Page 49
“So, average?”
A scowl mars his lips.
I set my smile free.
“Fine.” He crooks two fingers at me. “Give me your bag, then.”
He grabs my backpack without waiting for a response and hooks it over his broad shoulders, to my surprise. I don’t even know what to say.
He grins, clearly enjoying my tongue-tied state. “What? No ‘thank you’?”
“Considering you only accept thank-yous when a woman is on her knees, that would be a hard no,” I say, already breathing easier from the load taken off my back.
“Not true. I accept them when a woman is on her hands and knees too.”
Warmth rushes to my core, but I ignore the comment because imagining how Lawton would be in bed is reserved for nights when I’m lonely, bored, and feeling particularly masochistic.
“How lucky for Katya. She must miss you terribly,” I say. Her name creates this curdling, bubbly sensation in my stomach that I refuse to acknowledge.
“Don’t know about that,” he says. “She’s dating a guy named Serge now.”
I gasp, partly because I’m shocked he’s talking about her, and because— “Serge, as in the undercover French sniper who set the Guinness Book of World Records for longest water-gun shot in history?”
He scowls. “That’s the one.”
“Wow. She really upgraded, didn’t she?” I’m mostly joking.
He grunts, hitching my bag up his shoulders, and changes the subject. “Damn. This thing really is twenty pounds, isn’t it?”
“Are you regretting doing me a favor yet?”
“It’s not a favor, I’m proving a point.” He turns, walking backward up the rocky ground. “I’ve ridden a bucking bronc at a charreada in Chihuahua, been tied up in an overwater bungalow, and not for fun, and dealt with an ex who threw a machete at my head. I can handle hiking with a few blisters and a backpack.”
“I get it, you have excellent taste in women. Stop bragging.”
“That’s the part you picked out from all that?” He cocks his head, the amber ring around his pupils glinting like fool’s gold. “Does it bother you? Me talking about other women?”
He unscrews the cap on his water bottle and takes a swig. I watch the muscles in his throat flex, remembering what it felt like to graze my teeth against those veins in his neck, but then his words pinball through my skull: It wasn’t real.
A too-loud huff bursts from my lips. “Your idea of a date is probably roping a cow, so no, it doesn’t bother me. I don’t want to be tied up with a lasso.”
“I prefer handcuffs,” he says.
“So, you’re one of those…”
He cocks his head. “One of what?”
“One of those guys who has a red room full of lassos and a Yes, No, Maybe checklist.”
To each their own, but after I dated that loan shark who wanted to blindfold me, tie me up, and play “pretend kidnap,” I decided that required too much work. All I want is an orgasm, but it’s hard to make that happen with a man. I need to be relaxed, in control enough to let go, and a kidnapping kink doesn’t do it for me.
He shrugs. “Nah, missionary’s good enough for me. Maybe I’ll throw in some hair pulling if I’m feeling wild, but I just want to make a woman feel good. That’s all.”
My lips part, and I don’t want to imagine it. I refuse to think about how he would make a woman feel good. Maybe he would pull my hair as he slides into me, those calloused hands teasing my—
“Did you hear that?” Out of nowhere, Lawton freezes.
I stiffen, listening to the forest. Every one of my senses goes on high alert. A twig snaps. “Stop talking.”
