Mated To The Mountain Lion Read online

“Probably not the one you think I should’ve had,” I quipped.

  “So, he still doesn’t know about Paris?”

  I opened my eyes once I got my emotions under control, seeing my mother shaking her head. My parents had adored Dallas back when I was in college, and my father always told me he was the one I was meant to be with. My mother thought he was the epitome of a southern gentleman, and my father knew he was the only one who wouldn’t try to tame the wild spirit that was my soul.

  “He rides the buck. He don’t tame it,” my father always jokingly said. And he was right, of course. No matter what I did, I did with all the passion in the world and Dallas never once tried to stop that. He’d laugh and sometimes poke fun at my sincerity and passion, but never tried to stop it or talk me out of it.

  “You owe it to him to tell him, Autumn. You broke that poor boy’s heart.”

  As much as I didn’t want to admit it, I knew my mother was right. “Yeah, and that’s all that seems to get brought up,” I muttered.

  “Well, what else is there to say?”

  “How about the fact that I hurt just as much when I walked away?”

  “Then why did you walk away?”

  “Because Paris called and offered me my dream job, Mom!” I exclaimed.

  Why was she not able to understand that?

  “And why did that require not telling Dallas?” she asked with her eyebrows raised.

  “Because I knew if he asked me to stay, I wouldn’t have gone!”

  I felt my breath hitch in my throat before tears sprang to my eyes. I knew my mother meant well, but I’d never really talked about it with her. I had never talked about how leaving Dallas that night had really altered me in some way, and how it altered the fashions I designed while I was working up the ranks in Paris. A little piece of him was in every design I made. And every fashion that went on a man, I imagined on his body first.

  Images of his chiseled form came wafting back to my mind, and the sounds of last night began to echo off the corners of my memory before my mother’s voice broke through my musings and told me something that absolutely rooted me to the kitchen chair.

  “Dallas came to look for you after you left. Showed up on our doorstep looking like a homeless kitten trying to figure out where you were. We had no idea what he was talking about until we found the note in your room about the job in Paris, but by the time we came back to show it to him, he had taken off for his car and skidded out of the driveway, and that sweet boy never did come back.”

  “He… he came here?” I said, breathing heavily as the blood slowly drained from my face.

  Mom nodded. “Yes. The day after graduation.

  I sat there, gripping my mug, positively stunned. Dallas had come to my house looking for me. After leaving him cold and alone in his dorm room after all of those graduation parties, he ran to my parents’ house looking for me. I felt a wave of guilt rise up in my throat. My stomach grew sour and I couldn’t stand to take another sip of my coffee.

  Tears ricocheted down my cheeks. In any other moment in my life, I’d be embarrassed to cry in front of my mother. She was the epitome of emotional reserve. I had never even so much as heard her yell unless she was shouting across the barn at my father. But at that point, I didn’t care. I’d just left Dallas to wake up naked and cold and alone in a trailer five years after I’d done it the first time. It was the worst kind of déjà vu.

  I felt like I was going to be sick.

  “You owe him an explanation, sweetheart. If anything, to clear your own conscience,” Mom said.

  But now, I didn’t know if I could handle telling him. How could I look at the only boy I’d ever loved and tell him I hadn’t trusted myself around him? How could I look at the man he had blossomed into and tell him that he’d tamed the strong, untamable woman that I was? How in the world was I supposed to look at the man I’d now left twice that the reason I kept leaving him behind was because I didn’t think he could come with me if I offered? There was no gentle way to say that a man like him just didn’t belong in a place like Paris.

  So how in the world could I possibly tell Dallas that the reason I left the way I did was because I wasn’t strong enough to do it any other way?

  I felt the bile rise to the top of my throat before I pushed my coffee mug away. I shoved myself away from the kitchen table and headed for the staircase, knowing that deep down, no matter how much I didn’t want to, I needed to talk to him. At some point, hopefully soon, I needed to tell him everything.

  Because at the end of the day, my mother was right.

  Chapter 7: Dallas

  I dragged myself back to my ranch and started feeding all the animals I had stabled up. My horses were begging for food, and I felt a pang of guilt that I left them for so long. I had no intentions of staying overnight in that trailer, much less with some piece of ass, blast from the past. So I decided to feed them some dessert for breakfast, giving them plenty of sweetened water to drink and then opening their stalls so that they could get some fresh air out in the pasture. I was supposed to be giving lessons, but I walked on up to my home and decided to cancel everything for the day. I could tell already that my mind just wasn’t in the right place, thanks to that damned woman.

  My mind kept flying back to last night. Sure, I’d missed her. That woman had lit up my world back in our college days. I may not have been anywhere near a virgin when I met her, but she sure as hell made me feel like one. Everything was a new experience with her, and every night I woke up with her in my arms was like the first time I’d ever woken up next to her. The light would always catch her hair just right and her light snoring would always make me smile. There wasn’t a morning where I’d grind into her back that she’d push me away or tell me she was too tired.

  God, I missed slipping in between her wet heat in the mornings.

  After she left the first time, I had tried for months to find a replacement. I’d bought lotion warmers and warming lubes. I had tried different toys from stores I vowed to never venture into again, and I’d even tried watching porn a time or two, just to see if I could replicate the feeling she gave me every morning. But all of it had been fruitless. Nothing could mimic the feeling of sliding into her from behind every morning before I got up and made us coffee. She just simply couldn’t be replaced and I’d been forced to accept that I would likely never see her again…

  I’d been forced to accept that she had up and left and wouldn’t be looking back.

  It’s disgusting, really, how much I had loved that woman. I used to tell the guys at the rodeos that she was just my lucky charm, but in reality, she was the woman I had once planned on spending the rest of my life with. The week after we graduated, I had a ride planned. I was gonna take her with me, and if I won, it would give me $5,000.00. Then I was gonna use that money to buy her the ring she deserved, and I was gonna get down on one knee at the next rodeo, in front of God and everybody else, to ask that woman to be my wife.

  I wanted her to bear my children and be my family. I wanted her to sell her fashions from a store she dreamed of. I wanted to build that store for her alongside her father with my bare hands in between my traveling to rodeos, and I wanted to have a farm full of animals to retire to so we could watch our grandkids run around with the ponies and puppies. I wanted to wake up every morning and smell her heat on my skin. I wanted to slip behind her in the shower every evening and slowly press her back against that tile wall. I wanted to make her dinners and take her out and experience family vacations with her. I wanted to yell and scream and fight behind closed doors before pounding her into the wall while grunting how sorry I was and how beautiful she looked.

  But she took all my dreams away when she left without a trace with no explanation and no goodbye.

  Hell, she hadn’t even told her parents where she was going! Maybe it was because she had intuitively sensed the wildness in me, and worried that if she had told her parents where she was going, I would track her down like the hunter I was. Ma
ybe she subconsciously knew that I had her scent memorized, and that if given a hint of a trail to follow, I would track her down, permitting my bestial nature to take control.

  If anyone could tempt the wildness out of me, it was her.

  I couldn’t deny that more than a time or two, I’d found myself wondering how she would respond if she ever knew the truth about what I was. It wasn’t something I liked to think about though.

  I made my way out to the bulls and fed them good before heading on over to my little heifer barn. I didn’t keep too many heifers around, just enough to breed with the bulls who were retired so I could sell the calves they birthed for the rodeos. But I always made sure they were reared to a certain age before ripping them from their mothers. Some breeders sold them the moment they plopped, but I wanted my heifers healthy. There wasn’t any reason to give away any calf that was born before their first birthday, and I kept it that way on my farm. Just because I made money off my animals didn’t mean I had to be cruel.

  Once the bulls were taken care of, and the few small babies were tended to, I trotted on over into the heifer barn. Right then, I had eight of them, and three were already reaching an age where they wouldn’t be able to bear calves any longer. I had two that were pregnant and made a mental note to call the vet to come check on them soon. One wasn’t due for a few more months, but we were keeping a close eye on the other one. She had been due two days ago, but she was still upright and the calf was still growing regularly, so the vet wasn’t fussing. But I guess I just worry too much about my animals.

  I milked the cows in the barn before I fed them their next meal, and then went over to pet both of my pregnant heifers before giving them some words of encouragement. I snaked my phone out of my pocket and dialed the vet up the road, and he agreed to come by to take a look at them. I told them I didn’t think the one in question was in labor, but wanted to keep an eye on her in case something was to go wrong. If she was carrying a bull, I could use the money, and if she was carrying a heifer, I could use one to replace the three aging out in my little population.

  Autumn would’ve done wonderfully with this type of lifestyle. As long as I’d known her, she’d loved animals. Horses were her favorite. The first time we ever went horseback riding together was on the weekend in between one of her family’s camps. I just couldn’t get over how beautiful she looked on that majestic animal. Her hair blew back in the wind, and her hips rolled graciously on top of the horse’s galloping form. It was the first and only time I’d ever fallen off the back of a horse. She turned herself around and galloped back towards me, worry in her eyes before a smirk upturned on her face.

  “Got them bulls under control, but can’t handle a little horse?” she had quipped.

  To this day, it’s my favorite memory of her. She was concerned, but confident. Graceful, yet dominant.

  My god, the life we could’ve had together.

  I finished tending to the cow barn and slowly made my way over to the chickens. It was egg collecting time before I sprinkled down some seed. I could hear my dog howling at my presence from the kitchen window. Lord knows the mess my beagle probably made while I was gone. And while Autumn continued to flood my mind, I couldn’t be angry at myself. I had gotten another chance to lay with her, to feel her skin underneath my fingertips, and hear her sounds whispered into my ear. God, she felt just as warm and tight as the first time I had laid with her in college, and it was as if I could feel her legs still wrapped around my waist. I mindlessly gathered the eggs from the nests as the memory of her scent wafted up my nose. My hand shook while I fed the chickens as her groans and grunts filled the caverns of my ears.

  She had flooded my soul in college, and now, she had managed to wiggle her way back in. While I was mad at being weak, I couldn’t be mad at caving. That woman was a mystery I had yet to decipher, and I had to admit that I’d still give quite a bit to spend my life trying to figure out why.

  I might not give everything, but I’d still give up a lot more than I should for a woman who left me the way she did. Twice.

  I still wonder to myself why in the world she left...

  I guess I technically could have asked her last night, but I was so fucking shocked to see her at my door, I couldn’t think straight. Of all the people who could’ve come knocking at my trailer after that ride, it had to be her. I should’ve asked why she was there…whether she came to see me, or if it was just a coincidence that I was riding that particular day. I should’ve asked why the hell she left me those years ago. I should’ve yelled about how much I loved and cared for her, and how her leaving had thrown me off a bull I couldn’t stand to get back on. I wanted to blame her for so much and yet, I still wanted to throw her onto that bed and fuck her body senseless into the mattress in that rickety trailer.

  And that’s precisely what I had done. I threw my anger away the moment she started crying on that fold-out couch and I decided to show her what she had been missing out on by leaving me. I decided to show her exactly how I had memorized her body. I decided to shower her with my affection just like I would have every day in between our last meeting and our current one had she never left me.

  But I didn’t want to shower her anymore because I was so angry with her. My contradictory feelings were maddening.

  Deep down, I wanted to show her that I really was hoping she would stay this time around. Whatever made her leave the first time, I was hoping to trump it. To be better than it. To show her that I supported her and cared for her and that I would give up and do anything to make her happy.

  But I still woke up alone.

  That’s what made me angrier than anything. That’s what really made my blood boil as I ripped the egg basket and marched for the house.

  It wasn’t the fact that she left again; it was the fact that I didn’t want her to leave, and the fact that she didn’t seem to care.

  Maybe we were just too different, even though that was the hardest thing to accept.

  Chapter 8: Autumn

  I should’ve headed straight back for that trailer, but as I was traveling along the highway, I saw those same trailers being pulled behind trucks to be stored for the next rodeo. Obviously, Dallas had woken up yet again to an empty bed, and the more I thought about it, the sicker I felt. Yet again, I’d left the only man who ever made me feel worth something, right after he’d bared his soul to me, no less.

  What kind of woman was I?

  I thought about traveling around town to find him. I thought about going to his parents’ home and asking if they knew where he was. I wondered if they were still alive, rickety in their old age still rocking on their porch, or if they had passed and if so, whether they were buried somewhere I could visit. Somewhere I could shed tears over not being at their funeral to pay my respects.

  Dallas was close to his family, and I adored them myself. He was an only child, but his mother had adopted many boys and girls around the neighborhood. Not legally, of course, but they always seemed to be in and out of their house. She would feed them, give them a place to sleep when they needed it, and even gave out keys to her own home in case they wanted to come over instead of going home. Dallas and I, we were fortunate to have loving families, but a lot of the kids around our hometown weren’t as lucky. Some had abusive homes and some had poor homes. Some had homes with too many children, and some had homes with absent parents. Dallas’s mother was never able to have the house full of kids she wanted, so she took in everyone else’s when they didn’t have a place to go.

  I decided to drive by their old home, just to see if anyone was there.

  The house was kept up really well. The porch looked to have been repainted, and the roof was obviously new. The old rocking chairs swayed with the wind, but no one seemed to be home. There were no cars or lights on, and no children frolicking around the property.

  Not before long, my eyes landed on a ‘For Sale’ sign in the front yard.

  I parked my car and got out to pull a slip of paper from the o
pen box, and when I slipped back into my car, I looked over the information; Four bedrooms, two-and-a-half baths, ranch-style home with a basement sitting on nine acres of land. Wrap-around porch, forced heating, central air conditioning, hardwood floors…

  The works. “Someone really put a lot of work into this home,” I muttered to myself.

  The home and property was being sold for $200,000.00, but I could tell it had been on the market for a while. My eyes watered at the idea of Dallas experiencing the passing of his parents by himself. It made me nauseous with guilt because I should have been there to help him. To support him during a time of need.

  I sighed, thinking about how I really needed to tell him what happened. I needed him to know it wasn’t his fault just in case he’d been incorrectly assuming that he had somehow chased me away.

  I opened my phone and called the only restaurant in town that I knew took reservations and made one for two at 7 o’clock in the evening. I still wasn’t sure how I would get in touch with Dallas before then, but I was sure if I asked around town enough, someone would lead me to him; in small towns, you never really could stay hidden for long.

  Unless, of course, you up and left without telling anyone except your parents via a note.

  I tossed the piece of paper to the floor after I hung up my phone and sped down the road towards the stables. I used to go there whenever I felt overwhelmed or needed to think. The owner’s son knew Dallas from high school. If they still owned the barn and he was still working there, I figured they might know where Dallas was and I might be able to get in a relaxing ride before cleaning up and meeting him later that night.

  That is, if he was willing to meet with me after my rude and abrupt departure.

  I weaved my way to the stable as if I had been there yesterday. It looked exactly as I remembered it, apple trees lined the half mile gravel driveway so the horses could have snacks while they were out to pasture. The grass was a lush green that could be seen for miles. My parents owned the second-largest piece of property to this stable. It sat on close to forty acres of rolling hills and land, and no matter how much the city tried to buy out some of their land, they simply paid the higher taxes and kept on going with their services. They provided everything anyone could possibly want when it came to horses and their care, from boarding services, to breeding services, grooming services, shoe services, and even training services. They gave lessons and had a partnership with my parents in the summer to help with the summer camps, and they even held horse shows and competitions so the local kids learning to ride horses could compete.