Page 59 of Cowboy in Colorado
“What would I be avoiding?”
“What you really want, deep down, that you’re scared of letting yourself have.” His eyes are honest, brutally honest with their emotional conflict. “Same reason I ran after we had sex that first time. I wanted you again the second we were done, and I wanted to fuck you face to face, no looking away, no avoiding the intensity of it. I wanted to…to stay in that cabin with you forever, or at least until we got tired of fucking.”
“I don’t know if that’s possible, given the way I feel right now,” I whisper.
“Same,” he says. “I think that’s what we’re both scared of. Giving in, all the way, to this thing, and…”
“Never getting out, and never wanting to get out of it, and then losing it, somehow?” I suggest.
“Yeah.” His eyes drop from mine. “That’s why I ran. Rather fuck it up before it was anything instead of letting it happen and fucking it up later, when losing you would destroy me.”
“So…for this to work, we’d just have to trust each other.” I let him go, because as much as I want to feel him and touch him and explore him and taste him and make him growl my name and lose control, this was deeper than sex. “We’d have to believe that no matter what happens, there’s no way to lose each other. Nothing we could do would fuck it up so bad that we lose everything.”
He nods. His eyes are rife, fraught, bared. “I’m not an emotional guy. I’m not good with words, most of the time. I’m selfish. I’m stubborn. I’m blockheaded and I don’t look at the big picture, or consider how my shit affects others. I’m more than a little obsessed with horses, and I’m a workaholic.” He stops, swallows hard. “But goddamn if I’m not the most loyal man you’ll ever meet. Once I’m yours, I’d be yours come hell or high water, Brooklyn, and there wouldn’t be a thing on this planet that could tear me away from your side.”
I choke. “And you say you’re not good with words?”
“What? I’m just telling you the truth.” His brow is furrowed; I doubt he realizes how beautiful and poetic that was.
“That’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard. And I’m not big on romance.” I feel something wet dribble down my cheek. “Why thehellare you so damned good at making me cry?”
He reaches up, brushes my cheek with a thumb. “I’m not trying to,” he whispers softly.
I tilt my head backward and blow out a breath. “Dammit.”
He pinches my chin and tugs my face down so I’m looking at him. “Don’t hide it from me, Brooklyn. This won’t work if we hide, if we let fear win.”
“I don’t know if it’ll work anyway,” I admit. “I don’t know how to be in love.”
“Me either.” He shrugs, shakes his head. “We just have to be real. Give me the truth, good or bad, and don’t hold back.”
“I don’t know how to hold back,” I say. “I’m…um, kind of hotheaded.”
“I’ve noticed,” he says, smirking. “You’re a tiger. No taming you.”
I shake my head. “No. There’s no taming me. The worst thing you could do would be to try.”
“Absolutely the same. I have to have room to be me. Ask my parents or my sister about that.”
Silence, for a moment.
“Where do we go from here?” I ask.
He lets out a breath. “I can’t go another damned second without you. Only reason we’re having this conversation right now is because it’s the one thing in existence that could take precedence over getting inside you as fast as possible.”
“We’re in my office,” I point out.
“I don’t care. I’ll muffle you when you scream.”
“I don’t have condoms,” I say, “and, for the first time that I can remember in my adult life, I’ve lapsed on my birth control.”
“I’ll pull out and come on your belly.” He slides a hand over my belly, tracing lines on the flesh around my navel, painting a picture of where his seed would go.
“That never works.” I swallow hard. I want him, need him, cannot go another second without him any more than he can go another moment without me.
“Then what do you suggest?” He reaches for the zipper of my skirt. “Because going somewhere ain’t happening. I can’t wait that long, and I don’t think either of us are exhibitionists.”
I reach past him and open a desk drawer, and withdraw a small black remote. I press a button and the windows of the office darken to an opaque tint.