Page 31 of Untaming the Cowboy
He gathered her in, lifted her without effort, set her on the tack bench just inside Cookie’s door, then thought better of the open stall and shifted them three steps to the empty grooming bay across the aisle. The hose hung coiled there; clean pads stacked on a shelf; the rubber mat took weight without complaint. He backed her against the post, his hat brim tapping wood, and kissed her again until her hands fisted in his shirt.
“Tell me to stop,” he said, forehead to hers.
She shook her head once. “Tell me to.”
That pulled a sound from his chest he hadn’t heard in years. He kissed the corner of her mouth, her jaw, the soft place beneath her ear; his hands found skin and learned it—ribs, waist, the curve where hip met thigh. She made a small noise when he cupped her, and he swallowed it like water.
Buttons gave. Denim rasped. The lamplight turned her to velvet and heat. He moved slow because he wanted to remember, because nothing in him wanted to take this like a man starving even if that was the truth. She met him with a patience that undid him worse than urgency would have, guiding, answering, letting him relearn gentleness he thought the desert had burned out of him.
“Look at me,” she whispered when his mouth lowered to her shoulder.
He did. What he found there—open, unafraid—stopped time.
“Good,” she said, breath catching as he pressed inside. “Stay with me.”
He did that too.
The rest unspooled in a hush the barn held for them—straw answering their shift of weight, leather creaking when his hand found the saddle rack for balance, Cookie’s slow chew from the other side of the aisle as if the mare had decided the universe finally made sense. He moved in a rhythm that belonged to this place—pasture wind, fence wire’s faint ring, the measured give of an animal’s breath. Her legs came around his hips and tightened; his name broke on her lips in a way that rewired every memory of it.
“Dahlia—” It was all he had for a second. Then sense returned enough to search her face, to keep pace with what she needed, to match her in a climb that felt less like falling and more like arrival.
When it took them both, the world went quiet. Not empty—full in a way that didn’t jolt him back to gunsmoke. He rested his brow to hers and let the silence hold.
They stayed there, catching breath, the two of them bracketed by cedar posts and a night that finally loosened its grip. He eased back and smoothed a curl from her cheek. The flannel hung off one shoulder now; his shirt sat half-open, dog tags cool against skin that still hummed.
Her smile came lazy, satisfied. “So much for not stoppin’.”
He huffed a laugh, still winded. “Didn’t say I regretted a damn thing.”
She stole a quick kiss and pointed her chin at Blaze’s stall. “Your boy’s jealous.”
Blaze had his head over the door, ears pricked, the showman. Luc reached blindly for a blanket, found one, and tucked it around her thighs before he turned and clucked the stallion back. “Mind your business,” he told him, the rasp in his voice giving him away.
Dahlia slid off the bench, toes finding her boots. She righted what needed righting and let him do the rest, his hands gentler now that the edge had been burned off. When he finished the last button, she caught his wrist and held it a second.
“This still a bad idea?” she asked.
He thought of the ceiling that wouldn’t let him sleep, the mug gone cold, the way his name had sounded in her mouth when the storm cellar went dark. He thought of Cookie settling under her hand where no one else could coax her quiet.
“No,” he said. “It’s the first thing that’s made sense in a long time.”
They didn’t rush the walk to the door. He killed the lamp; the barn went to silver. Outside, a thin slice of moon lifted over theeast pasture. Coyotes yipped somewhere far off and quit when Wynn barked from the house.
On the threshold, he caught her hand. The question that had tailed him for weeks climbed his throat, unasked. He said the truth he could carry instead.
“You got me sleepin’ through alarms and dancin’ in public. I don’t know what to do with that.”
Her lips curved, eyes lifting to his. “Then stop fightin’ it.”
He hesitated. “Where’re you headed?”
“Back to that guest room you swore was mine.”
“Not tonight.”
The words came rough, final. He didn’t give her space to argue. His hand stayed around hers, steady but sure, leading her across the yard toward the house. The screen door gave its familiar sigh, the kind of sound that usually welcomed only ghosts and silence. Tonight, it held something warmer.
Inside, he paused in the hall where the two doors split. Guest room left. His room right. He turned right.
