Page 18 of Risking it for the Cowboy

Lips pressed to her temple. God, she’d just done that in front of him? She covered her eyes.

His work-roughened fingers traced her stomach, her breasts, her jaw. “Why?”

Sleep hazed, her pulse picked up, but she shook her head.

His tracing stopped. “Want me to leave?”

“Not yet, Trouble,” she hastened.

He relaxed an inch. “What do you say I get you into more trouble? Make you forget.”

Nothing could make her forget. And yet, this time, his words were more tender, more uncertain.

That’s all I am is trouble … last night rushed back.

He’d told her who he was last night, and more trouble was not what she needed. His excuse, having a proposition, had clearly been to get between her legs, otherwise he would have proposed it by now. Yet why hadn’t he left yet?

His chest rose and fell in the darkness as breeze whispered over their sated skin. Did she dare think this might be the … start of something? Did she dare do that again when she’d sworn never to?

She traced his unfinished tattoos, this man who hadn’t made her feel foolish, who every time she thought he might leave, had stayed a little longer instead. His hands slipped up her arms as he rolled atop her again, mounting between her languid thighs.

She exhaled, eyes still closed as the wind picked up outside and turned her face as he dusted her jaw and cheeks with soft kisses.

“My breath must be awful,” she whispered on a laugh.

“Smells like roses and rainbows, Flower Girl,” he teased, purposefully nuzzling his face against her lips.

She laughed and wriggled against him, threaded her fingers into his sandy hair. Reality would crash down this evening at six o’clock. She still had until then to pretend.

He captured her wrists, pinning them to the pillows overhead, opening her body to him like a feast he wasn’t done eating. She’d never been so savored.

He cradled her cheek and kissed a roadmap along her nose, her forehead, her chin, the pulse in her neck that was beginning to flutter erratically again, caressed down her body, over her breast, swirling around her nipple, continuing down the ridges of her ribs, dipping over her hips, her waist…

“All these curves like back roads I wanna stay lost on,” he murmured as he stoked that lust within her, and she squirmed against his thickening shaft pressed between her thighs.

He was a wordsmith, and she almost believed his sweet nothings and obvious pickup lines to be genuine, like she mattered to someone—

Fingertips rough with calluses, that had wrung the most wondrous sensations from her body, caressed her shoulder now, down her arm, up her navel, as he began to undulate his hips again.

“Damn girl, are you a recording studio?”

Oh gawd, she mouthed and bit her lip on a grin, waiting for the punchline.

“Because I wanna spend the day in you.”

Now it was spend the day. Last night it had been spend the night. Was he fishing?

“Hmm.” She laughed, as he nuzzled her neck. “Are you a sad country song?”

He lifted his head on an anticipatory grin, his body coming down to rest atop her and blanket her with his warmth and weight as he rested his forearms aside her head and curved his palms around her crown. Amused, he smoldered in the moonlight as he rolled his tongue over his lower lip in anticipation and notched up his chin.

“Why?”

“Because you’re pathetic,” she whispered.

He chuckled that languid sound, like the slide of a steel guitar, without even speaking. “Damn straight, baby.” But the chuckling died on a contemplative look. “I just, uh, ain’t ready for that last goodbye yet.”

So sore, she still hooked her legs around his waist for more, to welcome him in one last time as he rolled his hips against her crux. Amazingly, he still had energy enough to rally for one last rut, when he whispered more quietly, his lips nuzzling her earlobe.