Page 37 of Sexting the Cowboy
I feel the want in the air like heat off a road. It’s in me too, no use pretending otherwise. “Annie,” I say, and her name comes out a shade lower than I mean it to, because my voice knows things my brain is still negotiating. “Thank you for coming.”
“You looked like you were having fun.”
“I was,” I admit. “It’s old hat, but it still fits right some nights.”
She nods, and then she’s closer without my remembering the step. Her eyes flick over my shoulder to my little shower and back to me. A flush rises at her throat, and I realize I’m still dripping. The towel is suddenly both too much and not enough clothing. I can’t decide which is funnier.
“Arm still holding up?” she asks automatically, reflexes doing their thing.
“You patched me good yesterday.”
Her lips tilt. The curl near her cheek escapes a little more, and I want to tuck it back with the back of my knuckles.
“Can I ask you something?” she says, and she’s close enough now that I can see the darker ring around her irises, the small scar near her brow that she probably forgets is there.
“You can ask me anything.”
“How do you come down after that?” She gestures toward the window, where the fairground glow is still a soft halo. “After a ride like that. Do you just…switch off?”
“I wash the dirt off,” I say, chin toward the damp in my hair, “and then I try to put it somewhere quiet. Tonight I figured I’d eat something terrible, sleep hard, and wake up human.”
Her mouth does that not-smile again. “That sounds reasonable.”
“First time you called me that,” I say, and lean an inch toward her on nothing but magnet and bad idea. “I’m not always reasonable.”
“Neither am I.” She comes closer. It’s a dare.
My hand finds her hip the way a man’s hand finds a rail he knows—palming the curve without squeezing, asking rather than taking. She doesn’t flinch. She steps in, slow, like a deer that decided the creek is safe after all, and puts her palm flat on my chest. Her fingers are warm from her pocket. My heart is doing a thing hearts do when they realize they’re not the only drummer in the room.
“If I kiss you,” I say, because I don’t do guessing games, not even in towel negotiations, “you’ll stop me if you want me to stop.”
She looks up into my face for something—permission, apology, proof. Whatever it is, she finds enough. She nods once, small, and that’s the only green light I ever need.
I lower my head and touch my mouth to hers, soft as first rain.
It isn’t fireworks. It’s not supposed to be. Fireworks burn out, and the smoke stings your eyes. This is heat finding heat, the simple rightness of a door that has been painted too many times, finally opening on its proper hinges. Her lips are warm and soft, just like I thought. I taste breath and the ghost of something minty and the clean soap she uses after she’s been touching other people’s hurt all day.
She exhales against my mouth and that sound—barely there, a sweet little surrender of air—slides down my back like a palm. Her body goes loose where we make contact. I angle a little deeper, only enough to ask for more, and her hand finds my shoulder, steadying herself and me both. Her nose brushes mine. I smile into the kiss because her care is turned outward all day. Getting even the thinnest slice of it for myself feels like winning.
Her fingers curl at the towel’s edge like she forgot what she’s holding. I’m not sure she even knew she was touching me there, but the moment she made contact, I memorized her heat. I keep a hand on the safe topography of her waist and another near the small of her back.
We take another breath together, and the second kiss is more certain, more yes. It coaxes rather than conquers, and there’s nothing in it that would make a woman later wonder who she was in that moment. She knows. I know. Her mouth opens a little, and I meet her there, not to claim, just to learn.
A low sound I don’t recognize at first as mine makes my throat hum. She answers it with a small press of her body, and the towel suddenly feels like the worst invention of mankind. It’s rough on skin that likes soft things, but my balls ache all the same.
She pulls back a fraction, enough to look at me. The room is a different size now. I’m hard, and there’s nothing I can do to hide that. The hum of the AC is a lullaby. The world outside remembers its business without us. Inside, it’s two people and a line that has been sketched for days deciding whether it wants to be ink. I don’t know if she’ll cross it.
“Brick,” she says, and my name in that voice is a place I didn’t know I needed to arrive. “I should…” She swallows, eyes searching mine like they might hold a rule book I forgot to hand her. “I should not be here.”
“You came to say congratulations,” I offer, not to argue, just to let her step down if she needs the stairs. “You did. You can go.”
“I don’t want to,” she says, which is the most honest thing in the room, and I feel it like a second pulse.
“So stay.”
She closes her eyes like the words were heavier than she expected and sets her forehead against my sternum the way you do when you need the world to stop moving for three seconds. I hold still. If I had both hands free, I’d put one on the back of her neck and the other on the part of the small of her back that makes most women breathe deeper. I keep my hands where they are and let her hear a heartbeat that has nothing clever to say.
She leans back. The curl by her cheek has committed a full mutiny now. I reach up and tuck it behind her ear with the back of my knuckles because I want to. Her skin there is impossiblysoft. Warm silk. She shivers—a quick, electric little ripple that makes every good instinct in me sit up and wag like a dog that thinks it just heard the truck door.
