Page 63 of Risking it for the Cowboy

She tipped her head back, eyes closed. “I shouldn’t even bother filing a restraining order this time.”

“You’re filin’ a restraining order, got it?” he growled.

Her eyes popped open. Stared at his mouth and his hard words, brow furrowing with frustration and helplessness. “Judge Mitchell always lifts them.”

“Got it?” he gruffed harder, his throat so thick.

She studied his dark expression. He relaxed his face. Forced a smile.

“Anyway.” She laughed wryly, swiping her cardigan cuff over her eye again. “I tried my best to get you to dodge this bullet.”

He petted his beauty queen with the broken crown’s hair and kissed her temple again. “Are you so blind that you can’t see I got hit square in the chest with it?” he croaked.

And have been bleeding for more ever since?

Jade gems so wide on him, he pressed a kiss to her forehead as they fluttered shut.

“Trouble,” she breathed, her nails pressing into his lower back and sending a shiver rippling over him.

“Flower Girl,” he whispered.

Kissed her nose, relishing that she was sinking into him like she had that night.

Her lips were upturned, begging for his. Fuck, but he shouldn’t kiss her right now, when her heart was vulnerable, except, he needed it, too, because what if Daisy had been hurt last night in Jason’s drunken outburst? What if that bottle had smashed Charlie instead of the cop’s windshield? What if he hadn’t been here today?

Their lips touched. A brushing. A reacquaintance.

And it was so damn sweet. She was finding this comfort in him. No one ever found comfort in him. And he was lying to her. Because she had every reason to see a record as a red flag, and God, he wished he could take that day back, handle it all so differently—

“I knew your whole indifferent vibe at the carnival was bull, Charlie Bradford, when I saw you in my shirt.”

She kissed him harder.

He groaned and doubled down, the hand fisting her overalls beneath her frumpy cardigan now sliding beneath the straps, beneath her T-shirt, to press into her glorious skin, fingernails trailing on her spine, inducing a whimper from her lips and a shiver across her skin. “It’s not what a girl does when she hates a guy. That’s a guy’s mark on her right there.”

She grappled to hold him closer, arching into him, lips so tender at first, colliding now.

“I knew—” His tongue laved hers and, heaven, still peppermint lips, still delicious. “You had a kid that night. And I didn’t leave…” He groaned at her growing intensity, his words opening this door of trust between them. “Little girl’s backpack on the chair,” he continued.

This capitulation felt so good. This wall she held up by sheer force of will crumbling an inch to let a tiny piece of him into her world that was so heavy to hold alone.

Somehow, in their frenzy, his forehead came to rest on hers and hers his, stoked by rhythmic scoring of his neck.

“I ain’t the most sophisticated,” he gruffed. His hand kept caressing. “You don’t gotta take me to your faculty dinners or anything—”

“Stop—”

“But if you like me back, then all I’m asking for is a chance because … I ain’t a bad guy, just a guy who wants to be worthy.”

Chapter Nineteen

He said nothing else, his declaration pulling tight the tension between them.

She had a choice to make. If she wanted to know him, she had to let him in.

She couldn’t kill this blossom before the seeds even sprouted. They just needed the right growing conditions. How could a guy prove his worth if she never let him try?

“I haven’t, uh, done this dating thing in a while,” she admitted, resting against his heartbeat.