For a woman who’s cold inmyhome. Making me responsible for her comfort.
That’s all this is.
It occurs to me that we’d both benefit from me saying this out loud as Willow shamelessly takes in my bare chest and arms, firelight dancing in her eyes. Eyes I can just as easily get lost in. Until she breathes, “Think we can really do this?”
My lip twitches. “Sure. So long as you remember my eyes are up here.”
Big, brown, mischievous eyes lift to mine with a hint of a smirk. “Yeah, well, you owed me one from earlier, cowboy.”
The corner of my mouth tugs up. “Suppose I do. So we even then?”
She scans my torso once more. “Even.”
I wait until she’s settled in under the covers and sipping her tea before I settle next to her.
And I can almost hear what she’s thinking.
The same thing I am.
This is a terrible idea.
9
His heat is the first thing I feel when I wake in the morning. It’s far too .?.?. human and alive to be from the fire.
At some point in the night, he must have thrown on his shirt because my cheek is pressed against soft dark cotton. I resist the urge to stir against him, like a single breath might disturb the steady drum of his heartbeat.
He’s so solid, it’s unnatural. Everything about this man is unreal. The way he carries a love that death couldn’t take away, the devotion to a daughter he never knew he had, the sheer sense of safety he exudes—I’ve never seen anything like it.
If he wasn’t such a jackass sometimes, I’d say I dreamed him up right out of a western romance.
Because men like that don’t exist. And it’s only a matter of time before even a man like Dallas Thorne proves it.
A cold, sharp reality hits and I jerk back an inch. Like I’m in danger of getting caught up in yet another web. One that will take me months to crawl my way out of.
Dallas groans, low and throaty, stirring up a fizzy feeling in my stomach—and a little lower.
My face is no longer pressed against his chest as his eyelids rise, blinking slowly as he makes me out in his vision.
When his eyes lower, I freeze, heat filling my neck. It’s a slow realization as I follow his gaze. Like in one of those dreams where you’re walking down the school hallway and it takes everyone staring at you to realize you’re in your underwear.
My bare leg is tucked between his thighs.
How did I not notice? How could I let that happen? Another low rumble in his chest as he rolls onto his back, releasing my leg, eyes now pinned to the ceiling instead of me.
I’m so mortified, I want to scream. Something to the effect of “Get over yourself, cowboy, we don’t know who or how that happened.”
But I’d be a hypocrite if I tried to point the finger at him. The leg-tucking is completely and one hundred percent my doing. It’s probably why it felt so natural to me. Why I was so unaware of it when I woke up. It’s my signature sleeping position when I share a bed with a man.
“Must’ve done that when the fire died out,” I say out loud.So don’t make anything more of it than it was.
That, I say to myself.
Because I don’t do this anymore. Falling all over a man for his charm and promises. Promises we both know he’d break. Even if he won’t mean to.
I’m not convinced that there’s a forever out there for me. I’m even less convinced that I could ever be someone’s.
But what I am sure of—is that if I were looking, I wouldn’t find it in a man who’s sworn his life to grief and grumpiness.
