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I didn’t answer her because I was already too busy working my hands through her silky curls and kissing the hell out of her.
CHAPTER SIX
Floss
Acton Cunningham was a conundrum. One minute he was the distant Texas Ranger intent on fulfilling his duty, the next he was pulling crazy romantic dates out of his perfectly carved tush and dragging me along with his wild dreams.
And here Andy and Ella thought I’d be the wild one.
I took the arm he offered, his skin warm beneath the long sleeves, as though he’d just gotten out of the shower. I’d clung to my sinking emotions over the last few days until Acton called and said he wanted me to go on another date with him.
My first reaction had been a big ‘hell, no’but the man begged, and if I were honest with myself, my heart melted the moment I saw him again. Not that his efforts and easy grin made what happened at the last event alright, but it did dim the anxiety that had been occupying my chest since I saw him last.
“You didn’t have to go to all this trouble, you know.” I mean, he did, but I wasn't about to admit that I liked what he’d done.
“’Course I did. Romantic at heart and all.” The corner of his mouth quirked up, belaying the shadows that crept into the corners of his gaze. He gave my arm a squeeze, and all I saw wasthe genuine man who had been too scared to ask me—or any girl—on a real date, so he asked me on a fake one.
“You’re doing fine,” I reassured him, though he didn’t seem to need it.
Maybe it was me who was nervous—that would be a first. But everything about this man set my emotions into a hyper aware state. Even the cool night air that brushed over my arms and wound its way around the open back of my dress left me shivery and hot all at once.
The candles glimmered at our ankles as he led me along the pathway to an arbor that looked covered in yellow cloth, but as we came closer, I realized he’d made a bower covered—every single inch of the structure—in flowers. Beneath it lay a picnic blanket with extra rugs piled at each corner. Pillows filled in the edges of the gassed space and a tray of food and chilled wine was set in the middle.
“Acton,” I breathed. “Where did you get all these?”
He gave me a small smile, looking down at me with a hooded gaze. “Ella helped,” he murmured softly. “I mean it, Floss. You deserve so much more than a man ignoring you when you were doing me a favor. I let work get in the way.”
“It was all about your work,” I protested, though my mind screamed,take the compliment!inside my head. But I had been there to support him, and I’d let my fear of being abandoned fill my head with the wrong sort of thoughts. “I should have been by your side the entire time.”
“It’s okay, Flossy. I get it.” He grazed his fingers across my cheek, catching my hair and drawing me closer. “Forgive me?”
“I— Of course,” I mumbled, flustered. Heat rose in my cheeks at the way he looked at me, hungry, like a starved man. I wasn’t used to anyone looking at me like that, or being the center of anyone’s attention, and kind of hated it and loved it too. I suckedin a breath and detached myself from him. “How long did it take you to do this?”
I spied one of the handheld spritz bottles Ella had stashed around her shop to keep everything looking bright and healthy.
“All day,” he admitted, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. “I didn’t start the flowers until the sun was setting, as I didn't want them to wilt in the heat. Took me a while to build the gazebo though.”
He’d built the entire thing. I blinked at him. “You have a very nice friend,” I murmured. Not many people would let you come into their home or land and construct something random for a date—even a fake one.
Yet again the sense hit me that this wasn’t fake at all and that I was finally getting to see the real Acton Cunningham.
“I’d rather think about you than him right now.” Acton wound an arm around my waist, drawing me back into his body as I studied the flowers.
I traced over one bright yellow petal that turned into a deep pinkish crimson in the candlelight and gave the bloom a squeeze. Its little mouth popped open and snapped back when I released them. “Snapdragons. You remembered.” That blasted form he sent through asking me all my vitals and my favorite flowers when we first met. It had been an unemotional, unattached approach, cold and sterile. This...this was anything but cold or lifeless. I smiled at him over my shoulder as he dipped his head, his lips gazing at the corners of my mouth. My body tensed, a frisson of goosebumps rising over my skin.
“I asked you for a reason, Floss.” He swept my hair over my shoulder and kissed the back of my neck, working his way to the curve of my throat, sucking lightly on the spot there. I shivered again, clinging to his arm that held me up.
“But that was before—” I started.
Acton caught my jaw in his fingertips, tipped my head back and kissed me.
If I thought he’d kissed me after our first date, I had been totally and utterly wrong. Acton swept his tongue along my bottom lip until I opened to him, then he delved inside, cupping the back of my head to angle me the way he wanted. A soft whimper drew from my throat as I reached one arm back to wrap around his neck, telling myself it was for balance when all I wanted was to be as close to him as possible.
His fingers massaged the back of my neck in sweeping circles, sending that same thrill over my body but deeper this time, awakening nerves and driving arousal far more than only surface-level. He kissed me harder until I arched for him, letting him mold me to his tall frame as he wanted, always supporting me with the arm that held me in a steady grip, gathering my dress up against my side one inch at a time.
“How hungry are you right now?” he rasped as he broke the contact long enough to press kisses along my cheek and down my neck.
I rested my head against his shoulder, ruffling his hair with my fingers as I stared up at the diamond studded midnight velvet sky above us. “Don’t stop.”
