Down Home Cowboy

by Maisey Yates

  She took a step backward when she said that, her manner getting a little more agitated.

  “When you’re not around?”

  “Right,” she said, lifting a shoulder. “Because she isn’t going to work at Pie in the Sky forever. And you and I aren’t going to... Well, you know.” She turned away from him, heading toward the kitchen that was across the open floor plan living area. “Wine?”

  “No,” he said, taking three decisive strides across the space toward her. “Bed.”

  They were going to have to talk. But first... First there would be this. Because it was how they had connected initially. Because still, that raging feeling inside of him existed just outside the bonds of language for him, and he had no words to give to the clawing, tearing sensation that was racking him.

  She blinked rapidly, her eyes going wide. “Bed?”

  He bent down, scooping her up into his arms, holding her tightly against his chest. “Which way?”

  She flailed her arm slightly to the left, and he assumed that was indicating the correct direction. He went that way, not really pausing to take in the details of the house. Later he would. Because he was in Alison’s space, and that did fascinate him. He wanted to excavate her. To find out all of the clues he could about her, so that he could continue creating the best, most detailed picture of her that he could.

  He was desperate for it. Starving. For every bit of Alison that he could possibly have. Wanted her, needed her. In his life, in his bed, in his soul.

  Her bedroom door was already open, and he walked inside, depositing her on the bed, joining her immediately and claiming her mouth with a hard, deep kiss.

  If she had any reservations, they seemed to vanish the moment his mouth touched hers. Because she returned it, deep, long, unending. She wrapped her arms around his neck, letting her legs fall apart so that he could settle between them.

  There had always been an edge to his physical attraction to Alison, to this heat between them. It had always cut, sharp and deep, straight down beneath his skin, hitting him in a place where no woman ever had before. This was different. It was deeper, sharper, about a thousand times more devastating.

  Because the beast inside of him was completely made of hunger now, of want that went so far past the physical it was white-hot and painful to the touch. To her touch. Delicate fingertips skimming over his body, divesting him of his shirt, moving down to work the closure on his jeans, all while her hips rocked against him, mimicking the rhythm that he would establish when he was buried deep inside of her.

  Every brush of her hands over his skin was a brand that he knew would mark him forever. In the past, that would have scared him. Would have made him want to run. But here, now, with her, he just wanted to lean into it. Wanted to surrender to it. And he wanted to drag her down with him. He grabbed hold of her hips, holding them tight, imagining that his fingers on her were leaving their own mark, hoping that if he visualized it clearly enough it would be true.

  That she would be as ruined as he was, as rebuilt as he was.

  They didn’t talk, they didn’t stop.

  Soon, she was naked beneath him, arching upward, rubbing her breasts against his chest, her tightened nipples, the yes on her lips spurring him on, ratcheting up his own arousal to impossible heights.

  He skimmed his hands down over her curves, reveling in the feel of her soft skin beneath his touch. Then he pressed his hand between her thighs, growling when he felt how wet she was, how ready she was for him.

  He quickly grabbed hold of a condom, protecting them both before sliding into her welcoming heat. And he waited. Waited for the rush of relief to wash over him. For a sense of satisfaction to pervade him, to sink its way down to his bones. Like it had every other time he had been inside of her. Except this time it didn’t. This time, being inside of her wasn’t enough. He needed more. Wanted more.

  They were as close as two people could be. Skin to skin. Joined in the most elemental way. But there was a piece missing. Something vital. And he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what it was.

  He flexed his hips forward and she gasped, arching up against him, wrapping her legs around his waist, allowing him to sink even deeper inside. And still, it wasn’t enough.

  He lowered his head, pressing his lips to her neck before scraping the sensitive skin with his teeth. Soothing away the sting he knew he had left behind with his tongue.

  She was all around him, her scent filling his lungs, her flavor on his tongue. It wasn’t enough.

  He moved inside of her then, no rhythm to be found, nothing more than desperation pounding through his veins as he pounded into her. As he chased after the indefinable thing that he knew he would die without.

  Except he didn’t know what it was. He didn’t know at all. He only knew that it was going to be found with her. In her. This was beyond the need for release, beyond the need for satisfaction. Beyond pleasure, beyond pain.

  It was something he had never had before, something he had never felt before. Something he had needed, from the day he was born maybe, but that he hadn’t truly become aware of until her.

  Her fingernails scraped over his back, her breath hot against his neck, the sweet sounds of her pleasure pushing him closer and closer to the edge. The edge of release, but not the edge of satisfaction.

  He needed something. Needed it more than air. Something.

  He closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, thrusting into her until he found a certain measure of oblivion in the pleasure that took hold of his body. And for a moment at least, as she wrapped her legs more tightly around him, as her internal muscles pulsed around him, as she found her own release and dragged him right down with her, pleasure consuming him like a blaze, the beast inside of him was quieted.

  But when the pleasure began to fade, when he became aware of the details in the room... Of her breathing, of her hands resting on his shoulders, of her chest rising and falling beneath his... Of his own heart pounding out a heavy rhythm... That need came back too.

  Yet there was something about this moment, like it was the eye of the storm, a storm he could see raging all around him, inside of him, even as he sat here in the calm clarity. There was something about that which allowed him to see.

  Which made him understand.

  Suddenly all of the pieces clicked into place. The ferocity of the need inside of him, in his heart, and his body, and his soul. And what it meant when it came to this woman lying in his arms.

  He loved her.

  He wanted her to love him back.

  He lifted his hand, tracing a line of concern that marred her forehead. Her eyes fluttered closed, the corners of her mouth turned down slightly.

  He wouldn’t say anything. Not now. Not because he was afraid, but because it wasn’t the time. He brushed a kiss across all that worry written on her face and she sighed, not opening her eyes.

  He couldn’t dump all of that on her now. Small steps. He would take small steps. He would start by sleeping with her all night. In a bed.

  He laughed.

  Alison opened one eye. “What?”

  “This is the first time we’ve made it to a bed.”

  And he wasn’t planning on letting her out of it. Not anytime soon.

  She closed her eyes again, only this time, a smile curved her lips. “I suppose it is.”

  She relaxed against him then, and he wrapped his arms around her, holding her against him. And he felt...satisfied. For the moment. Love. That was the need. That was the ache.

  It still ached. Still hurt. But he understood it now.

  Love. It was why he wanted to know her. Why he needed to know her. Why he could never get enough of her.

  He should have known. Because he’d been discovering that love was the reason for everything. That love always seemed to be the answer to the q
uestions in his life.

  Whether it was not showing enough of it, being afraid to talk about it, or needing it, it always seemed to be the answer.

  He had a feeling that in this case it might also be the sledgehammer. But he wasn’t going to let that hold him back. That was the lesson. He had a damned hard head, but even he learned eventually.

  But for now, for tonight, he just wanted to sleep with this woman. This woman he was in love with.

  He drew in a deep breath and shifted their positions so that her rear was nestled into the curve of his body, so that his forehead was pressed against her shoulder blades. He felt her stiffen for a moment, and he wondered if she was going to protest his staying the night. Then she relaxed against him.

  His last thought before he drifted off to sleep was that it was sure as hell nice to not be alone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  WHEN ALISON WOKE UP her heart slammed against her breastbone, panic firing through her veins. There was a heavy, masculine arm thrown over her body, and the presence of another person in her apartment was just so...so very apparent from the moment she had started coming out of deep sleep, that it was an adrenaline surge that ultimately pushed her into wakefulness.

  She wiggled, trying to struggle away from the person in her bed, but she stopped when a pair of warm lips pressed against the center of her back.

  “It’s just me.” The voice was thick with sleep, rusty from disuse overnight. But she knew it was Cain. Immediately. Everything came back then, and the panic abated. A little bit.

  “What time is it?” She noticed light filtering in through the curtains, then cursed. She sat up, looking over Cain so that she could see her bedside clock. “Shit!”

  She hadn’t just slept through the night, she had gone and slept through opening the bakery. She got out of bed, not caring that she was naked, and opened the curtains just a little bit so that she could see down to the street below. She saw Lucinda’s car parked against the curb, and breathed a sigh of relief. At least it was open.

  She looked at her nightstand, where she usually set her phone before she went to bed, and saw that it wasn’t there. Of course it wasn’t, because she had been in her kitchen texting Cain, and then he had burst in, and one thing had led to another, and they had gone into her bedroom.

  And they had forgotten about all the legitimately important things like her phone, and setting her alarm.

  “I didn’t mean to sleep all night,” she said.

  She looked at him, expecting him to say the same thing, because surely he hadn’t meant to spend the entire night holding her in his arms. He had cows to feed and whatever else he did back at the ranch, plus a much bigger bed—she assumed—than her own.

  “Why not?” he asked, rather than confirming what she assumed. “You were tired.”

  “Didn’t you, like, miss prime milking hour, or whatever?”

  “I called Finn last night and told him I might not be home.” He sat up, the blankets riding perilously low on his hips. She was helpless to do anything but stand there and appreciate the play of muscles in his back, in his stomach, his arms. Those hands. All of him, basically.

  Even in this moment of strange panic, she recognized that he was hot.

  “You did?”

  He nodded slowly. “Yeah. I came over to spend the night.”

  She blinked rapidly. “You could have asked.”

  “Pretty sure I stated my intent.”

  “For sex. Not for...intimate sleeping arrangements.” She was being ridiculous. She heard the ridiculousness coming out of her mouth, and she couldn’t really do anything about it. Couldn’t feel any differently than she did. Couldn’t stop it all from flooding forth like torrents of hysteria.

  “Some people assume that intimate sleeping arrangements come with the sex.”

  “As you pointed out last night, we’ve never even made it to a bed. So... This seems like a step. And I didn’t think we were taking...steps.”

  “Yeah,” he said, making a very male, morning-type noise and slinging his legs over the side of the bed. The covers fell away completely, exposing his body. His aroused body. And heaven help her if she didn’t feel a little bit weak, and warm. Very, very warm. “About that.”

  Right in that moment she felt the floor fall away. She felt like she was falling. Like there was nothing holding her up at all. He was going to do it. He was going to end it. And this. And whatever the hell he had been thinking spending the night in her bed, it was only a tease.

  It shocked her, stunned her how much it hurt. To realize she was poised on the brink of the end of this. The end of them.

  She opened her mouth to stop them from talking, to say something, but her throat was too tight, and she couldn’t think of any words anyway. So she just stood there, staring dumbly at his naked body, his beautiful, glorious naked body that he was about to take away from her forever. It was better than looking at his face. That face that had become so familiar, but was no less handsome for it. And those eyes. Those green eyes that seemed to see all the way through her.

  Yeah, she wasn’t going to look at those either. As affecting as his muscles were, they had nothing on his eyes.

  “The thing is, Alison,” he said, and she focused on his left pectoral muscle, because she couldn’t really look away from him, but she needed to not see what his face might look like when he broke up with her, “I love you.”

  If the floor had been gone before, now the walls were gone too. The street. Maybe the whole damn world.

  “What?”

  “I love you,” he reiterated. “You... You’ve changed me. In ways that I can’t really articulate, because I’m not good at talking, though I’m working on it. You’re like...an angel to me. A really dirty, beautiful angel, but an angel nonetheless. Everything in my life had gone to hell, and you helped me figure out how to fix it.”

  “That doesn’t mean you love me,” she said, barely aware that she had spoken the words, because somewhere during all of this her face had gone numb, and she couldn’t really feel her mouth. “That means you’re grateful. It’s not the same thing.”

  “I know the difference between gratitude and love, Alison. I know the difference between love and being in love. Mostly because I’ve never been in love before.” He took a sharp breath, that left pec pitching upward, the motion forcing her to meet his gaze. He was... He was so sincere, so intense it took her breath away. “I cared for Kathleen, and I even loved her. But I didn’t crave her. Not the way I crave you. You made me want to know you. Really know you, and to do that, I knew I had to let you know me. I had to let you in to everything, and you know how much I hate that. Because I told you. Because we actually talked about things. Alison, I’ve never had a relationship like this with anybody before. I’ve never wanted one. If you’d asked me a few months ago what my worst nightmare was, it probably would have been this. But now... I can’t imagine things without you. I don’t want to.”

  It was the longing that scared her the most. Coupled with that breathless moment from about a minute ago when she had thought he was going to end it, with the intense, crushing impact of that pain, it was all a little unbearable.

  And here in this space, this sanctuary she had created herself, that she had never shared with another human being like this... It was crushing. Invasive.

  This was her life. This place that she had built for herself, this reclamation of herself. And he was here, he was messing with it. He was changing things. They had rules, and he wasn’t following them. She didn’t want this. She didn’t.

  Liar.

  Yes, she did want this. And that was the real problem.

  That she couldn’t actually be with this man, sleep with this man without wanting more. But she wasn’t actually strong enough to stand on her own like she had allowed herself to believe that she was.
She wasn’t supposed to need this. She wasn’t supposed to need somebody. Not again.

  This place, this life, this woman, were supposed to be stronger than that.

  But she wasn’t.

  She was ready to throw herself down onto her knees and beg him to stay with her forever. Beg for it to be true. She had spent so much of her life wanting somebody to love her. The first person who had said it to her she had bound herself to for life. Had bound herself to hideous, awful abuses just for those words.

  Cain just said them. Like it was that real and that easy. He didn’t even make her earn them. And that was the headiest, most tempting part. The part that made it seem new and different and safe.

  Right now, she realized that if she wasn’t careful she would do it all over again.

  No, Cain would never hurt her. It wasn’t about him. It was about her. About the concessions she would make, the ways in which she would contort herself, the ways she would shrink herself in order to be the kind of woman she thought might be able to keep him. The kind of woman she thought might be able to earn his love.

  She would become that thing again. That creature. Colorless. Sapped of life.

  No. That was love. She knew it. She couldn’t take a chance on it again.

  “We talked about this,” she said, feeling disembodied from the words that were coming out of her mouth. “That it was going to just be sex.”

  “I know,” he said, his tone maddeningly calm. How could he be calm? Not content to unravel her heart, he was now working on the rest of her. She was falling apart right where she stood.

  “Then what are you doing?”

  “I’m not doing anything. I didn’t plan for this. Trust me, I didn’t want it either. But it happened. I fell in love with you, Alison.”

  She shook her head. “No. You can’t have fallen in love with me. You can’t.” Her parents had spent their entire life staunchly not loving her, and Jared certainly hadn’t fallen in love with her, his wife that he had spoken vows to. It was inconceivable that a man could fall in love with her accidentally after so many years of people who should have loved her never quite forming that attachment. It didn’t make sense.