Page 71 of Lost Then Found
Terrible. Horrible. Bone-meltingly bad idea.
But I don’t move. Can’t. Because if I shift even an inch, I know I’ll lean back into him—and that might be the end of me.
Boone shifts behind me, adjusts his grip, and when he finally speaks, his voice is low—gritty enough to rough up my already frayed nerves.
“Comfortable?”
I should lie. Play it cool. Pretend this isn’t messing with my entire nervous system.
Instead, I say the truth, flat and honest. “Not even a little.”
He lets out a quiet chuckle, the sound dragging down my spine like a slow match strike. It’s low and deep and smug in that way only Boone Wilding can manage—like he knows exactly what he’s doing to me just by breathing.
Then he gives Springsteen a gentle nudge, and we’re moving.
And suddenly, I’m aware of everything.
Of the way his muscular thighs are pressed tight around mine. Of the heat pouring off him and soaking through my shirt like it’s tissue paper. Of the steady rise and fall of his chest against my back—grounded, certain, like none of this affects him at all.
I wish I could say the same.
The sun is blazing overhead, hot enough to turn my skin sticky, but the breeze cuts through it, sweeping my hair across my face and giving me something—anything—to focus on that isn’t the man pressed against me like a damn brand.
I shift slightly, trying to create some space, but all it does is send me sliding an inch forward in the saddle—enough to make my balance waver. I mutter a curse under my breath, but before I can straighten myself, Boone’s hands are there.
One second I’m off-kilter, the next I’m grounded by those hands—big, calloused, and way too familiar.
He catches me like it’s nothing. Like he’s done it a hundred times before.
His fingers wrap around my waist, firm and sure, and everything else disappears.
Because those hands? I remember them.
I remember the way they used to skim across my bare skin in the dark, how they’d splay across my stomach like he owned it, like he’d built it with his bare hands and had the right to hold it. I remember the weight of them on my hips, the rough scrape of calluses on my thigh, the soft drag of histhumb just under my ribs.
I know how gentle they can be. I know how rough. I know the places they’ve touched, the way they’ve held me, claimed me, learned me by heart.
I stare down at where they sit now—steady on my sides like they never left.
And then his voice is right at my ear, low enough that it barely cuts through the sound of the wind, but it hits anyway.
“You good?”
His breath fans across my neck, and it’s not fair. It’s not fair how fast my body remembers things my heart tried to forget.
I swallow hard, throat tight. He still smells like spearmint and cedar and saddle leather. Like the boy who ruined me and the man who could do it again without trying.
I don’t trust my voice not to crack. So I just nod.
Because I’m not good.
Not even close.
But if he keeps touching me like this, I might forget to care.
His hands leave me slow—too slow. Like he’s not ready to let go yet. Like part of him wants to stay exactly where he is.
And damn it, I want him to.
