The Quick and the Hot 2: Slick Rider by Em Petrova

Chapter One
    The bell for room four pealed for the third time in a quarter of an hour. Lilly Hall whirled around and glared at the light flashing over the door. The normally quiet alarm sounded like a gong in her head.
    “Bed four needs something, Lilly. Don’t keep your patient waiting,” her fellow physical therapist assistant Katie said with a grin. Short-staffed as always during late summer. Everyone went on vacation and left the physical therapists to answer call lights.
    “He needs something all right.” A kick in the chaps—bound and gagged . The insufferable cowboy was driving Lilly’s patience to the brink. If she heard his country drawl one more time, she was going to do something very bad. Like hog-tie him with a resistance band.
    Juss Rossie, star of the rodeo circuit, was injured and on her turf. He was everything Lilly had dreamed he’d be—his game was smoother than aged whiskey and every hard inch of his body spoke of the power and control he exerted over the bulls he rode.
    Now he was confined to a sling and a splint after taking a fall from Bushwhacker, one of the meanest, ugliest bulls on the Professional Bull Riders Tour. Juss had ridden it for seven seconds before he was flung off laterally, tearing his knee and dislocating his shoulder and popping several ligaments. They’d brought him in gritting his teeth in pain, refusing to take any pain meds. The first thing Lilly had done was help hold him down while a nurse administered a big fat shot to his tanned butt cheek.
    Yes, he was wonderfully tanned—all the way to his toes.
    And horribly infuriating.
    The light over his door kept flashing. Having a long shift with a frustrating patient made Lilly grind her teeth and remind herself why she loved physical therapy. For two more weeks she was stuck with him in this private rehab center. Unfortunately, Juss Rossie had assigned himself to her every waking moment of those two weeks. Money could do that.
    If she was being honest with herself, she’d admit she was like a cat in heat for the panty-drenchingly-sexy cowboy. How many times had she watched him on the Jumbotron being jerked all over the place and wished she could mount a man with that much skill?
    As a physical therapist’s assistant, she often traveled to the arena with Doctor Paddington, who personally saw to several of the riders. She’d never seen Juss up close and personal before though. She would have remembered those steely biceps, corded forearms, hard chest…and the hat he would have worn dipped low over those smoldering black eyes that went with a blacker reputation.
    They called him Slick Rider because he’d started out riding broncos, and it was rumored he liked to ride bareback. Actually, his reputation was that he preferred everything bare.
    A tingle ignited between Lilly’s thighs. She contained the urge to squeeze them together. Getting hot and bothered at work was a pitfall of hanging around so much muscled flesh. An almost constant parade of rodeo riders visited this private center.
    Lilly hadn’t ever dated a cowboy, but it was on her bucket list. Still, not one of the cowboys who had visited the center had ever lit a spark in her. She’d spent half of last night dreaming about being with Juss—bent over, pinned beneath him, and riding him.
    The last image had finally awakened her, and she’d had to finger herself to get relief. Taking control of a powerful man like Juss was a dream she’d never forget. But the reality paled in comparison to her fantasies.
    “Lilly,” Katie warned when Lilly continued to ignore the flashing light.
    “Jeez— All right!” She burst through the door of room four.
    He lay there like a tanned god. Long, sooty lashes framed gorgeous chocolate-colored eyes that melted every woman in his vicinity. He always wore a goatee, but since coming here he’d trimmed it extrashort. Probably because he’d injured the shoulder of his dominant hand—his left—and was forced to use his