Christmastime Cowboy

by Maisey Yates

She had made her decision, and she was upset about it. But she couldn’t go back now. He didn’t want to be jerked around, she was certain of that. She had done a fair amount of it, all high-and-mighty and full of her own power when he’d admitted that he wanted her.

  And right now, she did feel stupid. As stupid as she had felt that day at the winery when she had caused a drunken disaster in front of all and sundry. When she had destroyed everything she held dear.

  She had been a teenager then, demanding that she be treated like a woman while acting like a child.

  Now she was a woman, acting like a child, feeling like a teenager.

  She just couldn’t get all the pieces of herself to play nicely. To line up.

  “This is it,” she said softly, when they reached the end of the road and her small home came into view, the porch light on, typically a cheery and welcome sign, and now less so.

  “I’m sorry... I just... Bye.” She put her hand on the door, and then suddenly found herself being called back toward the driver side.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Into... Into my house,” she said, her voice trembling.

  Suddenly, she was in his arms, crushed up against his chest awkwardly, her back against the steering wheel. And he was kissing her. Hard, fierce, his tongue staking a claim, branding her with a fire that burned away every worry, every thought, every little panic she had experienced just a few moments before.

  There was nothing. Not a single year without him, let alone thirteen. Not a giant gulf between their experience levels. Nothing. Nothing but his lips. Nothing but his kiss.

  It went on and on, for she didn’t know how long, and she reveled in it. Gloried in him. Was so damned grateful for it.

  He lifted his hand, cupped the back of her head, then curled his fingers around her hair, jerking her back, separating their mouths.

  “I want you,” he said, his voice hard. “And I don’t care about moments. How many damn moments have passed, Sabrina? Since I’ve known you, too many damned moments have passed. We let them pass. I’m done with it.”

  “You’re the one who let it pass the first time,” she said.

  “That’s true. I did. And I regretted it, a lot more often than I care to admit. Damn, did I regret it. I’m not gonna let it happen again.”

  “But... It just... It kind of did.”

  “Then I’ll make a new one. A new moment.”

  “I don’t...”

  And then he was kissing her again, each drugging pass of his tongue against hers, that slick slide of flesh, carrying her closer to something she couldn’t put a name to.

  They parted and he was breathing hard, just like she was.

  “Get your ass in the house,” he said.

  “Liam...”

  “Otherwise, this is going to happen in the truck, and after all this time I think we deserve a little bit more room than that, don’t you?”

  “I...”

  “If you want to stay in the truck, that’s fine with me. The first time can be in the truck, we’ll make the second time in the bed.”

  “The bed would be good,” she said, moving away from him and stumbling out of the cab of the truck, her heart hammering.

  She was shaking, she realized. Not because she was afraid of him. But because she was just... Overwrought. Overwhelmed. She couldn’t believe it was happening, and she knew, to a degree, that she hadn’t told him the moment was over because she was trying to put a stop to something she had a feeling had been inevitable from the start. An inevitability that scared her now.

  It wasn’t about Clara, or conversations of bison. It was about her. About being terrified of risking the kind of exposure this would cause her. About feeling silly. About doing the wrong thing.

  About revealing so much of herself.

  It was all fine in theory, but in practice... It was so much of her worst nightmare.

  This stripping away of layers, this unguarded emotion. This need that would be a thousand times more naked than they were.

  Maybe that was the real reason she had avoided men and sex all this time. Maybe it wasn’t because of Liam, and how much she wanted him.

  She could have lain back and taken second best at any point in time. Maybe it was just the idea of being out of control. Of being at the mercy of someone else and what they might make her feel.

  Because she hated it. Because she had done it once, and it had wrecked her entire life. No, Liam hadn’t made love to her ever, but he had taken control of her. Bewitched her. Her emotions, her actions. She had felt beyond herself, completely and totally out of control after he’d left. He had demolished all of her carefully cultivated defenses from day one. She was so afraid of that happening again.

  So afraid of so many things.

  She opened the front door and walked inside, waiting for a moment until he came in after her before closing it behind them. She wished that she had cleaned. She didn’t think her bed was made. She was pretty sure she had left her pajama bottoms and her panties lying on the bathroom floor. Was most definitely not ready for this. Not ready for him.

  She turned to him, turned to him to say something, to protest. But then he gathered her up in his arms and kissed her deep and hard. Kissed away her thoughts. Her concerns.

  Just as he had done in the truck. And it left behind nothing. Nothing but desire. Nothing but need.

  She felt like she was standing on the edge of a cliff, on the brink of making a choice. And she realized then that she was going to have to be more afraid of turning away from the cliff than jumping off.

  When he pulled away from her, cupping her cheek and gazing into her eyes, she felt like maybe she was. Like it would be worse, more terrifying, to avoid the jump than to simply take it.

  He dropped the plastic bag on the ground, reached inside and pulled out the box of condoms. He left the rest. Then he wrapped his arm around her waist and kissed her again, sweet, consuming kisses that went deeper each time. Kisses that made her shake, that made her ache between her thighs, a hollow feeling spreading out from there.

  She had come too far not to jump.

  “Take me to bed,” she mumbled against his lips.

  “With pleasure.”

  Suddenly, she found herself being swept up off the ground, held against that hard, broad chest. “Which way?” he asked.

  “Back that way,” she said, gesturing wildly toward the hall. She grimaced as they passed the tiny kitchen, the sink piled high with dishes.

  Yeah, definitely not the sexiest thing.

  “Where’d you go, Sabrina?” he asked, his voice rough.

  “What?”

  “You’re not here with me. You’re thinking about something. Worrying about something.”

  “Just... My house is a mess.”

  He stopped walking, then he gripped her chin, holding her face steady and forcing her to meet his gaze. “Look at me, baby. I don’t give a fuck about how your house looks. Whatever other things you’re worried about? I don’t care about them either. I want you. There is nothing else on my mind. Nothing else I’m thinking of at this moment. I want you. Just you. Exactly as you are. Whatever it is you’re afraid I won’t like, afraid you won’t like, don’t be afraid of it.”

  “Just like that?” she asked, her voice wobbling. “Don’t think about anything else? Don’t worry?”

  “Yeah,” he said, his voice calm. “Just like that.”

  “It’s not that easy for me,” she said. “I have a...a busy brain.” And all those thoughts kept her from feeling too much. As long as she was thinking about everything that was happening, it didn’t feel quite so big.

  “I think I can handle that,” he said. “By the time I’ve got you in bed, I’m going to erase every thought from that head. Until all you can
do is feel. My hands on your skin. My tongue. My cock.”

  Shock stunned her for a moment, her stomach twisting sharply. She said nothing, did nothing but stare at him.

  “That’s more like it,” he said, clearly taking her silence as a victory.

  And then he was walking again, carrying her toward the bedroom, toward a moment that had been in the making for thirteen years.

  There was so much between then and now. So much hurt. So much worry. So many good things, and so many bad things. So, so much. But it didn’t matter. Not now.

  It was only them. Only this.

  They moved into her bedroom and she tried very hard not to imagine what it was he saw when he looked around the place. At her bed with the little pink duvet with the little gathered bunches of fabric that made it look like roses. At all the girly pillows on her bed that clearly announced a man did not live here, never had, and had likely never even been anywhere near the mattress.

  But he didn’t pause. Instead, he crossed the room and set her down at the center of the bed, straightening and leaning back to flick the light on. She bit her lip.

  “What now?” he asked, way more in tune with her than she’d like him to be right now. If only she could save all that instinct of his for the actual sex, and have him be totally oblivious when it came to everything else.

  “Are we going to do it with the light on?” she asked.

  “Do it? You mean am I going to make love to you with the light on? Yes. I damn well am. Because I want to see your body.”

  “It hasn’t improved since I was a teenager.” She shifted restlessly on top of the covers, leaning back against the pillows.

  “Well, I don’t believe that,” he said. “I maybe haven’t seen you naked since I’ve been back, but believe me, I have taken stock of the situation.”

  “My hips are bigger,” she pointed out.

  His green eyes swept her up and down and her whole body went hot. “I’ve noticed. I like it.”

  “My breasts are not as perky,” she added, making sure he was aware of the grave reality.

  “Do you honestly think any man cares about how perky they are? You’re a woman. You’re built like a woman. The hell do I care if your breasts are up by your eyeballs? I don’t. I just care that I get to see them. That I get to touch them. Taste them.”

  She shuddered. “Oh.”

  “And I figure, that what you said is true. I have seen you naked, even if it’s been a long time. And you haven’t gotten to see me. I thought you might want to.”

  He gripped the hem of his T-shirt and pulled it up over his head, his ab muscles rippling with the motion. Her throat went dry, her entire body seizing up as she watched the play of his muscles, the way his tattoos shifted and bunched with the motion.

  He was beautiful. So much more than she had imagined. Her heart felt like it had been crunched up in a fist and she forgot to breathe. Forgot to do anything but stare at that incredible body that was everything it had ever promised to be. Those glorious muscles and those incredible tattoos. She was trying to read them, trying to take it all in, trying to figure out what they all meant.

  She could see the rest of the tree now, the one she had only just gotten a glimpse of peeking from the short sleeves of his T-shirts since he had come back.

  It wrapped around his shoulder, wrapped around his back. She couldn’t see the whole thing, not yet.

  Though, now that she could see as much of it as she did, it reminded her of that large tree at the winery, the one just in front of the house where she had grown up. The one she’d been standing under when he’d come out of the house after talking to her father...

  She swallowed hard.

  “I do want to see you,” she said, her breath catching. “I really do.”

  “Good.”

  He smiled, walking over to the bed, tossing the box of condoms onto her nightstand. Then he leaned over, placing his hands on either side of her head, pinning her down to the mattress as he kissed her deeply. She lifted her hands, then curled them into fists, dropping them back down at her sides.

  “You can touch me,” he said.

  She was embarrassed he had realized how nervous she was. Had definitely picked up on her hesitation. Rat bastard and his selective insight. He was going to pick up on her inexperience too.

  She could tell him, she supposed. Except, she didn’t want to talk about it. She didn’t want to say anything. She didn’t want to think. For the first time in a long time, all she wanted to do was feel.

  Wanted to feel his hot skin against hers, wanted to finally know what it was to have him inside of her.

  Yes, she wanted all of that. All of that and more. She wanted to escape that prison she had built inside of herself. Those walls. All those walls.

  That thought jarred her. Hadn’t she just been thinking about the way her father built up walls between himself and everyone around him? The way he closed everyone off from him.

  She did it too. She had spent the past few years slowly barricading herself behind reason and sense, hiding herself away from strong emotions, from anything that might challenge her, that might take her control.

  She might not cut people off, but she cut off feelings. And she cut them off ruthlessly.

  But if this was her chance to explore passion, perhaps it could be even more than that. Maybe it was her chance to destroy that fear. To destroy those walls.

  To get back what she had lost all that time ago.

  Liam had made it perfectly clear that nothing was going to happen between them, not permanently. But there was no reason that it couldn’t be something more than just sex.

  No reason it couldn’t rebuild what had been lost.

  So she reached up, pressed her palm against his chest, felt his skin, so hot and delicious beneath her touch. The hair there tickled her palm, sent an arrow of need down between her thighs. He was so different from her. So much harder. So much larger. It was intoxicating. And so, so sexy.

  “Your turn,” he said, his voice rough.

  He grabbed hold of her sweater and wrenched it up above her head, so that she was exposed to him, wearing only her very plain white bra that had not a single bit of lace or anything sexy to recommend it.

  She was going to try to not worry about that, was going to cling to what he had said earlier. That he didn’t care about much of anything as long as he got to touch her breasts. And taste them.

  She shivered. She very much wanted him to taste them.

  He gripped her chin, held her face steady as he kissed her, and somehow, he removed her bra from her body without her even realizing what he was doing, somehow, her bare breasts were now crushed against his chest, her nipples tight. From the cold air, and from the intensity of her arousal.

  She was so turned on. So desperately needy for whatever he could give her.

  It was terrifying. Most definitely like falling off that cliff she had been poised on the brink of only moments ago. But she wanted it. Wanted to embrace the fear, wanted to take this moment to be a woman untamed. Out of control. To be nothing but feeling, and no hesitation at all.

  She wanted to be new. Wanted to be different.

  Perhaps it wasn’t so different than that earlier feeling of wanting to crawl out of her skin. Wanting to be someone else. Feel something else.

  Wanting him. Just him. With a kind of desperation that stunned her.

  He moved away from her, gazed at her body, his eyes unashamedly fixed to her breasts.

  “Damn,” he said, reaching up and sliding his thumb over her nipple. She gasped, arching her back. “Sensitive.”

  He leaned down, tugged the tightened bud between his lips, sliding his tongue over it, then drawing back and blowing across it. She shivered, shocking jolts of need rocking her. Her internal muscles pulsed, brin
ging her to the edge of climax with just one touch. Oh, she was going to embarrass herself. She was going to come so quickly he was going to know that she was inexperienced. He was going to know no other man had ever touched her like this. No other man had seen her naked.

  But then, she couldn’t worry about it. Not when he brought his lips down on her other breast, on the tender skin just above her nipple, before lowering his mouth and taking it in deep, sucking hard, making her moan.

  “Very sensitive,” he murmured against her skin.

  She was dying. Coming apart. Each touch, each kiss a brick removed from one of her walls. Undone. She was undone. Or at least, about to be.

  Nothing left but need. Nothing left but feeling. So much feeling. Feeling she had turned away from, denied, shut out for so, so long.

  He reached up, palming her breast, squeezing her hard and she arched against him, begging for more of his touch without words, because she didn’t have words. She had nothing. Nothing but a deep, intense desire to have more of him, all of him. Everything he would give. She grabbed hold of his shoulders, slid her fingertips down his back, the interplay of those hard muscles beneath her touch a sweet kind of torture that had her feeling hot and slick between her legs.

  This was nothing like anything she’d ever felt before. Nothing like wanting him at seventeen had been. She had wanted to be close to him. Wanted intimacy. And she had been turned on, but mostly nervous. She had been innocent. A girl.

  Now she was a woman. And she felt every inch a woman. Responding as a woman, needing as a woman.

  Her lips curved into a smile.

  She matched up. Finally.

  His hands lowered down and he flicked the button on her jeans open, drawing her zipper down, then he pushed his calloused fingers beneath the hem of her panties, sliding one finger down between her slick crease, moving the pad of his finger back over her clit. She jerked against his touch, that intensity of her longing so shocking she was powerless to hold back her gasp of need.

  She wanted him so much. Wanted this so much. Finally, Liam Donnelly. Finally.

  She looked up at his face, and memorized the sameness. Those green eyes, those wicked lips. And the differences too. The hard grooves that had been carved next to his mouth, the lines between his eyebrows, by his eyes. Representative of a thousand smiles she hadn’t seen. A hundred different frowns. Moments of stress and tension that she hadn’t been a part of. So much life that she had missed. So much of him.