“Very soon, lil Kicker.” There’s a new excitement and urgency in his voice that makes my skin prickle as I shift on my heels and reach for my jeans. “I’m gonna marry you, and I’m gonna make you so goddamn happy.”
Roman is a few months older than me, but I knew he hadn’t kissed another girl before that birthday kiss. It was perfection.Red solo cups, an open tailgate, fall leaves falling, and a plaid blanket.
I discovered love that day. Well, I loved him before that, but that kiss… It was like ten new shades of red were created inside me, and I was never the same girl again.
I circle his wrist with my fingers, pulling his hand to my freshly cleaned cheek and pressing it there. “You already do.”
“Happierthen.” He snaps his tongue along the top of his perfect teeth, his lips pulling back in something close to a cowboy’s smile. “I gotta get a couple ducks into the row, then we’re gonna do it, tell the family, and start our lives, baby. Or start our lives,thentell the family.”
“How about you knock me up,thenmarry me?” I try.
Roman chuckles, shaking his head. “You know the rules, baby girl. Soon as we’re official, I’ll get a baby in that belly the same night.”
We work our clothes back on with grunts and kicks and laughter in the confined space of the back seat, and as he’s snapping up his shirt, and I’m working on my bra, he puts that incredible cock back in the corral, and I’m overcome with desire again. I take one last shot with my jeans hanging on one ankle. Leaning back against the door, I fix one heel on the seat and the other on the floor, and let my knees fall wide.
His eyes snap up immediately. “Kicker.Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” I play coy, pinching my bottom lip between my teeth and wiggling my knees together, then apart, like a pussy butterfly.
His lips turn into a determined line. Roman won’t budge, and I get it.
His birth mom was a dancer at the club my dad owned and ran with Allister.
I don’t know much about that, only that she’d cleaned up her life, became a medical tech, but still was shit at picking men.Roman’s father was a one-night stand that left her giving birth to a baby just weeks before she started having trouble breathing. Her heart took it tough from some old lifestyle choices and carrying Roman, and her body sort of just gave out.
She had no one else, and she had to make some decisions. She couldn’t have chosen better than Aunt Leah and Uncle Allister to raise Roman, but in his soul, he wishes things were different.
Call it PTSD from a situation he can’t even remember, but he will not risk baby-making without a foundation built on a marriage and a father who can and will provide.
He pushes my legs together in a firm rejection of my offer.
“Get those rhinestone pockets back on that ass before I get out the crop and my spurs.”
Just as I’m about to sass back, his phone rings through the Bluetooth on the truck’s speakers. Roman heaves himself up and out of the back seat, leaning through the console to hit the accept button.
“Bruh.” Roman grunts, squeezing his Montana-sized body forward through the space into the driver’s seat and dropping his legs down under the steering wheel with a grunt.
I wiggle my jeans back up my hips, then my socks and boots onto my feet as Roman checks his perfectly messy hair in the rearview and puts his hat back in place.
Casey’s voice fills the truck through the speakers. “I’m calling the cops.”
My cousin Carrie’s voice is in the background. “We see your truck down there, and the windows are steamy in the middle of freakin’ July!” She giggles. “You need another layer of blackout, big brother, because I swear I just saw a bare ass in the back seat...”
I giggle-snort as I grab the backs of the front bucket seats, the soft, creamy leather under my fingers as I pull myself throughand drop into the passenger seat, grabbing my backpack from the floor.
“You did not! I’m fully clothed, and so is your brother.”
Roman looks at me and winks.
“Well,whatever, we know what you are doing and it’s gross. So get up here. We have a whole plan, and you are messing with my schedule.” Carrie’s voice takes on that high pitch when she’s getting anxious.
We are yin and yang. I run buck wild, and she lives her life by a spreadsheet. I can barely set an alarm, and she has a panic attack if she’s not fifteen minutes early for anything.
“On our way.” Roman hits the button, killing the rumbling diesel engine and leaving us in a vacuum of silence.
Most men would work their whole life for a truck like this. It’s the one thing Roman conceded to his parents. He let them match the money he’d saved for his dream truck by working as a horse trainer, as well as winnings from riding, reining, and cutting horses all through high school.
A hundred and twenty thousand dollars later, we get to fool around in Ford F250 King Ranch luxury whenever the opportunity presents itself.
