Page 141 of Touch the Sky

Instead of stepping back to draw the curtain shut, she scoots inside the stall with me and tugs the fabric closed behind her.

I’m about to tell her that is not what I meant, but as soon as my eyes lock with hers, all the words die in my throat.

I’ve never seen her look sohungry before—which is saying something, considering we’ve been maintaining our commitment to the whole ‘going slow’ thing and haven’t done more than make out with our hands under each other’s shirts for the past two weeks.

It’s been a struggle not to rip all her shirts in half and have her up against a stall door every morning we’re out doing chores. The way she’s sighed my name against my lips every time we force ourselves to break apart tells me she’s been wanting me just as much, but the look on her face now is a whole new level.

It’s like she wants to eat me alive.

She’s panting, and I realize I am too. We’re not even touching, and I’m already aching to have her inside me, to let her fill me and empty me in any way she wants.

She leans in towards me, her hands reaching for my hips.

Someone coughs from across the store.

We both freeze, but no other noise follows. No footsteps approach the changing stalls. There’s just the tinny sound of a country song playing at a low volume on the shop’s speakers.

“You are going to get us thrown out of this store,” I whisper, “and maybe arrested too.”

Jacinthe’s thumbs hitch around the waist of the chaps.

“I don’t care what they do to us,” she mutters. “Not when you look like that.”

She toys with the leather fringe and cranes her neck to get another look at my reflection behind me.

“You’re really into this, huh?”

She snaps her gaze back to my face. “I’m really into you.”

She says it fiercely, proudly, like she’d jump out of this stall and shout it to the whole store if I asked her to.

I don’t need that, though. I don’t need proof. She proves what I mean to her every day, in everything she does. She fixes my coffee just the way I like it. She tells me I’m hot even when I’m covered in dirt and stinking of sweaty horses. She spends hours teaching my kid to play guitar even when she’s already had a hard day at work.

She fits me. She fits like a piece that’s been there all along.

I cup her face in my hands and kiss the tip of her nose before pressing my lips to hers.

She stays still for a second, like she wasn’t expecting me to go this far, and then she’s kissing me back, gentle at first but then with a growing heat that sparks between my legs in a matter of seconds.

I slide my hands to the back of her neck. She moans into my mouth.

I break the kiss, still panting as I try my best to muffle a nervous giggle.

“Okay, we are absolutely getting banned for life if we do not stop right now.”

Her eyes are just hazy slits. Her grip on my hips tightens.

“It would be worth it.”

I titter again and shake my head.

“We co-manage a boarding stable together. We can’t afford to get banned from the only tack shop in the area.”

It takes a moment, but eventually, my point seems to sink in.

She glowers and lets her hands drop to her sides.

“Hmm. I wish you weren’t right.”