about due for his growth spurt, otherwise he might look like a bean pole forever.
I reached into my back pocket and pulled out a hundred bucks. I’d paid Mickey to sign up for me because he had two advantages I didn’t. One, he was eighteen and you had to be eighteen to ride at this event. Two, and the one that peeved me off the most, was that he was a boy. The misogynistic old bastards who ran this league didn’t care that he was so weedy that he’d basically be a toothpick for a bull like Black Hurricane. As long he had a dingleberry that could flap in the breeze and the brass ones to sign up, he was good.
“Branch is right though, Tessa May. It is dangerous.”
I rolled my eyes at him as I headed towards the livestock trailer that Daddy had brought the bulls in. In my duffle I had everything I needed to ride. It was time to prepare.