Page 119 of Bad Cowboy, Tennessee

My heart beat like a drum inside me, alarm bells going off like I was starting up a self-destruct protocol.

He thinks he cares about you.

You’ve tricked him.

He doesn’t know. He can’t know that at the root of it all, you’re not lovable at all. You’ve never been capable of being loved.

“And everything that happened to you growing up,” he said, and I heard an intensity in his voice like I’d never heard before. “Noneof that was your fault. You were hurt, and you didn’t deserve it, and it makes me want to set the fucking world on fire.”

A thousand tiny cracks were forming inside me.

It was a war of conflicting thoughts:I’ve never let anyone in like this before, and I never should have told him a damned thing.

But, also, a louder one:he needs you, so… why isn’t it just as possible that you need him?

His skin against mine was like a match, lighting fire to all of the kindling that had built up inside me for decades.

And I realized, as I drank in his scent and clutched him close, that something terrible had already occurred.

The thing I’d been so afraid of happening? It had already happened.

I had fallen for him.

It rocked me like a fissure in the ground, like I’d just been tossed from Veil’s back and had every bit of breath stolen from me.

Max was something I couldn’t control. A man who’d learned most of my secrets and still persisted. Still met every bit of bitterness inside me with a sweet, soulfulhope.

A man who didn’t want anything out of me.

Not money, not security, not land.

He just wantedme.

And that was something I would never be able to control. I felt it pulling me into Max’s current like a wave taking me out to sea.

I moved my head to the side, taking in a deep lungful of air.

I could feel his cheek on mine.

The smooth skin of his face up against my scar.

I turned, holding the side of his face for a moment, brushing my fingertips along the edge of his jaw.

And I closed the space between us, pressing my lips to his in a kiss.

I kissed him slowly.

And felt myself surrender.

The heat of his lips on mine for the first time was more intoxicating than if his mouth had been wrapped around my cock. I was suddenly hyperaware of every inch of my body as he pressed up against my hips with his groin.

Our kiss was slow at first, my lips exploring his like new territory.

He parted for me after a moment and his tongue came out against mine. I let out a feral sound, gripping my hands on the small of his back and pressing his body closer.

If the plushness of his lips was like an invitation, the slick heat of his tongue was like a demand.

And I craved his insistence like it was aneed. I opened to him, deepening the kiss. I’d gone without it for so long that I was like a touch-starved addict now, heat flooding my body as the rest of the world melted away.

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