Page 30 of For Cowgirls and Kings

One I ache to hold with my own two hands.

I’ve missed so much, and somewhere along the way, I’ve realized I refuse to miss any more. Even if it is just as friends.

With a tortiously slow pull, the deep purple top lifts off her skin, revealing the softest, warm bronze skin, covered in a magical pattern of freckles and moles. I want to trace them, draw lines between them, feel each one beneath my fingertips. They’re mesmerizing and beautiful, but the way she shivers, I know she doesn’t feel the same.

I force my eyes back to hers, and even though there’s a wicked grin on her lips, there’s fear in her eyes.

I should tell her it’s okay. A better man would. A gentleman would. But right now, I don’t feel like a gentleman. I feel like a beast, salivating over the meal spreading out in front of him.

“What was the dare, Dale?” My voice is thick with a husk I refuse to acknowledge. We’re just two friends playing a veryforward game of truth and dare. I want her to fold so that I can get the truth from her.

I also want to see her tits worse than any moral human should.

“Fine,” she hisses, yanking at the back of her bra and throwing it to the floor in a small tantrum. I barely notice, because as she tosses it aside, her heavy breasts, full of the same dark freckles, sway and bounce. The dark nipples, surrounded by large purplish areolas sway, dragging my eyes back and forth.

This was a really stupid fucking idea. A brilliant, bad, pleasing, and painful idea.

I don’t even know what I wanted to ask her anymore.

“Asshole. My turn, truth or dare, Mateo?” She spits my name out, more pissed than I anticipated. But she could be screaming at me and I still wouldn’t be able to look at her face. The dots sprinkling the swells of her breasts dance with each word, swaying with each breath.

Magnets for my desperate gaze.

She crosses her arms over the peaks, and I snap my eyes up, having the good sense to feel a little embarrassed. She’s clearly pissed, but there’s something underneath it, and I so desperately need to know what it is.

Right, truth or dare.“Truth.” I’m lucky to have even enough oxygen for a single syllable—I feel like I could die.

“You would.” She rolls her eyes. I always was truth, willing to share whatever, but unwilling to break the rules the way she was.

Several seconds pass and as bad as I want to, I refuse to drop my eyes from her face. Even when they feel like they’re on fire, I hold them still. She licks her lips, her tongue dragging slowly over her plump bottom lip, leaving it glistening and I nearly groan.

And then she surprises me, maybe even surprises herself,and drops her arms, shifting to extend them behind her, pushing her chest out.

Even a man batting for the other team would look at this point. They’re too beautiful not to.

“Do you like my tits more, less, or the same as other women’s you’ve seen?”

“Wh…what?” The word stumbles out. But I don’t look up.

“You picked truth, Mateo.” She shifts back and forth slightly, making her nipples sway. I sit up straighter, tugging at my jeans again, hopeful it's dark enough she doesn’t see my cock, now rock hard, pressing against the seam. “Do you like my tits more, less, or the same as other women’s you’ve seen?”

I’m in deep shit.

“Uh, they’re very nice breasts.”Did I really just say breasts?She shakes her head, making them sway harder and I almost fall forward, out of the chair to catch them.

Instead, she does. Reaching forward with one hand, pinching the nipple between two fingers. I groan, praying it’s quiet enough I can play it off as a cough. But when my eyes finally peel up to hers, there’s a smirk there, and I know my prayer was not answered.

“More, less, or the same Mateo? And the actual truth. You’re about to lose and have to do a dare.”

Sucking in shards of oxygen, I focus on her eyes once more, and not the fingers still pulling and tugging on her dusky nipple. This was a fucking mistake in every sense of the word.

But I don’t feel the least bit sorry, not really. Which should be the real red flag here. What kind of friends play truth or dare and dare their friend to take their top off?

The desperate kind.And I’m fucking desperate for Dale.

“More,” I state, willing every cell in my body to uncoil, lean back, and pretend to be unaffected. She nods for several seconds, before dropping her hand and crossing her legs.

“My turn.” I’m still completely out of breath, but I have to regain my composure if I have any hope of winning this. “Truth or dare?” I remind myself she could stop at any time.