Page 8 of Bad Cowboy, Tennessee

“If I wanted to hurt you, you’d be unconscious by now,” he said, his gemstone eyes casting a glance toward me like a threat. “And if I wanted to kill you…”

He didn’t finish that sentence.

“You think knocking me onto my porch isn’t hurting me?”

“There’s not a scratch on you,” he said, idly rubbing his fingers over the spot where I’d bitten him. “Go ahead. Check. I’ll wait.”

He reached down and offered me an outstretched hand. As if the motherfucker wanted tohelpme now.

I slapped it away.

“Why were you breaking into my barn?”

He reached down onto the ground and grabbed something. Keys jingled in the air, glinting under the moonlight. I instantly recognized them as my mother’s spare set, complete with a little leather rooster on the keychain.

“Lily gave me these,” he said. “It’s not consideredbreaking inif I have keys. Didn’t know which key it was, so I was trying a few.”

I breathed deep and my heart rate finally started to even out. “You could have just told me that the moment you saw me with the goddamn stick.”

“No fun in that. I liked feeling out how you fight.”

“Why the fuck does it matter how Ifight?”

“I also liked seeing how you looked when I pinned you down,” he continued, looking down at his sleeves and brushing them off. “Spitting in my face was a nice touch.”

“I was desperate.”

He looked up at me. “I know. You were starting to make my cock hard.”

I glared at him. “Bullshit.”

“It was pretty inconvenient in a fight.”

My chest was molten.

It was the first time all night I’d felt like he admitted I hadanyeffect on him at all.

My sister’s fucking boyfriend got hard from my spit on his face?

For Christ’s sake, when was my life going to go back to normal?

“Why would my sister tell you to come into my barn unannounced?” I asked, changing the subject as fast as I reasonably could.

Draven’s gaze skated over my body as I stood up. He was reallywatchingme now. I wasn’t quite as tall as him, but I was still six foot and had gone to the gym four times a week for the past five years of my life. I wasn’t exactly a weakling, either.

“She said you were out at work bartending,” he finally told me. “Said you wouldn’t be back home for at least another hour. But when I asked about whiskey, she said your barn had a wholelot more liquor in it than your parents’ place does. Told me to go grab some. And then she tossed me the keys.”

“I swear to God, Lily,” I muttered.

Lily had always had more of a…things will always work outattitude than I did.

I enjoyed my life, but that didn’t mean I liked change.

Change usually just meant bad things. When you live in the same small town for your whole life, you start to notice it. People you loved moved away. Places you’d gone for your whole life closed down.

Sadistic people showed up at your doorstep.

My sister was more adventurous than me by a long shot, which is why she’d moved out to Montana, and probably why she’d gotten involved with a man who seemed to require heavy sedation.

---