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I’m tired of keeping secrets. Tired of keeping my distance.
Heartbeat in my ears, I turn around and walk back to his room. I lift a hand to knock, but before I can, the door’s ripped open.
“Dakota,” Davis husks, bare chest heaving, muscles rippling.
I wet my lips. “I forgot something.”
His throat works, his eyes running over my face, my body. “What’s that?”
“Another secret.”
“Tell me.”
“I miss you,” I say, right before cupping that handsome, tortured face in my hands and locking my lips to his.
Dakota’s kiss keeps burning on my lips like a fire I can’t put out.
My muscles scream as I hammer the punching bag. Movement’s the only way to keep my mind off everything. “Goddamn it,” I mutter, taking a swing that shakes the bag. I can feel the tension of the last three days falling away.
The gym behind the lodge is an old piece of barn we rehabbed. In its center, a punching bag, and off to the side, hay bales stacked for high jumps. Free weights litter the cement floor. It’s shit for insulation—running hot as hell in the summer and ice cold in the winter, but it does the job. Gets me out of my head so I don’t go insane.
I pause to re-tape my hands. A mistake. My mind goes to Dakota.
I rub a hand over my lips, still feeling her kiss. It was a hundred proof. And against all my bad judgment, I want another round.
After six long years, her sweet taste was heaven. A second chance I never thought I’d get again.
And it has to end now.
What the fuck was I thinking kissing Koty McGraw?
Sure, she kissedme. But I kissed her back.
Temptation was the devil on my shoulder, telling me to haul that woman into my room and strip her bare. Tear offthose panties and paddle that pretty ass pink in punishment for coming to me while I was in the grips of a nightmare that could have hurt her. Spread those legs and taste every sweet inch of her. Instead, I stopped her. Stopped us. That flash of anger in her eyes almost had me regretting my decision. But she was gone before I could change my mind.
And a good thing too.
I wanted her too goddamn much.
The memory of her soft fingers sweeping over my scar—our heated, soul-baring words—kept me up for the rest of the night. Fuck, how I missed that. Missedus. Secrets. Late night confessions. If I have walls, Dakota’s my bulldozer.
Forever breaking me down. Getting me to crack.
I only do that with her.
I miss you.
Those words fucked with my mind.
Have me questioning what we are. And it scares the hell out of me.
It’s not the time to think about us or the stranglehold this woman has on my cock. It’s time to think about her.
She’s suffered so much and it feels like my fucking fault.
I never asked her to stay. I pushed her into the arms of some sick fuck who hurt her. If we cross lines and it ends badly, she’ll leave, or worse, run. Christ, the thought of her taking off in the middle of the night has my blood pressure skyrocketing. The last thing I want to do is overstep. Her friendship’s too important to me to lose that.
Maybe after all this is over, we can talk. I can clear up all the bullshit, say everything I should have said that summer, but…
