Page 32 of Untaming the Cowboy
Her steps followed.
The room smelled of cedar and clean sheets, faint smoke from the fireplace he’d left cold since winter. The bed sat wide against the far wall, flannel sheets pulled tight, untouched. He stood there a beat, thumb tracing her wrist, the faint pulse beneath skin he already knew by memory.
“If this ain’t where you want to be, you can still say so,” he said.
Dahlia reached up, caught his shirt, and rose to meet his mouth. “This is exactly where I want to be.”
The kiss deepened until the room disappeared. He drew her closer, felt her smile against him when he backed toward the bed. The mattress dipped under their weight; boots thudded to the floor. Every wall he’d built since Stacie’s goodbye cracked beneath her hands.
Her hat slid to the nightstand. His dog tags hit the wood beside it.
She pressed a kiss to the cleft of his chin—her running joke, his unraveling—and whispered against his skin, “You don’t have to fight the dark alone, Luc.”
He didn’t answer. Didn’t need to.
The night closed over them, quiet and sure. Sheets twisted, breaths tangled, the war in his head went still. For the first time in years, he let someone stay.
And as sleep pulled him under, one truth settled clear as dawn?—
with her beside him, he just might make it through the night.
14
DAHLIA
Sunlight slippedthrough the tall windows, soft and gold, pooling over Luc’s bed before reaching her bare shoulder. The scent of him lived in the sheets—cedar, smoke, and something deeper she couldn’t name but already missed when he wasn’t near.
Dahlia stretched slow, toes brushing the cool cotton, her muscles pleasantly sore from everything they’d done in the barn. Luc hadn’t taken her to the guest quarters afterward. He’d carried her here—to his room, his bed—and she’d let herself be claimed without question.
Now the room breathed his rhythm. Heavy wood beams overhead, clean lines, the hum of the ceiling fan moving air through the space. His boots sat by the door, dust still clinging to the soles. His side of the bed was empty—of course it was. That man’s body still ran on Marine time. He rose before dawn even when he didn’t need to, as if the world might crumble if he slept in.
Dahlia smiled into the pillow.
She wasn’t mad about it. It gave her time to feel.
Her fingers slid over the sheets, tracing where his warmth had lingered. She should’ve been embarrassed about the recklessness—the unprotected kind of love that didn’t think past breath and heartbeat—but she wasn’t. Dahlia had always been careful with her body, with who she let in. Her grandmother used to say a woman’s spirit sits behind her ribs, and if she wasn’t mindful, she’d go giving away her light. Dahlia believed that. Still did.
But Luc had walked in, and something ancient in her had reached toward him before her mind could find the brakes. He wasn’t a passing man. He was a tether. The kind that pulled her home.
She could already see it—her hands on the porch rail while he came up from the pasture, the smell of hay and wind in his clothes, Cookie trotting behind him. The two of them cooking breakfast on quiet mornings, maybe a few little Stanleys running through the yard, big-headed and barefoot.
Dahlia laughed softly. Lord, she was gone.
She slipped out of bed, wrapping his shirt around her shoulders. The hem brushed her thighs as she padded barefoot to the kitchen.
The ranch was half-awake outside, boots crunching gravel, men hollering to each other in the yard. She cracked the window, let in the crisp morning air, and reached for flour.
Soon the kitchen smelled of butter and browned edges—fresh biscuits split open and stacked, eggs scrambled soft, ham and sausage sizzling in separate pans. She stirred honey into the tea and wiped her hands on a towel just as Beau’s voice boomed through the doorway.
“Smells too good to be lawful, Miss Dahlia.”
“Good thing I ain’t cooking for the law,” she said, sliding a biscuit sandwich onto his plate. “Eat before it cools.”
Luc walked in not long after, hat in hand, eyes catching hers before anything else in the room. He looked freshly showered, hair damp at the ends, that day’s scruff shadowing his jaw.
“You didn’t have to do all this,” he said, setting his hat on the counter.
“I wanted to.”
