Slow Burn Cowboy(26)

“Are you comparing me to junk food, Lane?”

“I’m comparing you to any bad decision I can make on a given day. That’s what separates us from the animals. Sometimes we don’t make them. I have to not make this mistake.”

“Why is it a mistake?”

She laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. She crossed her arms, shaking her head. “Are you proposing? And if you are, do you think I’m going to say yes?”

“Hell, no.”

“Then how could it be a good idea? Unless it’s going to end somewhere permanent it’s just going to end. And then where does that leave our friendship?”

He was out of words then. He was out of restraint. He was out of everything. Everything but the need that had eaten at him for so long he didn’t know who he was without it. Didn’t know what it was like to take a breath without wanting Lane Jensen. It had become part of him, and he was so damn tired of it he couldn’t take it for one more second.

So he wrapped his arms around her, just like he had done yesterday. His hands were pressed into her back, fingers tangling in her hair. It was like silk, she was like silk. He expected her to push away from him, expected her to fight, after all that verbal sparring she had done.

But she didn’t. Instead she went still, frozen. Like prey that had spotted a predator. Or maybe she was just leaving it up to him. Her breathing was shallow, and slowly, very slowly, he felt her soften beneath his touch.

Gradually, her breasts met his chest as she leaned against him. But she didn’t move to close the distance between their mouths. He dragged his palm up the line of her back, letting his fingertips drift along her neck. She shivered beneath his touch.

Lane shivered beneath his touch.

Other women had done that, he was sure. When it came to his sexual prowess, he had never had a complaint. But it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter what other women had done, what other women had felt. What mattered was that Lane felt this now. For him.

But he wasn’t going to be the one to close the distance between them. She had to make the move. It had to be her. So that tomorrow she wouldn’t be able to pretend it didn’t happen. So that she wouldn’t be able to get angry at him. So that she wouldn’t be able to pin it all on him. And maybe she would turn away. Maybe she would keep denying all of the electricity that arced between them.

But he didn’t think she would.

He wove his fingers more deeply into her hair, tightening his hold on her head, and at the same time he moved the hand on her back down lower, then to the side, grabbing hold of her hip. She gasped, that small reaction worth more to him than he could possibly quantify.

“Tell me you don’t want me, Lane,” he said, moving just a little bit closer. “You’re going to have to tell me.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want you,” she said, but she came nearer when she said it.

“Come on,” he returned, “you’re going to have to do better than that.”

“I don’t—” she inched closer still “—want you.”

“Yes,” he affirmed, “I can feel just how bad you don’t want me. The way you’re all pressed up against me proves that.”

“You’re holding on to me,” she said.

He released his hold on her, dropping his hands back down to his sides. “Then run away.”

She swayed slightly, but she didn’t move. Her eyes widened, and for the first time she looked downright terrified. Mostly, he imagined, because she didn’t move back. Because she didn’t run. Because, for whatever reason, she was still standing right there, her breasts pressed tightly against his chest, her mouth only a whisper from his.

“You’re my friend,” she mumbled. “Running away from you would be almost as stupid as...”

“Kissing me?”

“Nothing would be stupider than that,” she said, the words a rushed whisper.

Then her eyes fluttered closed and she leaned forward, the movement so slow, so slight, if he hadn’t been tuned into every single thing about her, he might have missed it until her lips pressed up against his.

The sound she made was somewhere between surrender and a wounded animal. Distress and satisfaction reverberating between them as she gave in to the attraction that he had never even bothered to deny. At least to himself.

He wrapped his arms back around her, forking his fingers into her hair and wasting no time taking the kiss deeper. He wanted this. He wanted her. And he wasn’t going to pretend otherwise. Not while he had her like this. Not while he was finally holding Lane Jensen the way he had always fantasized about doing.

He knew plenty of guys who would say it was a weakness to want a woman and not claim her. Finn had always seen it as a feat of strength. Which was why this surrender to temptation shamed him in some ways. Why it felt like giving up.

But it also felt like summer rain falling on his face for the first time after a long cold winter. It felt like that very first flower persevering through the frost. Like life after so much nothing.

And that won out over anything else.

He tightened his hold on her, moving back, pressing her up against the edge of the counter as he let her feel the evidence of his desire for her. Let her feel just how hard she made him. Just how much he wanted her.

She was clinging to him, just as she had done last night, her fingers curled around his shirt as she kissed him back. And when he felt her begin to pull away, he stopped her, sliding his tongue across the seam of her lips, growling as her flavor flooded his mouth.

She whimpered, an answering sound, an answering surrender. And then the tip of her tongue touched his, that little returned exploration like a lightning bolt that went straight down to his cock.

He slid his hands down her body, down those curves he had spent so many years pretending not to want, and he moved his hands down to that ass he’d worked for so long not to stare at. And now he was holding it in his palms.

Just the thought made his knees about buckle.

He tightened his hold, drawing her forward, and she rolled her hips, a needy sound rising in her throat. She was trying to satisfy herself, trying to get some relief from this heat that was burning between them.

And then it was Lane who let her fingertips drift down his chest, Lane who rested her hands on his belt buckle for a moment, then pushed her hands up underneath his shirt.





CHAPTER TWELVE

SHE HAD LOST her mind. It was official. When Finn had showed up at her door radiating all the male energy that she was working so hard to pretend he didn’t have, she had gone into fright mode. She had done what she did best. She pushed things down; she hid them. She pretended that they weren’t happening to her.

That was the way she handled things. The Lane Jensen method of dealing with trauma. Just pretend there was no trauma. Tell no one. Not even yourself.

So, she had plastered a grin on her face and proceeded to act like he hadn’t devoured her last night and demolished the walls that she had placed very purposefully between them from the moment they had met.

Unsurprisingly, that hadn’t gone over very well.

Surprisingly, she was kissing him.

More surprising was the fact that once his lips had touched hers, common sense and any capacity for thought had flown completely from her mind.

She moved her hands down to his belt, rested them there for a moment, and then let her fingertips inch just beneath his shirt. She gasped when her skin met his. When she felt all of that hard, hot muscle beneath her hands at last.

At last. What a strange way to think of it. A strange way to think of something that she had never really thought about doing until this moment.

She had never touched a stomach like his. So well defined, and covered with just the right amount of hair. She knew what he looked like without a shirt. She had just seen him without one. And—he was right—she had checked him out. Fully and completely. She had memorized each ridge of muscle, and so now as her hands drifted over them, she had a pretty clear visual to go along with it.

Part of her was screaming that this was a mistake. But most of her was just lost in the best kiss she had ever experienced in her entire life.

His hands were so firm and sure on her body, so large and strong. The funny thing was, now that she had accepted they were kissing, she could appreciate the kiss they’d shared yesterday. The fact that he hadn’t been tentative. The fact that he hadn’t asked permission. The fact it had been a claiming rather than an interview.

No tentative meeting of lips that was tantamount to an awkward handshake. Not for Finn Donnelly. No, he kissed like a master. Like a man who knew exactly what he was doing, and exactly how to make a woman’s body do just what he wanted it to do. Feel just what he wanted it to feel.

Never, ever had she kissed a man with this kind of skill. Who knew just how to call this level of arousal up in her body this easily. He wasn’t even really touching her intimately. His palms were resting on her denim-covered butt, but that was it.

Meanwhile, she ached. From her breasts down to her toes, and everywhere in between. She could feel herself getting wet for him, wanting him.

Wanting Finn.

That thought, much like the growl that had rescued her sanity last night, jerked her into the moment. Into reality. She wrenched her mouth away from his. “No way,” she said, wiggling out of his hold. “Stop,” she said, more to herself than to him. “This has to stop.”