The Cowboy's Way(40)

“Heather?”

“If you had let me finish, I was about to tell you that I don’t want to add not making love with you to the list of things I’ll regret,” she said softly. “Tonight I want to forget about broken furnaces and wondering if I’m going to make ends meet from one day to the next. I don’t want to worry about the future. Tonight I just want to feel.”

His breath lodged in his lungs and it took a moment for him to draw in enough air to speak. “Are you sure, sweetheart?”

Nodding, she pressed her lips to his. “Yes.”





Seven

Gazing up at T.J., Heather knew that she could very well be making the biggest mistake of her life, but she had never really had a choice. From the moment T.J. had kissed her that very first time in her kitchen, it had been leading up to this moment.

When he got up from the couch, he picked up the baby monitor, then held out his hand to help her to her feet. “Let’s go upstairs to my room,” he said, putting his arm around her shoulders to lead her toward the stairs. “We’ll be more comfortable.”

As they reached the top of the stairs, they stopped at the room she shared with her son to check on him sleeping soundly in the play yard before she and T.J. continued down the hall to the master suite. When he opened the door and turned on the bedside lamp using a switch by the door, he stepped back for her to enter ahead of him. She barely had time to notice that the room had a huge king-size bed, a wall of windows that seemed to make the star-studded night sky part of the room and that it was decorated in a rustic Western décor before he took her back into his arms.

“Sweetheart, I’m going to do my damnedest to take things slow,” he said, raining tiny kisses from her lips to the hollow beneath her ear. “And I want you to promise that you’ll let me know what feels good, what brings you the most pleasure.”

Her heart raced at his intimate tone and her breathing became shallow due to his warm breath feathering over her sensitive skin. “It’s been...quite a while.”

“Since your fiancé?” he asked, bending to remove her shoes and his boots.

“Y-yes,” she answered breathlessly when he caressed her foot and ankle as he removed her socks.

Removing his own, he straightened to take her hands in his. “We’ll learn together how to please each other.” His promising smile warmed her all over as he placed her palms on the front of his chambray shirt. “Why don’t we start with you taking this off of me?”

Tugging the tail of the garment from the waistband of his jeans, she slowly released the snaps, then slid her hands inside the cloth to ease it from his wide, heavily muscled shoulders and down his bulging biceps. As the shirt fell to the floor, a shiver of excitement coursed through her at the sight of his well-developed torso.

“You’re beautiful,” she said, lightly touching the thick pads of pectoral muscle. “Your muscles are so defined.”

He shrugged. “It’s a remnant from my rodeo days.”

“Let me guess, you rode the rough stock,” she said, glancing at the size of his upper arms. Every cowboy she had ever known who competed in those events had biceps most men would kill for. “Horses or bulls?”

“Bareback and saddle broncs,” he said, smiling. “I also did a little team roping with my brother Lane when I first started out.”

His smile faded and a shudder ran through his big body as she used her finger to trace each ridge and valley of his exceptional abs. By the time she reached his navel, a groan was rumbling up from deep in his chest. “You have no idea how good it feels to have you touch me like this,” he said, his voice gruff with need.

“Probably as good as it felt when you touched me earlier on the couch,” she admitted, wondering if that sultry female voice had really come from her.

He reached for the hem of her T-shirt to lift it up and over her head. Then, when he brushed her bra straps over her shoulders, she realized he hadn’t refastened the clasp. But the thought was fleeting as he covered her breasts with his hands. The feel of his calloused palms chafing her taut nipples caused her to tremble with longing and her knees to feel as if they would give way.

When he lowered his head to kiss his way from her collarbone down the slope of her breast to the tight peak, Heather felt heat race through her veins to gather into a pool in the most feminine part of her. But when T.J. took her nipple into his mouth to tease her with his tongue, she thought she would surely burn to a cinder.

“Does that feel good?” he asked as he moved to do the same to her other breast.

“Y-yes,” she said, bracing her hands at his waist to steady herself.