Page 88 of Buckin' Around

“It’s okay. I’ll get to it tomorrow.”

“I’ll help. I’m on vacation for a few weeks, anyway.” Her dark gaze is still on mine, her grip on the door whitening.

Her chest plummets?—

She whips her head ’round and focuses on the food in front of her.

“Riles . . .”

I don’t know what I want to say. I know what I feel. What I’ve been thinking about for weeks with this little woman in my orbit.

“Yeah, I’ll just heat it up. Won’t be long.”

“No, tha?—”

Her head pops up from the refrigerator. Her eyes narrow as I shift on my feet, my shoulder flinching with the movement.

“Spencer Emerson Lockwood, what did you do to yourself.”

Christ, not the full name.

I can’t help the half smile that kicks up on my lips. My cock swells in my jeans at her chastisement.

The refrigerator door shuts, and she’s in my space a beat later. A single brow cocks up on her stern, fucking beautiful face.

Hell, if this is mad Riley, I’m going to be breaking every single bone in my body.

God, she’s fiery, and protective as fuck.

She is sexy as hell when she’s mad.

She’s . . . undoing the buttons on my shirt.

My heart thunders. “It’s nothing, Riles.”

I move to halt her progress, and she slaps me away. “I’ll be the judge of that, cowboy.”

It’s all I can do to stand, arms hanging—especially the right one—as she guides my shirt from my shoulder and presses her fine fingertips to my bulky biceps, over and around the shoulder joint before making her way back to the shoulder blade.

It hurts. All of it.

But my body is numb to anything but her touch.

My cock stretches my jeans, fire weaving through my veins and ending in my useless lungs that fail to capture enough air to be viable for life.

Finally, I coax enough oxygen into my lungs, only to be hit with her scent. Her shampoo. Her perfume. A heady mix of everything that is Riley O’Malley.

It is at this very precise moment I realize, with acute clarity, that I have gone and fallen head over heels for the only woman who’s never showed an ounce of interest in me beyond friendship.

Well, maybe the tiniest of inklings. When we accidentally touch. Or she lets me hold her baggage for a moment when life is too hard.

“. . . ence?”

Riley’s dark eyes are homed in on mine.

“Sorry, what?”

“I said, did where I touched hurt?”