Page 15 of Tattooed Cowboy
Or the visions his touch awakens. They swirl behind my eyes: ancestors fleeing towers of light, a woman carved from starlight pressing a child into mortal arms, a mark searing the air between two peoples. One of starlight and cloud, the other of earth and fire.
Tears slide down my cheeks. The images aren’t seen—they’refelt, like everything about this man. The flare fades, yet he still holds me, thumb rubbing circles into my wrist, an unreadable expression meeting mine.
“Now, you know why I can’t touch you,” he says.
My eyes lift to his. “Too late.”
Thunder booms, distant and deep, the storm matching my pulse. He drops my wrist. Rises, then, steps back, but I won’tlet him retreat. I follow, my fingers brushing his arm where the tattoos still glitter.
“If you stay,” he warns, voice fraying, “I won’t stop.”
“Don’t.”
Light and sound swell. The cabin hums, walls trembling with the same frequency that’s been haunting my bones since the day I drove up.
“Melody.” My name leaves him like a prayer, like surrender.
The word collapses the space between us. I lift my face as his lips descend—not spontaneity this time, but inevitability. The roots of the same tree finding each other again.
Heat, light, breath. The cabin disappears in his kiss, leaving only the sound of our names dissolving into each other.
The hum threads through us, a living current. My hands on his burning chest, his heartbeat answering mine. Everything dissolves into radiance; desire weaves the air into something sacred.
Chapter
Six
MAVERYK
The floorboards hum beneath our feet.
Light seeps through the cracks like veins of silver.
My heart drowns in my chest for want of her—resonance igniting me from the inside out.
Only ever spoken of in whispers and shame. Now it burns clean as truth.
Pulsing through me. Terrifying. Purifying.
The thing I’ve spent a whole lifetime hiding from and searching for. The thing that could wreck me on its rocky shore.
Our breath syncs, each exhale altering the sound of the storm outside. The wind answers like a bow drawn over wire.
Melody palms my chest, her tiny hand fragile against the heat of my flesh, light slipping between her fingers.
The flesh that hums for her.
A low chord shudders through us—warmth, vibration—and I don’t know where it starts or ends, only that it binds us until we feel like one thing.
The mountains sing through us. The words float inside my head. Our eyes lock. She hears. She knows.
The world blurs at the edges.
Focus narrows to light, touch, to the beat of her heart against mine.
I pull her closer, a desperate growl escaping my chest—like I’ve spent decades holding my breath, lungs straining only to finally inhale.
Her arms thread around my neck, fingers tangling in my hair.
