Page 35 of His Texas Claim

“Well?” he said.

I unbuckled so I could face him fully.

“For starters, you’re going to stop calling me ‘woman’ like I’m a mule you’re negotiating with.”

“That how it sounded?”

“That’s exactly how it sounded.”

“Didn’t mean it like that.”

“Don’t care how you meant it. Consider it demand number one.” Buck interrupted me by suddenly leaping from the back of the cab into my lap. I huffed. “Number two, you’re going to actually finish a sentence tonight instead of trailing off like every word costs you money.”

“Costin’ me plenty right now.”

“Good. Keep talking anyway.”

He grumbled under his breath, but he got out and came around to open my door before I could do it myself. Buck jumped out right away and headed toward the dark house, leaving me alone with the broody cowboy.

I turned again, and Stetson stepped right in between my legs to lean against the car door, one hand braced on the roof.

“Anything else?” he asked.

I narrowed my eyes at him.

“If you opt out of this, it has to be about us, not about…your baggage.”

“Haven’t known you long enough to even tell if there’s an us.”

“And yet you didn’t hesitate to come inside me.”

“Well, when you asked like you did…”

“Ah…you just couldn’t control yourself, hm?”

"Somethin' like that."

"So which is it, Stetson? You lost control, or there's an us and you're just too stubborn to say so."

He didn't answer right away. Just looked at me, one hand still braced on the roof of the truck, close enough that I could feel the heat coming off him in the cool night air.

"Maybe both," he said finally.

"That's not an answer."

"It's the honest one."

"Fine. I'll take honest." I reached up and hooked a finger into his shirt collar, pulling just enough that he had to bend toward me. "But you don't get to disappear on me again. Not tonight, not after your dad shows up, not when it gets hard. That's the actual demand. Everything else was just warm-up."

His voice dropped to a low rumble when he spoke again, his breath a warm whisper against my lips. “You drive me fuckin’ crazy.”

I laughed. “And you like it.”

“I’ll be damned…yeah, I do.”

He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me out of the truck, and I folded my limbs around him so he knew I wasn’t letting go. He carried me up the porch steps like that, my legs locked around his waist, mouth already finding mine before we made it to the door.

“I wanted to see your place,” I said.