Page 79 of Rancher's Return

“Don’t,” he said.

“Tell me,” she said. “I was brave enough to say all this—you be brave enough to tell me what you want.”

“I want what I always wanted. I want you naked and underneath me. I want to corrupt you. That is what I want. It is what I’ve wanted since I first laid eyes on you. Because that was the whole point of it, wasn’t it? The bad boy and the good girl? What is the fucking point if the bad boy doesn’t take your virginity, Lily? Huh? What kind of fun fantasy was that?”

“Nothing about it was fun,” she said.

“Damn straight,” he said.

This felt dangerous. They were here, by themselves. There was no one around to stop them. No one around to make them think better of this. No one around to make them want to be better versions of themselves. No. There was only this.

Her heart was thundering hard at the base of her throat. She took a step toward him. “I guess I got all the heartbreak and none of the benefits.”

“You broke your own heart, remember? I didn’t do a damn thing.”

She shook her head. “If it makes you feel better, you’ve broken my heart at least a dozen times since then. Every time I ever looked at you and couldn’t... Couldn’t be honest with you. Couldn’t be close to you. It’s never felt right. Having to live with you, treat you like a member of the family? What a joke. We’re the reason they’re together. We’re the reason this family exists, and we’re the only two that can never fully...feel like it’s a family.”

“What do you want, Lily?”

“Maybe I want what I lost? Maybe I want the opportunity that was taken from me.”

“I’m going to need you to say it.”

“Kiss me.”

“We’re not seventeen anymore. If you only want to kiss, you need to say that up front.”

She shook her head. “I don’t only want to kiss.”

“Praise God,” he said.

Then he closed the distance between them, and his mouth touched hers.

Chapter Four

It was a bad fucking idea. It was the dumbest thing he had done in his life, and he had done a lot of dumb things. It was incendiary. It was impossible. It was perfect.

It was inevitable.

They had been lying to each other all this time. That was definitive.

But everything had always been leading to this moment. All it took was the removal of their supervisors. It didn’t take a hell of a lot to get back to that intense magical alchemy that had always existed between them. When their lips touched, it turned to gold. And there wasn’t anything else like it.

God in heaven.

He had told himself that maybe he had built it all up in his mind. That it was an exaggeration. That for some reason, he had managed to build up a concept of attraction in his head that didn’t exist.

Not in the real world. Except it did. Because right as soon as their lips touched, it was like being back home. It was like being back in the fire. In the center of the storm.

They had always somehow simultaneously been the most uncomfortable, comfortable trauma he had ever experienced.

They had never made much sense.

But it was real.

He couldn’t deny that now as he moved his tongue against the seam of her lips and she parted them, granting him entry. As he tasted her, deep and long and perfect, soft and sweet as he remembered.

Yeah. There was no denying this.

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