Page 64 of Bad Cowboy, Tennessee

And then I felt a hand on my back pocket.

Fingers, making their wayintomy pocket.

Instinct kicked in immediately. I hadn’t been looking for a fight, but if someone was trying to pickpocket me, they picked the wrong fucking target.

I whirled around and had my hand closed around the guy’s wrist before he could get another millimeter deeper into my pants.

“What the fuck?”

The words escaped my lips as I turned and saw in an instant that it wasn’t someone trying to rob me.

It was Max.

He caught me off guard, though, grabbing thefrontof me, sticking his other hand into a belt loop at the front of my jeans.

He pulled me forward by the belt loop. My hand was still tight around his wrist, but he wasn’t struggling against me this time. His eyes burned into mine. The glow of the street lamps beside us framed him in a golden halo, and I’d never seen him look sopretty. Or maybe I just liked intensity.

Liked my hand around him.

He’d come up behind me, surprising me, throwing me out of the prison of my own thoughts.

Max didn’t try to break my grip from his wrist. He seemed tolikeit, actually. Time paused for a moment as I tried to give him a warning look.

Get the fuck away from me.

You don’t want this.

And then he yanked my belt loop harder, taking a step in toward me, bringing his face close up to mine.

He was just a couple of inches away from me now. He smelled so good, clean and fresh and just as innocent as he really was.

A white heat flashed through my veins as Max’s face came closer to mine, and his gaze flitted from my mouth to my eyes and back again.

When he moved in to kiss me I thought it must be a mistake.

Chapter 11

Max

Iacted on pure instinct. My heart was beating so hard I thought it might jump up to my throat. My whole body was hot, and even justlookingat Draven’s plush lips felt forbidden. I wished I was anywhere other than in front of the Hard Spot, but I was also too far gone to care, caught in a moment of raw desire like nothing I’d ever felt before.

There was something about him.

Something about having his hand on my wrist again, too. A feeling I didn’t think I could want again, but I kept coming back for more.

It was as if I was making good on a bet, or taking a dare—but nobody had bet I wouldn’t do this other thanme.

I had some strange urge to prove something, but what? And to myself, or to Draven? My cock was hard and I could tell he was just as turned on, but he was resisting me. Resisting everything, even though the other day at his house, he’d practically drawn me closer to his cock like he was a river current I couldn’t resist.

I didn’t want to kiss a man.

But since the night he almost told me his secrets, he’d been running from me. Like he was scared to see me beingniceto him.

Like he couldn’t handle my kindness at all.

I needed to show him, finally, that I wanted my lips on his. I was sick of questioning my attraction to him, and I just wanted to act on it.

I closed the distance between us, acting on the base instinct before it disappeared.

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