Page 27 of 11 Cowboys

She has a hole inside that needs filling, like I do. A wound that won’t heal but needs salve.

She moans into my mouth, and it’s a sound I want burned into my brain. That sound means I’m doing something right. That I’m wanted. Useful.

Her hands are under my shirt, dragging it up, and I pull it over my head and toss it onto a bale, soaking in the hunger of her expression like a drug.

I kiss her harder as her nails rake lightly down my chest, and I groan into her neck, that pulse of pleasure mixing with something older, heavier. Something I’ve spent a lifetime pushing down.

Because this is what I know. Skin. Noise. Heat. Flesh on flesh. This is where I shine. I don’t have to explain myself. I’m more than just the kid who didn’t know better or the man who never figured out how to be more than eagerhands and empty promises.

Her mouth moves to my collarbone, so open and warm. I nearly flinch because it feels so good to be accepted this way by an impressive woman like her.

I drop to my knees, ready to worship. My hands slide up her thighs, slow, steady, and she breathes out my name like a secret.

And then she says it.

“You don’t have to.”

The words hit like a slap. I blink up at her, stunned. “What?”

“You don’t have to do that,” she says again, gentler now. “It’s okay.”

I stare at her, and everything inside me freezes. The words hit wrong, cutting sideways across my focus, and for a second, I stare up at her, confused. But then the shame hits. That old, familiar hollowness clawing up from the base of my spine.

You don’t have to.

God, if she knew how many times I’ve heard those words in reverse. How many times I saidI’m finewhen I wasn’t? How many times I let someone use me for a moment and smiled through it like I liked it? How many times I let myself believe that this—this physical skill, this performance—is the only part of me anyone wants or values?

I laugh, once, low, sharp, and unamused.

“Grace, darlin’,” I say, running a hand through my hair. “I’m gonna say this one time and one time only. Never sleep with a man who isn’t prepared to get on his knees for you. Ever again.”

Because what kind of man doesn’t? What kind of man doesn’t understand that this is the point? This is how you make a woman feel wanted and desired. This is how you breathe her hunger into your chest and taste her pleasure from the inside.

This is the only part I’ve ever been sure of.

She trembles when I show her what she deserves every time, because even though I can’t offer her stability, or trust, or anything that lasts, I can give her this.

And I do.

She tastes like rain and heat andwoman, and I lose myself in it, pinning her down when her body undulates, soaking in her whimpers like a drug.

I push her shirt up over her head, and she lets me, arms raised in surrender, her breath catching when I trail my hands down the bare skin of her waist. She’s flushed and warm and so damn responsive. A woman who doesn’t hold back when she wants something.

And right now, she wants me.

She sinks her fingers into my hair again as I kiss down her throat, slow and deliberate, pausing at every place that makes her sigh. I want to map her. I want to leave fingerprints on every part of her that aches. Maybe then she’ll remember this as more than a moment.

Maybe I will, too.

I take her apart, slowly, reverently, like a puzzle I already know how to solve. Her thighs tremble. Her hands grab at anything they can reach: my hair, the blanket, the curve of my shoulder. She cries out my name like it means something, likeImean something.

And for a little while, I believe it.

Until I press my hand over her heart and realize that some smoke and mirrors shit is going on here.

“Grace,” I whisper, kissing her hip and licking her salty skin. “I know you haven’t come yet.”

“I did,” she lies.