He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her into his arms, kissing her, fierce and hard.
She looked so beautiful, standing here in the bakery. When he’d come in this morning and seen her talking to Jackson, he’d nearly lost his shit.
He had come to bring her a flower. Aflowerof all things.
Instead, he had simply left it on the counter and taken the roll.
Because he knew he had no right.
He had no right to tell her who she could speak to. He had no right to tell her who she could go on a date with.
He had no right to do anything at all.
Because he wouldn’t even let her tell Marlowe that theywere sleeping together, because he knew that this was going to end, because he knew that he couldn’t keep her.
If there was one thing he knew for certain about his life, it was that nothing stayed.
That was a poem. One that he had read as a kid, before his family had died, and it had stayed with him. Haunted him now, all the years since, echoing through his soul.
Nothing gold could stay.
He’d had people in his life that were gold, but like the leaves on the trees, they withered and passed away. Blown out of his life on a cruel breeze, never to be returned.
That was reality.
That was life, the way that he knew it. The way that he understood it.
She would be no different, and because of that, he knew he didn’t have the right to interfere, didn’t have the right to be angry, but he was angry, and he had interfered. Because he couldn’t stop himself. Just like he couldn’t stop himself now from consuming her. From kissing her like his last breath depended on it.
From kissing her because he could do nothing else. Because he wanted nothing else.
And God, did he want her.
Her lips were soft, she was soft all over.
The kind of soft that he hadn’t touched for years until he had touched her.
Now all he wanted to do was touch her.
He wanted to quit working at the ranch. He wanted to quit being a cowboy. He wanted to dedicate himself to her pleasure. Forever. He could happily die inside of her, the taste of her on his tongue.
And that was the scariest damn thought he’d ever had.
But that didn’t stop him now. Didn’t stop him from kissing her, didn’t stop him from lifting her up and setting heron the counter there in the back of the kitchen, pushing her dress up her thighs and settling himself between her legs.
“Oh, this is a health code violation,” she murmured against his mouth.
“Fuck the health code.”
“Oh, I can’t do that because I?—”
He bent his head and bit her neck.
She whimpered, gripping hold of his shirt as he pressed his hips forward, letting her feel how hard he was for her.
Letting her feel how desperate he was for her.
“You can’t do what now?” he asked.
