Page 43 of Kicking Up Dust

“Nope, still pretty cocky. Ain’t that right, mama?” he asks me with a dimpled smirk that tells me he’s joking about his dick again.

I wait til we’re climbing the stairs and out of earshot to reply.

“We’re not in a relationship, cowboy. And we left my bags in the truck.”

“We are, and I’ll get them in a minute. Gonna get you settled first.”

He bypasses my room for his, sitting me down on the bed and handing me the remote.

“Queue up the next episode. I’ll go get your things and then I’m going to rub your legs for a bit.”

“Colt, I don’t need my⁠—”

“La, la, la, la, la, I can’t hear you!” he sings, fingers in his ears as he leaves the room again.

TWENTY-THREE

COLT

“Colt.”

“Hmm?” I ask her, eyes purposefully glued to the TV screen while my hands are even more purposefully glued to her thigh. Massaging it, of course. Because her legs hurt after her trip to the mall.

“My thighs don’t hurt.”

“Oh, good. The massage is working then?”

She huffs impatiently and I swear to god, my dick twitches.

“My thighs never hurt. It was my calves that were hurting.”

Fuck. I knew that, I was just hoping she wouldn’t call me out on it so quickly. I’ve been having dreams about her thighs around my head and touching them was the next best thing. Well… no. My body between them would be the first best, my head between them would be second, hands between them would be third, and touching them like this is fourth.

“Colt?”

“Hmm.”

“That means you can stop touching them.”

“I can stop or you want me to stop, because those are two very, very different things.”

She’s quiet for long enough I figure I’ve overstepped, so I pull my hands away and look up at her to apologize, but what I see is not a woman who wants me to stop touching her.

Pupils blown wide, cheeks and neck flushed, lips wet and slightly swollen on the bottom, like she’s been biting it. I’ve seen her this way twice before: the first time, at the hotel and the second, in the barn right before she came inside to touch herself in the shower with no clue as to how thin the walls are in that bathroom.

I reach over to push a piece of hair that’s fallen in front of her face back behind her ear.

“Do you remember what I told you?” The skin between her brows wrinkles in her confusion, but I smooth it out with my thumb. “Are you ready for me to take care of you, pretty girl?”

Now that I’m paying attention, I feel her thighs shift again and understand what it means. The movements I’d been mistaking for her getting comfortable earlier were actually her pressing them together, trying to find her own relief.

Her eyes flick between mine, but I don’t know what she’s thinking she’ll find there other than a man who’s half fucking gone for her already.

“If we do this, it doesn’t have to mean anything.”

I laugh. “Oh baby, when we do this, it’s going to mean everything. We don’t have to take it all the way tonight if you don’t want to, but I’m literally jonesing to go down on you, so…”

“Jonesing?” she says with a smile.