Page 41 of Wanted by the Lawman

She drew her feet off his lap, although she wished she hadn’t. “Zander—”

He held up a hand. “Please, before you give me some run-of-the-mill explanation, you don’t have to worry. I get that you cared for Rory and it’s never easy coming out of a relationship, no matter how shitty. Hell, not only is he a jerk but he’s a missing jerk.”

“I wasn’t going to explain anything. I was only going to say that your ex was an idiot too. I can’t imagine a woman having a good man like you and letting him go.”

“Maybe she did have her reasons? This work I do can drain a person.” The words fell off thin lips.

“But it’s a part of you. It’s what you love. A woman who loved you would understand that.”

“Until she got tired of being alone. I loved her, but never enough. Not like the love I’ve witnessed between my mom and dad.”

“It’s easy to make a mistake.”

He swiped his palms together. “You could be onto something, but do we really want to talk about the past? I don’t think so.”

“Really.”

“No. Really. What about us?”

“What?”

“That is what you’re getting at, right? Where we go from here.”

She nodded, wanting to ignore the excitement rolling through her limbs. “I guess so.”

“That’s a deep question.” He lifted a shoulder as if blowing off her words.

“Yes, but…” she smoothed her clammy palms down the thighs of her jeans.

“But what, sweetheart? Spit it out. You wanted to have this conversation so here we are, we can’t hold back now.”

“I guess a part of me could be worried I don’t know my own feelings. I don’t trust myself.” It was the first time she admitted it to anyone, even to herself.

He stared at her. His lashes were long. He had nice, prominent cheekbones that any woman would fight for, and his lips were naturally pink, and yet he was the most masculine, virile man she’d ever met. He wasn’t wearing a hat, that didn’t happen often, and his thick, black, wavy hair called for fingers to be tangled in the mass. She’d easily volunteer for the job.

“Say something,” she squeaked.

“What I’m thinking is…life could have been different for us if we’d made different choices.”

“You wouldn’t have met Sam and learned the lesson of love and loss.” The words tumbled out on their own.

He chuckled. “And saved myself a shitload of arguing, suffering, and regret? Yeah, I wouldn’t want to have missed that for the world.” He rubbed his jaw. “I get it though. We all have to get through a storm to see the rainbow.”

“There must have been some good times or you wouldn’t have been with her for as long as you were.”

He leaned his back against the couch, stretching his legs. Good thing he’d put his shirt back on because she wasn’t certain she could have kept her hands off his chest. “At first, yeah, we were good together. Sex was amazing. Unfortunately, even that lost its luster after the first year. She wanted something different, something that I couldn’t offer.”

“Like what?” That was completely hard for her to process. A man like Zander had a kindness that not all men had. He was a walking ad for sex appeal. To her, he was a ten. Maybe a twenty if the scale was weighted.

“Like…” His jaw twitched. “A man who had lines that he wouldn’t cross.”

She stumbled across his words, confused. “I don’t get what you’re saying.”

He crumbled the wrapper in his hands and tossed it into the bag. “I think she believed sex was dirty.”

“Really?”

“Pretty much. There’s nothing worse than feeling as if strong sexual urges were the demon’s work.”

Why did her nipples harden and strain against her shirt? Maybe because thinking of Zander ripping off her clothes and taking her, without a wig or a toy, made her body hungry. She ate a bite from her sandwich to dispel the sudden thick energy inside her. “Did you ask her why she didn’t want things to get wild?”

“Sure.” His jaw tightened.

“And?’

He shrugged. “She just wasn’t into kink.” His gritty tone undid something amazing inside her. “And Rory was into too much kink. I feel like an ass.”

“The kink wasn’t what bothered me. The feeling that he didn’t find me attractive or needed “new” to get turned on.” She pushed the sandwich away, forgotten in exchange for another hunger that compared to starvation. She ticked her gaze down his scruffy layer of a day’s beard, to the open neckline of his shirt, down along his long legs clad in faded denim. “When it was just me, he was a moped doing twenty and I was the Ferrari clocking in at a hundred-ten. But just as soon as I put on a wig and lace and leather, he was a completely different man. I felt like I didn’t even know him.”

“How about you, Wynn? What are your limitations?”

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