Page 18 of A Summer to Claim Her Cowboy

“Or,” she said, taking a step toward him. “Hear me out. We fix this for each other. You don’t have to have the conversation. If you’re with me, you don’t ever have to say those words again. Because you and I...will have sex, and then it won’t have been eight years since you’ve been with a woman. You’ll have been with me. And... And I’ll never have to tell a man that I’ve never had an orgasm before. During sex. I’ve had orgasms by myself.”

His mouth had gotten even grimmer, and perversely, it made her want to kiss it even more. “Walker,” she said. “Don’t think of it as doing something for me. Don’t think of it as trying to fix something for me. How long has it been since you’ve done something for yourself?”

He made a low sound in his chest.

“You’re the best man that I know. The best father. You’ve given up everything for those boys.”

“I never gave up a thing for them.”

“You gave them all of yourself. The best of yourself. And we’re kind of both in the same boat, buddy. They don’t need either of us as much as they used to. I guess that means we don’t really need each other. So maybe it’s just time. To move on, and maybe this is going to help us do it.”

She set the cinnamon rolls down.

And she finally did it. She finally took a step forward and did what she had always dreamed of doing. She reached out and gripped his face, bracketing it between her hands, got up on her toes and kissed that grim, beautiful mouth that had haunted her dreams for years.

CHAPTER SEVEN

WALKERFELTLIKEhe had been gut punched. Or something more. Something deeper.

Orworse, something softer.

Because Frankie was kissing him. Sweet and slow, tentative. She’d made a big deal out of having experience, but she didn’t exactly kiss like a seductress.

Not that he needed her to.

The press of that soft mouth against his, that first kiss in eight long years, was enough to reduce him to a pile of ash right where he stood. And when she darted her tongue out to lick the seam of his lips, he was pretty damn sure he was near enough to an explosion. All that would be left behind would be a crater in the earth. The only evidence that Frankie Davis had ever kissed him.

In spite of himself, he cupped the back of her head, held her to him and angled his position so that he could take the kiss deep. So that he could allow her entry into his mouth. So that he could give her everything she was offering, and then some.

There were alarm bells going off in the back of his head. Warning him to stop. Demanding that he stop. He didn’t listen. Because he just didn’t want to.

What he wanted was to be kissed.

It had been so long. He knew he missed sex. And he knew he missed Anna. There were long, lonely nights where that just ached. Because he was supposed to have a partner. Someone by his side raising his kids.

It wasn’t the same kind of sharp grief that it used to be, but there was a sense of wrongness to that empty bed sometimes.

They were two separate things, and he didn’t often associate one with the other. One was missing Anna. The other was missing a woman’s touch. Right now, he realized he had missed intimacy. Holding hands. Being kissed. Having somebody rest their body against his.

He’d been thinking about satisfaction. About the feeling of thrusting inside of a tight hot body.

But it was more. He hadn’t even let himself fully realize that. Probably because it was just too damned painful. Because it was the kind of thing that would make a man lose his mind if he wasn’t careful.

He was losing it now. Who was he kidding? This washisFrankie.

The sweet girl that had shown up to his house the day after Anna had died and just asked what she could do. And he’d been in too reduced a state to tell her to leave. He had been dependent on her when she was a teenager. He had been such a wreck. He couldn’t even remember those first few weeks after Anna. He hadn’t been able to be there for his boys, not really. He’d been like a robot. If Frankie hadn’t been there, everything would’ve fallen apart.

She meant more to him that he could readily say. But in some ways, Frankie was like the air around him. Something he needed, but something he didn’t think all that much about. Except right now, she was running hot, and he couldn’t ignore her. Not at all. Couldn’t ignore this.

He said he didn’t need her. What an idiot. What a damned idiot.

She moaned, deep and long in the back of her throat, arching against him. And he answered that with his own groan of pleasure. Her breasts were tempting, so gorgeous pressed against his chest he wanted to tear her shirt off of her so that he could see them. Those objects that had tormented him these last couple of years.

And this was him and Frankie in a nutshell. Basic. But complicated all the same. Because when she was in his arms like this, she was a woman. She was also Frankie. And he was a man, he wanted her naked, he wanted to taste her breasts. Wanted to suck her nipples. Wanted to feel how wet she was between her legs. But he was Walker. And he also wanted to take care of her, to pay her back for all the things she had done for him. Wanted to hang on to her, and never do anything to hurt her.

He pulled away from her, breathing hard. “Damn, Frankie,” he said.

“Please,” she said.

---