Page 19 of Broken Ride

Instead, I walked to his motel room in the dark.

I'm on my feet before I've decided to stand. He's faster, out of the desk chair with a quickness that shouldn't belong to a man held together by tape and ibuprofen. He rises to his full height and the room shrinks by half, his shoulders blocking the overhead light.

"Tell me to sit down," he says. His voice is low, stripped of the easy drawl he wears in public, and the raw sound of it drags heat through every nerve ending south of my collarbone. "Tell me this is about the case and you'll walk out of here and I'll let you go."

"I don't need your permission to leave."

"I know. That's why I'm asking."

There it is again. The single word that keeps rearranging the wiring in my chest, and I resent the rearrangement almost as much as I need it.

"This doesn't mean anything," I say, and I close the distance between us.

His mouth is bourbon and coffee, and the taste lands with a jolt that travels straight through my chest into my hips. His hands find the sides of my face, thumbs along my jawline, the hold firm enough that the pressure registers against my teeth. I could pull back. He'd let me. And the fact that I know that makes me want to stay exactly where I am.

I fist the front of his t-shirt and drag him down to me. His breath catches, a sound I file somewhere between triumph and warning. His hands slide from my jaw to the back of my neck, fingers threading through the base of my braid, and when he tilts my head back the exposure of my throat should make me flinch.

I arch into it instead.

Then we stop. Not a decision. A reflex. His forehead presses against mine. We're both breathing hard. Neither of us moves. The kiss cracked open a door that's been sealed since that first conversation at the livestock pens, and the air coming through it is hotter and more dangerous than either of us planned for.

His thumb traces the line of my jaw. Slow. Almost careful. The gentleness is worse than the kiss because it asks a question I don't have an answer for.

"This is still a bad idea," I say. My voice doesn't sound like mine.

"Probably." His mouth is close enough that the word lands on my lips. "You want to stop?"

"No."

The word hangs between us for a full breath. Then my hands find the hem of his shirt and push underneath, palms pressed to his stomach. He's warm. When my fingers find a scar along his oblique, he pulls a sharp breath through his nose.

His mouth moves to the hinge of my jaw, then lower, teeth grazing the tendon in my neck. My hands drag the shirt higher, and he reaches behind his head and pulls it off in one motion.

His torso is a topographic map of damage, scars and bruises layered over muscle built by decades of absorbing impact. I trace the faded surgical scar along his left shoulder, and he flinches under the touch, not at the sensation but at being seen. I press my mouth to it. The sound he makes is low, almost involuntary, a vibration I feel against my lips before I hear it.

"Wait." I put my palm on his chest. His pulse hammers against my hand, and the rhythm matches mine beat for beat. "I need to say something practical before I stop being able to think practically."

"Talk."

"IUD. I'm clean. Last panel was earlier this year."

"Clean. Tested at the sports medicine physical in January." He pauses. His hands loosen in my hair. His thumb brushes across my collarbone with a care that borders on hesitation, as if he's suddenly aware of every place his body is touching mine and is recalculating the pressure. Downgrading. Pulling back into the controlled version of himself.

I recognize what he's doing. He saw the flinch earlier. He heard the Oklahoma calls. He's adjusting. Being careful with me.

I don't want careful.

"Don't be gentle with me," I say. "I didn't walk over here for gentle."

His gaze drops to my mouth, then lower, and the careful restraint burns off like fog in heat. His hands tighten in my hair, fisting the base of my braid hard enough that my scalp stings. My breath catches. The ache between my legs sharpens into a pulse of its own.

"Wasn't planning on it."

He lifts me onto the desk. Papers scatter, my manifests and his maps sliding off the edge onto the carpet, and my thighs bracket his hips with the hard rim of the desk biting into the backs of my legs. He pulls my shirt over my head in a single motion and tosses it somewhere behind him. My bra unhooks under his fingers with a competence that makes my stomach drop, and he strips it down my arms and drops it on top of the scattered maps without looking away from my body.

His hands close over my breasts, rough palms against sensitive skin, and my body bows into the contact before I can stop it. His thumbs drag across both nipples, slow and deliberate, and the sensation pulls a sound from my throat that I don't authorize. He does it again, harder, his focus locked on my face while he works them stiff. The heat between my legs tightens into a coil that has nothing to do with anger. The days of friction that led us here have everything to do with it.

"Days," he says, low, as if he's reading my body the way he reads a bronc in the chute. "You've been thinking about this for weeks."