Page 5 of His Cowboy Heart

I’d finally found the cowboy I’d been looking for… an actual real live cowboy who kissed me in a way that no man, real or imagined, ever had. Nowhere in my dreams, though, had I been left wanting more as our mouths had parted only to realize my dream man had wanted less.

Lessdick,to be specific. A lot less dick and a lot more feminine amenities.

While he’d stolen my very soul with a touch of his finger over my cheek and a kiss thatI knew no other man would ever be able to stand up to,he’dbeen kissing the damsel in distress, clearly having no clue what was nestled between the thighs of his fair maiden.

Even now he was probably scrubbing his mouth and lips with mouthwash while I’d taken carenotto wipe mine with my wrap as I’d cleaned my face.

I ran my tongue over my upper lip. It was faint, but I could still taste him. I wished there was some way I could bottle up that taste, along with the sensation of the kiss that I’d been graced with.

“It’s better this way,” I murmured as I righted myself in the driver’s seat and pulled the door shut.

Itwasbetter this way. I could store that kiss away in my memory, minus the shitshow that had followed of course, and it would always be there. It would be the last kiss I felt before I fell asleep and it would be the first one to greet me in the morning. It would be there whenever I needed it, and the best part…the best partwas that since I never had to see those gorgeous lips and their even hotter owner again, I could come up with any ending I chose.

I turned the car on and flipped down the visor so I could check my appearance in the mirror. I should have been focused on the nasty black and blue mark forming beneath my skin, but all I could see were my full lips with the tiny spots of red along my lower jaw where my cowboy’s beard had scratched my skin.

Mycowboy.

I put the visor back up and as I pulled onto the road, I could feel a smile forming. I’d finally gotten what I’d been bugging Brooks for since he’d left for Wyoming.

A hot cowboy of my own.

Okay, so the “my own” part wasn’t quite what I’d intended, but for that handful of seconds, Hot Cowboyhadbeenallmine.

What did it matter if the man had a completely different perspective of what had happened in that alley? It wasn’t like he’d be around to have a say in it.

With that, I ran my tongue over my lips once more, then tried to lift my spirits by thinking about all the cowboy eye candy I’d get to drool over when I reached Black Hills Ranch. No matter how hard I tried, though, a heaviness in my chest made it feel as though I’d lost more of what little of my spirits remained. By the time I reached the foot of the mountain, I’d made what would hopefully be the first good decision I’d made in a really long time.

No more cowboys. It didn’t matter how gorgeous they were or how their hairy, muscled chests glistened in the sun. I didn’t care if they walked around the ranch in assless chaps. I didn’t even care if a dark-haired stranger with a voice as smooth as cognac, eyes the color of whiskey, and forbidden lips that God and the devil himself had to both have had a hand in creating strode right up to me, dropped to his knees, and reached for my zipper. It wasn’t going to happen.

I found myself letting out a soft chuckle. I wasn’t a particularly religious guy, but just in case there really was a man upstairs, I wasn’t going to press my luck. I’d literally taken the hand of the devil so I could have a taste of perfectioninEden.

In Eden.

Damn, you couldn’t make this shit up. Hopefully God had a sense of humor about my metaphorical bite of the forbidden apple that had included a lot more tongue and no taste of any apple. If the Bible thumpers were right and I was going to hell anyway, at least I’d gotten my moment of heaven. I didn’t think it mattered that my heaven had taken place with a stranger in an alley, but I didn’t really care either way.

I spent several long minutes reliving that kiss before realizing that the worst part was probably also the best part.

I didn’t know the guy’s name and never would. His face and touch were already etched into my brain, but I’d never have to worry about yelling his name while some other guy was fucking me. A silver lining, I supposed.

A shiny, untarnished piece of silver surrounded by nothing but rust.

ChapterThree

FLYNN

“You’ve gotto be fucking kidding me,” I said in disbelief as my horse reached the final bend in the steep dirt road that signaled what I’d already known for a while—that I’d reached my destination.

Black Hills Ranch.

My temporary new home until the urge to move on hit me.

Normally, I would have taken in the sight of the working ranch and automatically focused on the ranch hands, the equipment, the different buildings, but mostly the horses. They were part of the reason I was here, after all. A person could tell a lot about a ranch by the way it cared for one of its most important assets… the horses. The animals were invaluable in mountain terrain. They could access places that no ATV or 4x4 ever could.

So yeah, I should have been focused on the horses, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the Range Rover sitting in front of a dark brown, rustic two-story house that had probably seen better days. The mere design of the house had me suspecting that it was at least a hundred years old, and with all the fixing and patching it had undergone over the years, the thing would be there for another century.

Even if I hadn’t recognized the Range Rover immediately, I would have noticed it anyway because I’d seen the expensive SUV in a parking spot near the convenience store before I’d found the young man and his tormentors. It hadn’t exactly fit into a street lined with rugged pickup trucks covered in mud and sporting heavily treaded tires. And since Eden wasn’t near any main highway or interstate, there probably weren’t a lot of tourists itching to explore the run-down town.

Although I hadn’t seen the young man I’d encountered in the alley few days earlier drive off, between the kind of clothing he’d been wearing and the fact that the Range Rover had been gone when I’d left the alley, I’d already known the vehicle had to be his. I just hadn’t expected to ever see it or him again.

---