Flustered by his nearness, I push up to my hands and then to my feet and watch Tahoe quietly head over to the stables to saddle up two horses.
I watch the play of his muscles under his shirt with an ache. He’s such a physical man. A very physical man who’s never been able to love anyone he’s cared about physically.
“Get over here,” he says, oblivious to my thoughts.
“I don’t know how to even get on that.”
“I’ll help you.” He grabs me by the waist and ushers me forward, then cups my butt.
“Tahoe! Not by the butt!”
I squirm restlessly to keep him from lifting me. His magnetism is becoming more and more impossible to resist and his hands on me feel too good, too male, too his.
“There’s not a butt so luscious anywhere but here,” he teases me, and palms it then squeezes gently, and he turns me around and draws my front to the flat plane of muscles that is him.
We were laughing. But the smile fades from his face the instant our eyes lock and we both seem to register our position. My breasts heave against his chest, my butt is in his hands, and then he scents my neck a little as he buries his face inside my hair.
I tilt my head and grip a handful of his T-shirt.
It’s as if he can’t help himself. I can’t either. When he lifts his head, his eyes are lightning, thunder, and blue, blue rain. He looks at me as if I’m the most forbidden, most succulent thing he will ever take a bite of.
I look at him, slowly, cautiously, nervously tipping my head upward.
When he sees that, he slides his arm slowly around my waist to draw me tighter to him.
“Come here,” he says, his voice dark as he leans his head.
His breath is so close I can feel it on my face. His eyes look so dark, they’re almost navy blue when he gazes into mine. He cradles my cheek in his hand.
He holds my face utterly still as he leans in.
And he gets closer,
And his nose brushes lightly over mine,
And his breath blends with my breath,
And his lips whisper over mine.
All this time I’ve been staring at him, motionless. Then his eyes start to close, and his lashes are gorgeous, and he smells like pine and hay…
And his lips close firmly over mine.
Softly but so possessively, I gasp as my whole body arches up to the kiss. His tongue flicks softly—opening me.
A thousand emotions and sensations ripple through me.
I’m still scared.
I still know this won’t amount to anything.
I now know he may possibly never, ever come to love me.
But all the longing, all the nights, all the days, all the nudges, all the baits, all the teases, all the arguments, the games, the holidays, the chocolates, everything simmers to the surface until I feel like I’m going to explode into a million tiny, horny little pieces.
I grab his hair—hard.
A violent groan leaves his chest as he parts my mouth wider and wider. He tightens his arms around me and lifts me up against his chest almost aggressively. He squeezes me tightly but lovingly, and nibbles my lower lip, saying, “God, this mouth belongs to me, this mouth was made for me.”
His hot little bite is a soft prick on my lower lip, firm enough to feel, but soft enough to feel like being bitten all over.
He groans again and his tongue smooths over the sting of the bite and I groan for him, moan for him, grab his hair tighter, hold him close, my heart beating a thousand beats in one single heartbeat.
When he finally eases back, he stares into my face as if searching for something he needs to see, something he’s craving for, would die for, that’s how intense his eyes are, how rabidly they look at me.
“I’m still on Earth?” I whisper.
His lips curl briefly, his lids heavy, eyes dilated and still fiercely searching.
“Yeah?” he asks in a voice coarsened with desire, rubbing the knuckle of his index finger over my bruised mouth.
“Yeah.” I laugh.
He gives an impatient nod to the horse, and when he grabs my waist to lift me, he stops and inhales a deep breath. He smiles against my temple, and I smile to myself. I haven’t seen his dimple in a while, and this time I can actually feel it against my skin.
Sometimes we use the people close to us as crutches, to keep from facing reality, or to keep from doing the hard work. We think they can do it for us or shield us from the truth. Sometimes we use our pain as a crutch too, to keep from putting ourselves out there again. I can no longer deny that between me and Trent, there always stood a six-foot-plus blond Tyrannosaurus rex, and I hadn’t realized until now that nothing could have kept me from falling in love with him.
We ride across a dirt path up to the crest of a hill, where we can see the rest of the Hill Country before us. As we ride, he talks about growing up here, about the first time he fell off a horse, and I keep telling him it’s so peaceful compared to Chicago. “You can almost hear your own thoughts here,” I say.