Page 43 of Bucked By Love

It catches me off guard. My chest goes tight. “You promise?”

“I promise.” Those brown eyes connect with mine, and he says with a sincere intensity: “It’s you. Only you.”

That does it.

I explode. I cry out as I cling to him with tight, aching pulses. Ransom moans into my shoulder and I feel him—hot and wet inside of me.

We tremble together, jerking, out of sync, messy, lost in each other. Lost in pleasure and want and this incompressible desire to bind the two and form a new, singular being.

As I come down, I hear myself laughing. I can taste the nighttime in the air.

“I ruined your back,” I murmur. Even holding him, I can feel him—the heat of his ripped skin, the warmth.

“I ruined your hymen.” He grunts. “We’re even.”

His eyes meet mine. I feel like I’m seeing them for the first time.

Beautiful, Ransom eyes.

The eyes of the man I love.

Love.

I love him. It’s there, right there, so clear, so sudden.

I love him so much, it fills my entire body.

But when I open my mouth to tell him, the only words that come out are: “I hate you.”

And Ransom…

He smiles.

Because he knows. He knows me.

He presses his palm against mine. I thread my fingers through his. Connecting.

One body. One soul. One heart.

He kisses me, with nothing but black sky and bright stars behind him, and suddenly I understand what he was talking about before?—

I can taste the wild in his kiss.

33

RANSOM

Eventually, Claire and I untangle from each other. We snack on the food I brought for us. She laughs at my stupid jokes. She looks gorgeous with the moonlight on her bare skin. It bounces off her hair, turning her blonde a near ivory white.

I swell up again just from looking at her. She takes my Stetson, puts it on her head, and straddles me. I love the way she wears my hat. I love the way she rides me in low, swooping waves. I love everything about this powerful woman, wrapped in night sky and stars like some wood-bound spirit who means to drain my soul from me.

I give it to her. Every drop of it.

I want to spend all night with her. I want to find new ways to wrap her body around mine. I want to steal every moan from her lungs. I want to talk and laugh and draw little figure-eights into her belly and take small breaks and start up all over again, this hungry need to be close to each other never waning. But this princess has to get home before her chariot turns into a pumpkin.

We get dressed and I drive her back home. When I roll up to her front gate, we’ve both gone quiet. I think maybe she’s feeling just as sore as I am about parting ways, so I pull her in and steal a kiss. “Hey. See you in a few hours.”

That earns me a grin. “You’re not going to get any sleep.”

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