Page 57 of Cowboy in Colorado

I nod. “Yeah. It makes no sense.” I can’t breathe as I force words out of my mouth that have been percolating in my soul for months. “I mean, how does it work? What caused it? Was it the near-death experiences? Was it riding through the storm? We barely spoke to each other, and when we did most of it wasn’t even all that cordial. Was it the sex? Amazing, yes, I admit it. Just from a purely physical standpoint, that was the best sex I’ve ever had, and it was one quick fuck. I’ve had foreplay last longer than the whole experience, but something about it was just…I don’t even know.” I laugh again, another hysterical cackle. “What was it? Why are you so fucking stuck in my head? Why can’t I forget you? I can’t even masturbate, Will! I’m going crazy, absolutely nuts. Since that night with you I haven’t been able to find any kind of release. I couldn’t even begin to think about picking up a guy for some random dick, because it’s just—I just flat out know it won’t happen, I wouldn’t be able to get anywhere with anyone.” My voice drops below a whisper. “Because he wouldn’t be you, and there’s something about you that’s just…stuck inside me, head and heart and body, that I can’t dislodge.”

“I have no explanations, Brooklyn,” Will says. “I just know I’m tired of fighting it.”

“Me too.” I turn my eyes up to his. “So what do we do?”

He stares down at me, and his big deep wild blue eyes are as filled with conflict as I feel. “This,” he murmurs.

His huge rough hands cup my cheeks, and he kisses me.

14

The kiss tears me apart.

It’s not a rough, demanding kiss. It’s not a sexual kiss, it’s not fervor ridden.

It’s soft and sweet and slow and sensual, beginning with a touch of his lips on mine, damp and warm and feathering against my mouth with skittering fragility. It builds gradually, as I get over the surprise of it, and slowly accept that he is in fact kissing me, and that I do in fact like the way his mouth feels, the way his lips taste. His tongue slithers into my mouth, and I have to accept that this, too, it is good and right and exactly what I need. Because, as the kiss builds, I find I do need it. It’s precisely what I’ve been craving this whole time—before the sex, even. A kiss, just like this.

My whole life, I’ve been craving this very kiss.

His body is around me, over me, surrounding me. His hands cup my cheeks and make me know that I am held, that I am treasured. That I am his. Ludicrous, I know. But there it is—a truth I fear, a truth whose veracity I cannot deny. He takes ownership of me with the kiss. When I open my mouth to his, it’s a surrender. I melt against him. I sink against his body and surrender to the delicacy of my soul, and accept the fact that under my ice and armor I’m made of porcelain. I could have lived my entire life without this kiss, without this man—I am strong, and I would have been okay. I do not NEED him. But…

I need him.

I don’t know how to explain how you need someone without needing them—that I’m complete on my own, but incomplete without him.

I don’t know how to explain that it happened at first sight, overnight—instantly.

That it took months of loneliness and frustration and waking up aching with need and burning with a secret—that I missed him, that I wanted him, that I craved him.

How to put it all into a kiss? I couldn’t have done it, but Will found a way.

All that I can’t explain, he explains without using a single word, with his lips on mine, with his hands on my cheeks, with his breath tangling in mine, with his body pressed against me.

When neither of us could breathe any longer, could last another second without combusting, without pausing for breath, Will rips his mouth from mine and stares panting into my eyes.

The fire in his wild blue gaze is the spark that ignites the conflagration. The match in a room full of dynamite.

I snarl, a wordless noise somewhere between a scream and a moan—a sound of pure sexuality. I feel something snap inside me, something integral to my emotional objectivity shatters.

Will’s eyes widen, and his hands slide down from my jaw, his thumbs coursing over my throat, the pad of one thumb pausing on my frantic pulse, and then down, down, to the tender flesh at the base of my throat, and then he’s clutching my shoulders and pulling me against him, and now this kiss, this meeting our mouths—this one is purely sexual.

The first kiss was him telling me how he felt in a way he never could in words, and me finally accepting in myself that I feel the same, and that it will take us a both a very, very long time to figure out…

But, in the meantime, something far more urgent crackles and sparks between us—

The pent-up, denied, repressed need between us, the violence of our need for each other can be ignored no longer.

I slam my mouth slantwise across his and inhale his scent, suck his tongue in my mouth, and moan at the frenzy of his desperation in return. His fingers claw into the fabric of my blouse, and mine tangle in the cotton of his shirt. He kisses me, and I fight to take over, to prove thatI’mkissinghim. The battle which ensues is one of teeth on lips and tongue against tongue, breath for breath. I care for nothing but the ravenous desperation to feel his skin, and so my fingers, knotted in his white shirt, do the work of my need without being told: I rip his shirt open. Bared, his skin is hot under my hands and his muscles shift like those of a prowling predator. I paw at him, seeking more and more, palms roaming his shoulders and back, abs and waist, reaching his belt. While he’s fumbling at my blouse, seeking the buttons, I yank the giant silver buckle open and whip the belt off with a loudthwack, tossing it aside. I find the zipper of his jeans, the button of his fly, then yank his jeans open, and freed of the imprisoning denim, his manhood springs upright. I break the kiss and stare down at it, laughing under my breath at the beautiful sight of the massive thing. Straight and thick, pink and lovely with vibrant pulsing purple veins, bulbous head bulging, sac heavy and tight against him, it strains toward me, begging me to touch.

To hold, to stroke, to pet—

To kiss.

To devour as thoroughly as I have his mouth.

He’s still fumbling with obvious irritation at the buttons on my blouse, and with a growl, he does as I did—rips it open, sending buttons flying. I say nothing of the fact that it was a custom blouse worth over a thousand dollars, because I simply don’t care. Instead, I arch my shoulders forward and let my arms dangle so the ripped-open garment slides off and flutters to the floor at our feet. He makes much shorter work of my bra, and this he has no need to ruin—he simply yanks it upwards, ignoring the clasps, and just tears it up and off with abrupt force, leaving my breasts jouncing painfully.

It’s going to be a battle for supremacy, I think, this encounter. He won the last one, and I’m not giving up so easily, this time. I have desires that go beyond letting him have his filthy, beautiful way with me. I have no clue how this is going to help our situation, and I don’t care. So what if he thinks he’s in love with me? So what if I’m in love with him? The denial preventing me from admitting to myself that I am in love with him broke when we kissed the second time, and now I can’t ignore the truth of it. I don’t know how to love a man; I don’t have time in my life for love, for a man, for monogamy or a relationship or any of that bullshit. Never needed it, never wanted it, yet here it is live and in the flesh. Will is putting his mouth to my nipple, licking and flicking and swirling his tongue, and I gasp at the wet warmth on the sensitive, erect nub of nerves.