Page 82 of That Moment
I don’t answer right away. I press my mouth to his collarbone and breathe him in. The fan keeps time with its rotation above us. I rest my palm against his chest, finding his heartbeat. For now, I let the ache settle against my ribs. I let the want exist without a deadline. I let him be a man who keeps his walls where they are and still lets me inside them just a little.
“I’ll stay,” I breathe finally.
His sigh is a quiet, shaky exhale against my lips, and then he kisses me.
When he pulls the blanket over us, his arm slides around my waist, pulling me close until I’m molded to him. The last thing I hear before sleep steals me is his whisper against my hair.
“Good girl.”
Something warm presses to my shoulder, and at first, I think it’s the dream I was having—sun on my skin, his hands heavy and confident as they do wicked things to me. Then the mattress dips, and his voice scrapes low against my ear.
“Baby. Five-oh-eight.”
I pry one eye open. The room is gray-blue, the window still a square of dark. He’s already showered with damp hair under a faded Rockies cap, T-shirt clinging to his chest, jeans sitting low on lean hips. There’s a to-go cup on the nightstand, steam curling from it.
“No,” I croak. “Absolutely not. You’re insane.”
He smiles, his laugh soft against my ear. “Coffee’s there. Hot. Two sugars, splash of cream.”
I groan and burrow deeper, but the scent reaches me, rich and sweet, and I give up, rolling to my back. Every muscle protests, a slow, satisfied throb between my thighs.
“You’re awfully put together for a man who kept me up half the night,” I mutter, pushing up on my elbows and dragging the sheet with me.
“Early start,” he says, easy. “Horses have to be fed before I head in.”
I squint at him over the cup lid as I take a first sip. “Uh-huh. Or you’re trying to get my car off your property before the guys show up and start flapping their mouths.”
He steps closer, bracing a hand on the headboard by my shoulder, and tips my chin up with two fingers. The gesture is gentle, but it pins me in place. His eyes are clear and steady.
“This has nothing to do with anyone seeing anything,” he says, slow and deliberate. “I don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks.”
The words land with sincerity. I hold his gaze, heartbeat thudding against my tongue. Before I can make a joke or poke at the edges of it, he slides his palm to the back of my neck and kisses me hard, coffee forgotten, his mouth stealing the air from my lungs. By the time he pulls back, I’m half under again.
“Finish getting ready,” he murmurs, and punctuates it with a sharp smack to my ass. Heat skitters low in my belly, and I swat at him on instinct, laughing even as the pressure behind my ribs expands.
I swing my legs out of bed and pad to the bathroom. In the mirror, my lips still look slightly swollen, and my hair is a lost cause. I jump into the shower, deciding it will be easier to get ready once I’m back home if that part is done. After, I brush my hair and teeth, pull on my dress from last night, and shove my heels into my bag in favor of the spare flats I always keep on hand.
When I step back into the bedroom, he’s standing there with my jacket folded over one arm, my purse looped on two fingers like a gentleman out of a different century.
“Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.” I take another sip of coffee and try to ignore the way his earlier sentence keeps echoing between my ears like the fan blades last night.
I don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks.
I don’t say it out loud, but it feels like something shifting. Like the weather turning just before dawn. Instead, I ignore the question that bubbled up on instinct when he said that.
Does that include my brothers?
We climb into the cab of his truck, and he turns the engine over. His truck smells like him; it always has. He drives with one hand loose on the wheel, the other anchored high on my thigh, thumb tracing idle shapes that make me grateful for the darkness.
I watch him out of the corner of my eye. Cap pulled low, damp ends of hair curling against his neck. I want to reach out and run my hand against the dark scruff of his jaw, but I don’t. Something about that feels too intimate. Instead, focus on his lips, memories of the way he kissed me last night flooding my brain. On the dirtiest, filthiest things I’ve ever heard a man say.
The road is empty. The radio’s off, it’s just the dull hum of the tires on asphalt. Every few miles, we pass a fence post with a reflector, and each little flash is a heartbeat inside the cab. My body is loose and sore, my mind too awake. His hand tightens once on my thigh when we take the bend by the cottonwoods. He doesn’t move it after. He doesn’t need to. The message is clear without words.
I press my palm over his knuckles and leave it there. He doesn’t look away from the road, but I see the corner of his mouth tip, just barely. Something warm slides deeper into mychest, a warm pull that isn’t pain. By the time we pull behind the garage, the sky has diluted to milk-blue. The bays are dark, the gravel lot still. He kills the engine, and the truck settles with a soft creak. Neither of us moves.
He’s the one who breaks first, stepping out of the cab and walking around to open my door. “Come on,” he says, voice soft.
