Page 46 of Wild, Wild Cowboy

“I’m about to,” I promised. Hannah made a muffled squeak into my shirt and I grinned.

The next floor was ours and I hauled a mortified Hannah out of there, still grinning at my joke.

I barely got us into our room before she launched herself at me.

She liked this, going fast. It was like she was trying to outrun her demons. Get to the finish line before they could stop her. But I had the feeling it wouldn’t work any better this time than it had in the past, and if I let her try, we would end up in the same place as before, with her getting herself off. Which would be fine, if I thought for even a second that was what she wanted.

But it wasn’t.

Running from her demons hadn’t ever worked. She needed to turn and face them head on. We needed to try something different. And that meant slowing down.

So even though it was the last thing I wanted to do, I eased out of her embrace and took a step back.

“Do you want a glass of water?” I asked.

She stared at me with glazed eyes, her glasses askew, her hair mussed from me tangling my fingers in her braid. Not pulling her back into my arms was the hardest thing I’d ever done. “Water?” she echoed.

I grabbed the two disposable cups from the tray next to the coffee maker and ripped off the plastic, then headed into the bathroom to fill them up at the sink. “Yeah, honey. Water. Gotta stay hydrated.”

“Hydrated?” she repeated. It gave me deep satisfaction to know I had kissed her senseless.

She was standing right where I left her. She hadn’t even righted her glasses. I handed her one of the cups with a smirk. “You’re going to need it.”

I downed the full cup in three long gulps. Hannah took a small sip from hers and then set it aside. She fixed her glasses. Her hands dove for my belt buckle, and I barely managed to shackle her wrists before she got it undone.

“No, darlin’.” I pulled her in closer and brought her hands behind her back. “My pants need to stay on for now.” Otherwise, I didn’t have a prayer of slowing us down.

“How inconvenient.”

My laugh ended on a groan as she dragged her lips up my throat and sucked at the pulse point beneath my jaw. I was such a sucker for neck kisses.

“What, exactly,” she murmured between kisses, “are you planning to teach me? I promise I’ll learn a lot faster with your jeans off.”

I looped her arms around my neck. “Maybe, but this lesson is for both of us. My brain doesn’t move as fast as yours, so we’re going to be slow and thorough about this until I’ve learned every”—I kissed her right cheek—“inch”—I kissed her left cheek—“of your body”—I finished with a peck on her nose.

She pulled her head back to glare at me. “Don’t you try thatgee, shucks, I’m just a dumb cowboyroutine with me, Zack Hale. I know you’re not dumb. You’re just…” Her nose scrunched as she tried to figure out my game plan.

“I’m just what?” I goaded. “Making up reasons to spend all night worshipping your body? Damn right I am.”

“We don’t have all night. We have to sleep so we can drive tomorrow,” she said, ever practical even when horny, and honestly, that only turned me on even more. It was just soHannah.

“I’ll take the first shift,” I told her. “You can sleep while I drive.”

I could tell from her mulish expression she was about to argue some nonsense about me needing more rest than her and insist on taking the first shift herself, so I pulled my shirt off over my head. The distraction worked like and charm and the only thing that came out of her mouth was a happy sigh. Her hands went to my abdomen like they were pulled there by six magnets attached to my muscles.

The hours I spent working out had always been less about vanity and more about keeping my body strong enough for the brutal rides I asked it to endure and then the healing and recovering from said rides, but damn.Damn. The way Hannah looked at me, like I was the answer to her every prayer, I would happily double my time at the gym and never complain.

“You’ve been driving me crazy all night in this outfit,” I muttered, tugging her t-shirt off. “I’m not used to seeing this much skin from you. It scrambled my brain. I have Hannah overload.” I unhooked her bra and tossed it aside like it had personally offended me.

“Zack,” she gasped as I circled her nipple with my tongue, then sucked it into my mouth.

I scooped her up and deposited her on the bed. “How am I supposed to behave in public when you’re out here with bare arms?” I kissed my way down her arm, from her shoulder to her wrist, making her laugh breathlessly. “And your belly? Christ, darlin’.” I kissed and sucked along the waistband of her jeans. “But you know what? I missed your ankles.” I flicked open the fly.

“My…my ankles?” she stuttered, like maybe I had scrambled her brain as much as she had scrambled mine.

I tugged her jeans down her legs, tossed them aside, and knelt at her feet. “Your ankles. Wearing those skirts of yours,you have a tendency to flash me a little ankle now and then. Gets me hard every time.”

She snorted. “You’re ridiculous.”

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