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“Howdy yourself.”

She walked over to him, and stretched up on her toes, kissing him, deep and hard. He froze, stopped what he was doing and wrapped his arm around her waist as she kissed him. He returned the kiss, tenfold. Parting her lips and sliding his tongue against hers. She gasped. She could feel him getting hard against her, and she put her hand between them, rubbing her palm over his lengthening arousal.

“I got invited to girls’ night,” she said, looking up at him. “I won’t be home for a few hours. I hope this will save for me.”

“You are a little brat,” he said.

And yet, there was some sort of pleased light in his eyes, and it made her feel accomplished. And happy.

“Maybe I’ll make you something sweet.”

“The only sweet thing I need is your ass,” he said.

Lightning shot down her spine. “Sheriff,” she said. “That’s dirty.”

“Look what you’re doing to me,” he said.

She knew that he was just playing along. But it made her feel... a little bit guilty almost. Because he was so good. Or he tried to be. And here she was, undoing him.

But he was undoing her all the same. She was the one who had never even had sex with somebody until him.

He was the one who should feel guilty.

She had a feeling he already did. It was kind of his whole thing.

“Arizona is coming to pick me up.”

“Well. Have fun,” he said.

“You too,” she said, looking meaningfully at the bulge in the front of his jeans.

“Rat,” he said again.

She wiggled her butt on her way out the door. And a few minutes later, Arizona came driving through the work space. “Are you ready?” she asked.

Arizona was wearing her work clothes too, so Bix didn’t feel bad about the fact that she wasn’t dressed up for girls’ night. She wasn’t entirely sure of the protocol of that sort of thing. It was funny, how she had said yes to this. Just jumped right in. When before it had been terrifying to her. Talking to these women. Because she didn’t really know how to do the friendship thing. And it had felt so high stakes. She really wanted them to like her.

“Everything going good with the beer?” Arizona asked.

“Yeah,” said Bix happily as she got into the truck and buckled her seat belt.

“Everything going good with my brother?”

She turned to Arizona, and she knew her eyes were owlishly wide. “Which one?”

“The one you have a hideous crush on?”

Arizona was giving her far too deep of a look.

And Bix was smart enough to know when you couldn’t bullshit a person. “Just fine,” she said.

She tried to sound serene. There was no point denying it, though. She did have a crush on Daughtry. More than a crush.

That made her chest feel sore.

They started to pull away from King’s Crest and headed to Sullivan’s Point.

“He’s a good man,” said Arizona.