McLeod, Anitra Lynn - Dirty Cowboy (Siren Publishing Classic ManLove) Read online

  Dirty Cowboy

  To forgive you must forget, but what if forgetting costs you everything?

  As the sole survivor of a cursed cattle drive, Everett Henry kept pushing onward. When he comes across a buck naked man unconscious near a spring, his compassion and his libido are equally aroused. When the man wakes and doesn’t remember how he ended up there, Everett offers out a hand of friendship that quickly turns into a lover’s embrace.

  Dalton Hicks slowly regains his memory while sharing a fire and a bedroll with the most generous man he’s ever met. Dalton’s longings for acceptance and his cravings for passion are answered in Everett’s arms, but Dalton has a secret, one that will cost him everything if revealed.

  Faced with a life or death situation, Dalton must choose between keeping Everett alive, but letting him go, or allowing death to take the man of his dreams.

  Genre: Alternative (M/M or F/F), Contemporary, Western/Cowboys

  Length: 20,935 words

  DIRTY COWBOY

  Anitra Lynn McLeod

  EROTIC ROMANCE

  MANLOVE

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  IMPRINT: Erotic Romance ManLove

  DIRTY COWBOY

  Copyright © 2011 by Anitra Lynn McLeod

  E-book ISBN: 1-61034-860-5

  First E-book Publication: September 2011

  Cover design by Jinger Heaston

  All cover art and logo copyright © 2011 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  PUBLISHER

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  Letter to Readers

  Dear Readers,

  If you have purchased this copy of Dirty Cowboy by Anitra Lynn McLeod from BookStrand.com or its official distributors, thank you. Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book.

  Regarding E-book Piracy

  This book is copyrighted intellectual property. No other individual or group has resale rights, auction rights, membership rights, sharing rights, or any kind of rights to sell or to give away a copy of this book.

  The author and the publisher work very hard to bring our paying readers high-quality reading entertainment.

  This is Anitra Lynn McLeod’s livelihood. It’s fair and simple. Please respect Ms. McLeod’s right to earn a living from her work.

  Amanda Hilton, Publisher

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  www.BookStrand.com

  DEDICATION

  For all the dirty cowboys.

  DIRTY COWBOY

  ANITRA LYNN MCLEOD

  Copyright © 2011

  Chapter One

  Chisholm Trail, 1877

  Everett Henry was the sole survivor of one of the worst cattle drives in the history of men moving steer to market. Half the hired hands disappeared the first few weeks, and the low-down dirty thieves took more than half the herd with them. The rest of the men fell victim to an incredible string of misfortunes that had Everett thinking the whole venture was cursed from the get-go.

  After the men and horses were gone, the rest of the cattle stampeded. Riding solo, there was nothing he could do but watch them kick up dust as they ran. All that remained was him, his horse, and the two oxen that pulled the chuck wagon.

  “Quit your bellyaching. At least you’ve got something to eat.” His voice sounded amazingly loud in the open prairie. He’d tried to stop talking to himself, but loneliness and a pressing fear prompted him to speak every once in a while. Everett couldn’t shake the feeling that he was actually dead and all this was just his brain refusing to let go.

  If not for the wagon full of food, Everett would have probably died a week ago. By no account was he a skinny man, but he was all bone and muscle. Without constant grub, he’d fail fast. There wasn’t a lot of variety, but beans, salted meat, coffee, and biscuits would keep him alive and get him home.

  Hell.

  Problem was, he didn’t really have a home. He wasn’t a vagrant by any means, but he wasn’t a man to put down roots, either. He more sort of drifted from town to town, looking for work. When the work dried up, he moved on. But there was more to his wanderlust. He had a hankering for something. Exactly what he was longing for, he didn’t know. All he knew was that when he found this mysterious thing he wanted, he’d be happier. And maybe, just maybe, he could stay put for longer than a few months.

  After what happened in the last town, Everett was positive he wasn’t going to go back that direction. Getting the snot kicked out of him over a misunderstanding at the local watering hole was not his idea of a good time. He hadn’t wanted to play cards or drink himself stupid. He just wanted to sit, sip his beer, and watch people. That wasn’t acceptable for some reason. Looking at a man too long with a speculating gaze had ended up with fists flying and then his hat tumbling after him as he was tossed out the saloon door.

  Everett had picked himself up, brushed himself off, and moved on like he had done a dozen times before. On his way out of town, he’d run into a man he knew through another, and that’s how he’d ended up on this cursed cattle drive.

  Since he couldn’t go back, Everett moved forward. He had been following the most-traveled trail, and reckoned he was heading roughly northeast. He had no idea exactly where he was, but he decided knowing the location didn’t much matter. Alive and moving was all that concerned him at the moment.

  Tonight he was enjoying the sun setting at his back after a windy day of hazy sun and gathering clouds. He’d never been all that great at predicting the weather, but he had a feeling rain would fall tonight, or by tomorrow morning at the very latest.

  Concerned about flash floods in the lower areas, he’d pushed his little wagon train to higher ground. Once he felt he’d gained a good vantage point, he’d moved off the main trail to set up camp for the night. Curious about an odd grouping of amazingly tall and green cottonwood trees, he went a little deeper and found a spring.

  He also found a man.

  “Well, looky here, some
one worse off than me.”

  Naked as the day he was born, the stranger’s legs dangled in the water while his upper body was splayed on the bank. At first, Everett had thought he’d best lay off the cook’s whisky because when he’d come upon the tree-shaded scene, he’d thought there were two legs sticking out of the water. After peering intently, he’d seen the rest of the man. It was hard to see him under the layer of filth. The poor man was so encrusted he was the exact same color as the earth upon which he lay. Best Everett could figure, he’d been trying to clean himself up when he’d passed out.

  “Well, at least you didn’t fall face-first into the water and drown.” Although, that might be have been a blessing, depending on what had happened to the man. Everett didn’t see any blood, but there was only one good way a man lost all his clothing, and that was if he took them off to lay down with another.

  From his vantage point high up in the wagon, Everett looked up and down and all around the spring, but he didn’t see any clothing, gear, a horse—nothing. It was as if the man had crawled out of the dirt and fell half into the water.

  Curious, and sick of sitting on his behind all damn day, Everett hopped down from the wagon, brushed the dust off his ass, and laughed. “Right. Get myself gussied up for a man who looks like he’s been dipped in dirt.” Even if he jumped in the water right now, it would take a week to get all the grime out of his nooks and crannies.

  When he knelt beside the stranger, his knee sank into the ground a good three inches, like the earth had recently been plowed. Cupping his hand, he sifted the dirt though his fingers. It was soft, without any large clumps or rocks. Almost powdery.

  “Huh.” He brushed his hand off. “Let’s see what we got here.”

  Everett reached out to touch the man, to verify he was alive, but he stopped just short of contact. He wasn’t sure why he was cautious about touching him, just that he was. That funny inner voice that sometimes told him not to even look at a certain fellow was urging him to leave this one be. Everett argued that it wouldn’t be neighborly to just leave the poor man here, all exposed and possibly hurt. Still, that voice urged caution. Instead of touching him, Everett watched closely, noting that the man’s chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm.

  “Well, you’re alive. That’s a start.”

  Pulling the trail-dusty kerchief off his neck, Everett shuffled over on his knees to the water’s edge, rinsed the fabric out as best he could, then returned to the man’s side. Again, he hesitated to touch him. There was something almost… foreign about the man. But then, in a most curious way, Everett felt like he was the one who didn’t belong here, not the other way around.

  Determined to get a hold of himself, convinced these odd feelings were just the product of being alone for too long, Everett lifted the wet kerchief to the man’s face and gently wiped away the powdery dirt.

  The man didn’t stir.

  As more and more of the dirt came away, the man’s features became more pronounced. His hair was brown with some blonder streaks and far too long. Everett could just about pull the length of it back in a ponytail. The man’s lashes were the same color as his hair, and longer than any painted woman’s, but it was his mouth that compelled Everett to slow his strokes.

  Everett pressed his lips together to not say anything aloud. Never, not ever in his life, had he ever seen a man as handsome as this one. Had he seen him in a saloon, Everett would have done a hell of a lot more than simply stare at him. Everett would have gladly spent his last penny buying this man drinks and hoping against hope that they would end up sharing a bed.

  Despite his best efforts, Everett couldn’t stop himself from letting his gaze wander down the length of the man’s body. Sadly, his cock was so covered in dust he couldn’t get a good look, but what he was able to make out made him grin. The mystery man was packing one hell of a pistol.

  Chapter Two

  Each pass with the wet cloth tugged the man’s lips askew. When Everett lifted the rag away, they moved back into perfection. Dusty rose, not too thick or thin, the man’s lips were just about the most perfect lips he’d ever seen on anyone. And so plush. He felt them give below his cleaning fingers with more ease than the powdered dirt had given around his knees.

  After thinking too hard about what he wanted to do to that mouth, Everett allowed his naked finger to slip over the edge of the moist kerchief and directly touch the stranger’s lips. A jolt of pleasure washed up his hand then charged straight to his cock. Everett shot to his feet so fast he damn near knocked himself over. Worse, he puffed up fresh dust on the man who clearly didn’t need any more mess on him.

  “Damnation!”

  He’d felt a lot of things in his time, including a model of the newfangled electrified fence, but that shock was nothing compared to this. Everett felt as if he’d been struck by lightning. Curious thing was, the powerful surge hadn’t hurt him at all. What the zinging bolt of energy had done was arouse him to the point his cock was a stroke away from climax.

  As much as he wanted to turn away and attend himself, he couldn’t imagine what the man on the ground would think if the first thing he saw when he woke up was another man stroking his dick. Ignoring the urge, as he had so many times in the past, Everett decided he’d best stop touching the man. That inner voice was there to promptly say told ya so before shutting back up.

  Without touching him directly, Everett cleaned him as best he could, and only above the waist. After pulling on his gloves, Everett pulled the man by his armpits so that he was completely out of the water. When he didn’t stir, Everett decided his next chore would be to set up camp.

  He settled the animals first then took care of his private business. With a glance to the sky, he realized night would be full in under an hour. If he didn’t want to be stumbling around in the dark, or using up the precious oil in the two lamps, he’d better get a fire going.

  About the only good thing he’d discovered during this ill-fated trip was that he had a knack for building great fires. Their cook had been most demanding about how he liked the fire pit set, and since Everett liked good grub, he’d gladly taken on the task. An added benefit was the prairie was littered with dry mesquite, which burned slowly, and very hot. Since he wasn’t sure he’d be able to find good wood all along the trail, especially since it was so well traveled, he’d taken to filling part of the covered wagon with wood so that when he did stop, he was ready. Before he left tomorrow, he would replenish his supply.

  Everett didn’t set a big cooking fire every night, but he figured the stranger would be hungry when he woke, and he would need heat to cook the fresh meat he’d taken off one of the wounded steers earlier in the day. Poor thing. With both legs broken, screaming like a terrified woman, the cow never had a chance. Everett put the creature down then took what he thought he could eat in a few days. He left the rest for the coyotes.

  In another bit of grace, the days had been cooling off, so he thought the meat might last a while. But what blessed one event cursed another. Cooler days meant chilly nights. He was glad the meat wouldn’t spoil quickly, but he was worried about getting somewhere before the nights got too cold. There was only one blanket in the wagon as the thieves had taken the rest. Despite the protection of the covered wagon, one thin blanket wouldn’t be enough to keep him from freezing if the temperature dipped any lower.

  Thinking of the blanket made him think of the stranger. Hell, he couldn’t leave him laying there, buck naked, when night was settling in. He rummaged around in the back of the wagon, found the blanket, and returned to the still-sleeping man.

  Refusing to examine him any more than he already had, Everett placed the blanket over him then moved back to the wagon. He couldn’t stop pondering the odd dizziness he felt each time he came near him. With a shake of his head, Everett chalked the feeling up to too much traveling and not enough eating.

  After clearing a space and digging a shallow hole, he placed thin twigs in a teepee pattern, with the kindling in the center.
When he caught himself grinning like a fool, he realized he was happy. Being alone was something he was used to, but not something he enjoyed. Whoever the strange man was, Everett was glad for the company.

  Concentrating, he whapped the flint with the steel. Within three strikes, a spark caught the fluffy bundle of kindling on fire, which in turn lit up the thinner sticks that formed the cone. Carefully, he added ever thicker pieces of wood until he had a decent fire. Pleased as punch, he crouched down to watch the fire and wait for his new companion to wake up.

  “You’re very good at that.”

  “Damnation!” Everett lost his balance and tumbled backward.

  “You all right?”

  “Yeah.” Righting himself, furious that he’d become so enraptured by the flames he’d forgotten to keep an eye on the stranger, Everett climbed to his feet. He was glad night had fallen hard, and the fire wasn’t that bright, otherwise, the stranger would see the blush washing over his face.

  “Didn’t mean to startle you.” Naked and oblivious, the stranger settled on his haunches across the fire from where Everett stood. Flames danced in his eyes and along the edges of his wet hair. Best Everett could tell, the man had taken a dip in the spring to clean off the rest of the dust. He looked even more amazing all wet and glistening.

  “You gotta name?” Everett covered his embarrassment with a hefty dose of gruffness.