I reach for her before I can think better of it. One hand at her waist. The other at the back of her neck.
Then I kiss her.
It isn’t gentle. Or careful. It’s a week of restraint packed into one bad decision.
Her mouth opens under mine with a soft sound that hits me low and hard. She grips my shirt like she’s holding on, and I pull her closer until there isn’t room for air between us.
The storm crashes around us. Inside the stall aisle, everything burns quiet and hot.
I taste rain on her lips. Feel the curve of her against me. The give of her body when I back her against the wood just enough to steady us both.
I break the kiss first. Barely.
Forehead against hers, breath rough, I keep my hands where they are because I don’t trust myself to move them.
“This is a mistake,” I say.
Her fingers tighten in my shirt. “Then why are you shaking?”
I let out something close to a laugh. No humor in it. Because she can feel it.
I haven’t wanted anything like this in so long I forgot what it does to a body. To a mind. To the part of a man that’s easiest to lose.
“You don’t know what you’re asking for,” I say.
Her gaze doesn’t waver. “I’m not asking.”
That nearly does me in.
I kiss her again, slower this time and somehow worse for it. More deliberate and aware.
She rises into it without hesitation, one hand sliding up into my hair, the other still twisted in my shirt. I feel that touch…
Everywhere.
My hand slips from her waist, skimming the damp fabric at her side, the soft curve beneath it. She shivers.
Not from the cold.
“Dakota,” I say against her mouth, warning or prayer—I don’t know anymore.
“Yes.”
Just that.
One word. Willing. Certain.
I close my eyes for a second.
The storm keeps pounding the roof. The horses shift, then quiet again, the whole barn wrapped in heat and rain and the smell of hay.
This could go somewhere I won’t be able to take back.
I know it. She must know it too. “Just once,” I say, voice rough enough to scrape. “You understand me?”
The second the words leave my mouth, I know they’re a lie.
Not because I mean to deceive her. Because I already want more than once. I’ve wanted more since the first time she walked into my stables.
