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Colton would be there to stop each and every one of them.

That included himself. He would never lay a hand on her again.

* * * * *

The strains of country music blasted from Meadow’s alarm clock. The lyrics edged into her dream until her mind flipped awake.

Something about drowning your sorrows in a bottle.

How appropriate.

Without even opening her eyes, she snaked an arm out from under the covers and switched off the alarm.

While she hadn’t set out to drown her sorrows, she had drunk too much last night for other reasons. After all the alcohol she sucked down, her head would be spinning and her eyes sensitive to light. Regret came crashing in.

She cracked an eye. To her surprise, the sunlight beaming through her window didn’t stab her like a knife to the brain like it normally did when she made this mistake.

Slowly, she pushed herself into a sitting position, feeling out her body to see just how hungover she was.

Not bad. She could handle this. Apparently some higher power thought she’d been punished enough for what she did and she didn’t need to suffer on top of it.

She raked her fingers through her tangled hair. Everything about the previous night down at Badlands came flooding back to her.

Her friend Desiree cut out early, saying she had work in the morning. She told Meadow to text her when she got home, and after all that happened, she forgot.

She grabbed her phone off the nightstand and pulled up the messages. Sure enough, her friend had left her several texts asking if she was all right.

Thanks to Colton, she hadn’t gone home with that strange biker.

Meadow quickly thumbed a message to her friend, along with an apology for worrying her.

After Desiree responded, Meadow’s mind was eased that all was right between them.

Where she stood with a certain other person still raised a lot of questions.

Meadow set aside her phone and considered her actions of the previous night.

She’d messed up big time.

But had she? The ride home with Colton was also the hottest experience of her life. At the memory of his hand on her ass, her core pulsed. Not only had his spanking her been a huge turn-on, but having her flesh exposed to him ramped her up higher than any other encounter she’d ever experienced in her life.

Not to mention just how hard he’d been.

Whether that was all for her or because of some power trip from the spanking, she didn’t know.

She was going to find out, though.

After a quick shower, she took care to choose her favorite jeans that fit her like a second skin. She donned a red plaid shirt and knotted it at the waist so just a hint of midriff peeked out.

She wanted to catch the attention of the man who wouldn’t seem to leave her thoughts since the minute she picked him up at the airport…but she wasn’t going to press her luck with another miniskirt.

In the kitchen, she grabbed a banana and a cup of coffee for breakfast. When she hitched herself up on the counter stool, she winced.

Damn. He really had spanked her. That wasn’t a drunken figment of her imagination—the tenderness she felt back there was physical proof.

She hopped off the stool, but she could still feel every single millimeter of flesh Colton had touched. Her nerves tingled in a reminder of his hands on her.

She polished off the banana, and the caffeine helped wake her up the rest of the way. Now to go find the man whose touch she still felt on her body.