Page 139 of Bucked Hard

“This is ridiculous,” she says as I half drag her. But I catch the smirk playing at the corners of her mouth. “My car isright there.”

“In,” I demand as I wrench open the driver’s door on my Ford.

“Always so grumpy,” she hisses, kicking the gravel with each measured step, forcing me to tug her closer like a disgruntled puppy.

This woman-child will be my ruin.

And God help me, I'm ready to fall.

Chapter2

Callie

Buck nearly tosses me through the driver’s door, the leather seat still warm from his body heat.

“Slide over.” His voice is like a sweet noose around my neck. He has no idea the hold he has on me. The hold he’s had on me for too long. Breathing becomes impossible when his masculine scent invades me in such an intimate way I have to bite back a moan.

My heart pounds so hard I swear he can hear it over the engine's rumble as he climbs in his obscenely huge F350, forcing me to climb over the console and into the passenger seat, and slams his door shut.

I nearly lick his ear when he leans across and silently grabs the seat belt from next to my head and pulls it across my lap, clicking it in place his face so close, I can taste him. His body so big, it could cover me twice.

Buck "Buckshot" McCrae. My daddy's best friend since time began. The man whose calloused hands have starred in every filthy dream since I started having filthy dreams.

His face is a map of scars, some from his rodeo days, some from his ranch days, some from who knows where. He has silver at his temples. His thighs are like tree trunks and he could crack the shell of a pecan in the crook of his arm with his biceps.

He’s my own personal Porn Hub in flannel. Flannel I’d like to peel off and have him teach me just what reverse cowgirl means.

He grips the steering wheel like he wants to snap it in half, those forearms flexing beneath sun-darkened skin. I've spent years watching those arms rope cattle, fix fences, lift hay bales. Years imagining them pinning me down. Pulling me into his lap. Swatting my bratty ass.

God, those hands.

"What the hell were you thinking?" His voice is gravel and whiskey. The same voice that's talked strategy with my father around our kitchen table for as long as I can remember—plans for the craft brewery they’ve been dreaming up since I was in middle school. “You’re eighteen and alone in there?”

Now, that voice is directed at me. All that intensity focused like a grizzly bear.

"I was thinking I'm a grown woman who can go where she pleases. And, I wasn’t alone, I was with Missy," I cross my legs slowly, letting my dress ride up another inch. His eyes flick down, then away. But not before I catch the flash of heat and the movement of his Adam’s Apple as he swallows hard.

That seems to only make him angrier. His jaw muscle turns to stone as he seethes through his teeth. "That place is full of men who'd eat you alive and Missy be right there inviting them to the buffet."

I adjust in my seat, leaning against the console separating us, breathing in his scent of leather and pine. "Maybe that's what I want. Iwantto be eaten."

The tendons in his neck stand out like cords. "Don't. Say. That."

"Don't say what, Buck?" I trail a finger over the seat controls in the console, pressing the heat/vibrate button for his seat making him growl, his brow furrowing. "Don't remind you that I'm not a little girl anymore? That Daddy's not here to keep you in line?"

God, the thought of him losing control makes me freakin’throb.This man who used to swing me up onto his shoulders at rodeos. Who taught me to ride horses and shoot straight. The man who read the riot act to every boy in my freshman class under the guise of coming to career day to talk about being a cowboy, but instead he gave a thirty-minute speech about how gentlemen keep their hands to themselves and treat women with respect.

But I knew what he meant. He meantme.

He’s never once slipped, never once shown that he sees me as anything but his best friend's daughter. A little girl.

Until right now. Tonight, there's something wild in his eyes and I realize how fucking sexy crow’s feet can be. How does he get better looking with each passing year?

"You're playing with fire, Callie." His voice drops an octave.

"Then I’m gonna toast marshmallows." I walk my fingers from the seat controls down the smooth burl wood of the console and let my hand come to rest on the worn denim covering the hard muscle of his thigh, feeling him twitch beneath my touch. "You’ve been looking. I’ve just been waiting for you to stop pretending you weren’t."

I half knew he would follow me here tonight. With my dad out of town, he called to make sure I was safe and in for the night. I lied about streaming a Golden Girls marathon and making deep fried Oreos.

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