Page 75 of Cowboy SEAL Homecoming

“Well, that is disappointing.”

“There’s nothing underneath the hoodie if that helps,” she offered hopefully.

“It does.” His mouth lowered to hers again, this time the hand on her neck tightening its hold and his other hand sneaking under the hem of her coat and hoodie, cool, long fingers touching bare skin.

Alex’s hand was touching her bare stomach, and he was kissing her mouth. Alex Maguire. And it felt like puzzle pieces coming together, like fate finally aligning in the right part of her universe. Like a perfect, electrified hope.

He groaned, pulling his hand from her clothes as he stopped kissing her. His eyes were a dark swirl of emotions she couldn’t parse. “This has to stop,” he said in a voice that sounded awfully strangled.

“Why?” she asked on a dreamy sigh.

“Because we are going to do this right.”

“That sounds boring.”

“Oh, does it?” he said, his voice a deliciously dangerous rasp before his mouth was on hers again, hard and hot and insistent.

Not boring at all.

* * *

He had to stop. Had to control this side of him. She was new to all of it, and she deserved it to go in the right order. She deserved it to happen the way these things were supposed to happen.

Not in the middle of the night in a crappy bunkhouse that still wasn’t livable. Not before he’d even taken her out to dinner. There was a way you did things with women you cared about. There was a way his father would expect him to handle this.

Of course, that was laughable. He didn’t have a clue what his father would think about him making out with Becca anywhere, let alone here, but it was the thought that helped him finally step away. Not just stop kissing her, not just stop touching her, but step away and put distance between them.

Her cheeks were flushed, her mouth curved in that beautiful smile he wanted to soak in like summer heat.

“You need to go inside.” For her own damn good. And definitely his.

“I’m not going inside without you, Alex.”

Oh hell. He didn’t want to go back in there. Didn’t want to be faced with all of the pieces of himself that didn’t fit. The pieces all felt jagged and broken, and he didn’t know how to fix it.

The bunkhouse he knew how to fix, and he was certain once it was finished, he would feel finished too. Once this goal was achieved, all those jagged hurts living in his chest would go away.

“What about this?” she said softly, still close and warm and all too pretty. “We talk.”

“Sure? The calving is going well and—”

“Not about ranch stuff. Not about foundation stuff. Us stuff.”

“I like football. Soccer is confusing as hell. I firmly believe Taylor Swift is not country and tequila was invented by the devil.”

“Those are important things. More important, of course, is that baseball is superior to football, Taylor Swift is the best of country, and tequila…well, I’ve never had tequila so I’ll have to reserve my judgment.”

Damn it, why did he have to like her so much? He’d never known someone who talked like this, who was unafraid to poke at the rigid way he held himself. At least not in female form. Not in a very, very appealing female form.

“As firm as my opinions about Taylor Swift are though, your feelings about her weren’t really what I was getting at,” she added.

He closed his eyes for a second. He’d known that and tried to sidestep it, and still, he’d known he’d sidestepped nothing. Not by kissing her. Not by changing the subject. Becca did not give up once she zeroed in on something.

It was the most annoying damn thing—and the most admirable.

“Then what were you getting at? What is it you want to know?” More about the accident? The things he’d done as a SEAL? Maybe she wanted to know about his mother’s accident. Did she even know anything about it?

The problem was there were so many places he didn’t want to go. So many compartments he kept locked down.