Chapter 3: It’s Best to Be Bad
1027 Words
Chapter 3: It’s Best to Be Bad
The Rawhide Bar & Grille
Downtown Naples
7:56 P.M.
Cord parked his rented truck, climbed out and showed he was a complete gentleman by jogging around to open my door. I said, “Thanks, Cord. You’re spoiling me.”
“Get used to it, Bradley. My mother raised me to have manners.”
Enough manners to blow Prince Charming away, I thought, planting my feet on the familiar Floridian asphalt.
The Rawhide Bar & Grille is on Meridian Street. To its right is a sub shop, to its left is the Pumping Triceps gym. The Rawhide looks like an old-timey barn, complete with a red-and-white board façade and a carved wooden bull’s head over the door. No windows. The man-on-man action that happens in that cowboy bar stays in that cowboy bar—enough said. Inside, the bar is a complete change from Florida’s scurrying lizards, tall palms, semi-naked surfers, and sandy beaches. It’s like walking onto the set of a John Wayne movie. Yellow-dim lanterns hang from heavy beams above the oak floor. You sit at a barrel instead of a table as you shout over the country music. Wagon wheels and saddles decorate the walls.
Tonight, a few faux cowboys sat shoulder-to-shoulder-to-shoulder at a horseshoe-shaped bar, drinking draft beers out of thick frosted mugs. A bare-chested, brown-haired hottie was tending bar, wearing a white cowboy hat, a red-and-white bandana around his neck, and a tight pair of jeans. The pretty boy’s chest was hairless and he sported suntanned n*****s the size of beer cans.
In truth, I couldn’t have cared less about the bartender because I had Cord at my side. He seemed to have taken a liking to my city-boy charm. We walked to a pine booth and sat across from each other. We were soon greeted by a twenty-something waiter named Chad, dressed up like a cowboy.
“Two beers,” I said. “Draft. And make sure the glasses are clean.”
Chad nodded. “Anything else?”
“Two menus,” Cord cut in. “I’m starving.”
Before Chad moseyed away, I told him, “I’ll take the bill,” and Chad nodded again.
Cord said, “You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to. It’s my town. When I’m in your town, you can pick up the tab.”
“Fair enough,” he agreed with me, seeming pleased with my decision.
As we waited, he asked, “What exactly do you do for K&D Design?”
“I push papers from one side of my desk to the other, make a lot of phone calls, create a few computer documents, and whatnot.”
“What’s your title?”
“Executive Assistant.”
“To whom? Kepler or Dance?”
I shook my head. “Neither. I work in human resources.”
“You hire and fire employees?”
Again, I shook my head. “I do all the paperwork. Honestly, it’s pretty lame. I want to do something with my hands. Hard labor. Like what a Stockton County cowboy does.”
“But your job sounds cushy. Why do you want to break your back on a ranch?”
“Cushy isn’t always fun. I’ve been doing it long enough to know that.”
“So you see yourself throwing bales of hay around, feeding horses, taming broncos?”
Chad brought our beers and two menus, saying, “I’ll be back in a few minutes to take your orders.”
Once Chad had gone again, I took a hefty chug of beer, swallowed the soothing medicine down, and answered Cord’s question with, “I see myself being happy.”
“And living on a ranch will make you happy?”
“More than you know.” Cord didn’t seem to have any secrets, unlike every other man on the planet. Was he as honest and loyal as his spell-spinning eyes made me believe? Who knew? Maybe I’d find out. Maybe not. In the meantime, I decided to have a little fun, try to get him out of his country-boy clothes and have my wicked way with him.
Between sips of beer, out of the blue, he asked, “Do you like to be bad, Bradley?”
“It’s better to be bad.”
“That it is. But it can be dangerous.”
“How do you like to be dangerous?” I asked, intrigued.
“With you under me,” he said, grinning wickedly. “And other ways.”
“What other ways?”
“You’ll have to wait and find out.”
“Of course I will,” I snarked, looking at him over my beer while taking a chug. I wanted him sexually, more than any other cowboy I’d had.
* * * *
We danced to a Luke Bryan song after eating spicy-hot chicken wings and a massive plate of nachos with chili and jalapenos. Blake Shelton came on next, and Cord stood up and pulled me against his massive chest. There, nestled in his grip, swaying to and fro, I inhaled his rugged scent: sandalwood soap tinged with a hint of sweat. His scruffy right cheek rubbed against my clean-shaven left one, and he whispered in my ear, “I think you’re hard, city boy.”
I was hard. It felt like a steel bar had grown between my legs, ready for his use.
I wanted him—I wanted it so much—to undo my jeans, touch my swollen goods, and have his way with me—by touch or taste, his choice. How could a cowboy like Cord Darringer have such speedy and complete power over me? I was independent, doing well in my life along the Coast. What was it about his Oklahoma charm that made me fall helplessly under his erotic spell? Wasn’t I stronger than that? How could I lose control over my emotions in just a couple of hours? Why was I so weakened by feeling his chest against mine, feeling his lips brush against my earlobe as he spoke?
“You made me hard,” I replied, weak against him, charged by his strength.
“What can we do about that, Bradley Hull?”
I thought about pulling him into the men’s room and having my way with his naked skin. Maybe he’d press me roughly against a bathroom wall and plunge his condom-covered c**k into my taut ass, bang my rear with his western passion. But that felt seedy and vulgar. Yes, I could be cheap, but I didn’t want to be cheap with Cord. He deserved more than a bathroom bang, more than bucking my rear in a grimy men’s room. Besides, I wanted to tease him. I was trying to think clearly, and I knew I wasn’t going to give in to his needs. Yet. Sometimes it was best to lead a man on before succumbing to his desires, right? Especially a cowboy from Tulsa. I wasn’t beneath toying with the man’s emotions, playing a sinful game with him that I could easily call “being coy,” if he asked.
I said, “Dance a little more, have another beer, and, well, who knows what can happen between two men from different parts of the country.”
His response was a challenge: he dragged his tongue along my neck. While pulling away, he said, “You’re making me hard now.”
“I have a way of doing that to cowboys.”
“That you do.”
- Writer
