Page 49 of His Cowboy Heart

“Rule zero. This is a permanent one. No questioning it. Ever. Rule zero is that you trust me to always protect you and take care of you when you need me. You’ll never wake up alone anywhere again if I have something to say about it. This she bitch isn’t letting anyone or anything take you away from her. This rule goes both ways and it’s for life. So what will it be, handsome?”

Flynn climbed to his feet, setting me on my own in the process, and pocketed his phone. He reached into his other pocket and pulled out the key for the lock on the door. An unexpected rush of fear went through me. Was he sending me packing? Did he not mean what he’d said? Maybe I’d pushed him too?—

That was as far as my overactive brain got because Flynn chose that moment to pull me flush against him. I waited for his lips to come into contact with mine, but when he dipped his head, he lined up our mouths so they were close but not touching.

“Rule zero. Goes both ways,” he reminded me.

I let out a rush of air and nodded. “Both ways.”

“For life.”

“For life,” I agreed with a grin.

Flynn angled his head so he could kiss me the way he wanted.

Fully.

Completely.

I was a bowl of Jell-O by the time he ended the kiss. “Just sealing our deal with a kiss,” he said with a smile before he kissed me softly on the tip of my nose. “Oh, and by the way, remind me to teach you more about wolves because most of what you were saying was?—”

My sharp frown had Flynn shutting his mouth. The way he was staring at me made me wish like hell that we could just stay there in his room.

“Okay, let’s do this,” Flynn said. He kissed me again and then his big hand was squeezing my ass. He promptly released me, shooting me a wink before saying, “Sorry, needed one for the road.”

I smiled innocently as Flynn motioned to the door. The poor man had no idea what he was in for.

God, this was going to be fun.

ChapterFifteen

FLYNN

Turnedout that rules still sucked as much as they had when I’d been growing up. Back then, at least I’d had the guts to break them, but after a few of Jules’s disciplinary actions in the first week since the panic attack from hell, I’d ultimately given up.

Truth be told, as much as I mentally griped about Jules’s Mama Wolf approach to taking care of me, it felt good to know the man I’d lost my heart to had meant every word he’d said. From the moment we’d arrived at the hospital, Jules had seen to it that he was with me throughout every second of the ER staff’s rapid approach to making sure my heart was okay. I hadn’t cared that the nurses and doctors had seen him holding my hand from the time my vitals had been taken to hours later when we’d left the hospital hand in hand.

Admittedly, I’d been embarrassed by my own behavior at first. My entire body had gone on lockdown from the moment Jules had gotten me to walk through the ER’s sliding doors. Jules had needed to do most of the talking for me, he’d had to talk me through changing into the dreaded hospital gown, and worst off, he’d seen my reaction when the technicians had started attaching the leads to different parts of my body so my heart activity would show up on the little monitor that made the godawful beeping sound that had haunted me from the last time I’d been in a hospital bed. My muscles had locked up so tight at that point that my heart rate had started to increase, which meant the beeping had increased.

Jules had practically bitten the technician’s head off when he ordered her to turn off the beeping sound on the machine. He’d then sat down on the edge of the bed and ordered me to lean forward. His surprisingly strong hands had begun massaging my neck and shoulders all while he’d made me close my eyes so he could walk me through every little detail of how the mountains had looked the day we’d gone to see the wolves.

My man’s methods had worked. I’d gotten through hours of testing and monitoring as well as the wait for the on-call cardiologist to reach my personal doctor back in New York so he could learn everything about my medical history. By the time I’d been given the all clear to leave, I’d fallen asleep with Jules’s hands wrapped around mine.

They’d been there when I’d been roused from my rest. Jules had kept his word that no matter what, I’d never wake up in a hospital bed with no one there to greet me.

The first week of following Jules’s mother hen care had been pretty easy, but mostly because so much had taken place on the ranch in that time. Xavier’s name had been cleared of any wrongdoing in the so-called attempted murder of Brooks’s father when they’d been kids. The motion to have his criminal record expunged was working its way through the judicial system.

Additionally, Xavier and Brooks had stopped hiding their relationship, and Curtis had announced that the man he himself had loved for most of his adult life, Del Tipton, Curtis’s one-time foreman before his death, would be known as Del Sterling. Sterling was Curtis’s last name. The pair had secretly been married in Vegas and while they had been forced to continue to hide their marriage afterwards, we’d learned the night we’d been up on the mountain to find Xavier that Curtis had been visiting his husband’s grave on a regular basis for years after his death. It’d been a heartbreaking scene to witness, but it’d changed something in Curtis. He’d started wearing his wedding ring, and he’d had Del’s headstone changed so it included his married name and an epitaph that made it clear what Del had meant to Curtis.

While all the ranch hands had been stunned to learn about Curtis and Del, most had suspected what’d been going on between Xavier and Brooks and many had congratulated the two men. Only a couple of ranch hands had revealed their bigotry by leaving the ranch for good, but as far as Jules and I were concerned, that’d been a good thing.

Jules and I had agreed to keep our own relationship under wraps until we’d made some decisions together that would affect our immediate future.

But first I’d had to get through Jules’s list of rules. Week number two had found me breaking several of the rules repeatedly. I’d tried to sweet-talk my way out of the so-called discipline Jules had warned me about, but all that had earned me were responses that were both heaven and hell combined. Instead of verbally sparring with me if I didn’t follow the strict heart-healthy diet he had found on the internet, Jules had simply refused to keep up with his nightly visits to my room where we spent most of the time just lying in my bed talking until we fell asleep. I’d been determined to hold out so Jules would put an end to the rules, but what I ended up with was a kind of sensual torture I’d never expected.

Every night during that second week, instead of coming to my room, Jules had begun to send me pictures and videos of himself. Only they hadn’t been traditional videos. They’d been designed to send me to the brink but drop me before I had a chance to fall over that cliff of pleasure. The first couple of videos and pictures had been of Jules in his room at night doing what I’d at one time made him promise he’d do for me.

He'd played dress-up.

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