“So let’s fix that,” he said. “Stand up.”
The Saloon was empty. Late-afternoon light poured through the high windows and the dust motes hung gold in the air. Somewhere outside, the ranch was doing its late-day business: horses being watered, guests heading to their cabins to clean up before dinner — but inside this room it was just us. Wade flippedthe switch for the string lights and they came on in warm loops along the ceiling and around the bar, turning the wood to amber.
He stood behind my camera and raised it. “Just stand there. Don’t pose, don’t smile, don’t do anything. I’m going to tell you what I see.”
“This is mortifying,” I said.
“I know. Stand still.”
I stood still. My hands hung at my sides and I was intensely aware of every curve and freckle and flaw on my body, standing in warm light with nowhere to hide for the first time in my adult life.
He looked through the viewfinder. “Your hair,” he said. His voice had dropped half a register and the sound of it rolled through the quiet room and found me. “The light is hitting it from the side and the red comes through. You have about four different colors in your hair and I don’t think you know that.”
I didn’t say anything. My throat had gone tight.
He pressed the shutter. “Now the freckles across your collarbone. They go under the edge of your blouse and I can see them in the shadow.” Another click. His voice got lower, rougher. “The curve of your waist. The way your blouse sits against your body. You keep pulling at it like you’re trying to hide, but from here—” He lowered the camera enough for me to see his eyes, and the blue in them had gone dark and focused. “From here, Layla, you are the best thing in this room.”
My skin was burning. Deeper than a blush. A heat that started in my cheeks and rolled down my throat and spread through my chest. My nipples tightened under my blouse and I felt it between my thighs, a heavy pulse of want that clenched and held.
He raised the camera again. “Turn your head. Just a little. Toward the window.”
I turned. The light shifted on my face and I heard the shutter click and his exhale, rough and unsteady.
“Your mouth,” he said. “The light is on your lower lip and I need you to know that I’ve been thinking about your mouth since yesterday and I’m running out of professional reasons to keep a camera between us.”
The room was very quiet. My heart was slamming so hard I could feel it in my fingertips.
He lowered the camera and set it down on the stool behind him. With the same care he’d used to pick it up. He pulled his hat off and dropped it on the stool next to the camera. Without it he looked younger, more himself, the performer stripped away.
The distance between us was four feet. Then three. Then his hand was on my jaw, his thumb tracing the freckles on my cheek, and his eyes searched mine with a question he was not going to push past.
“Tell me to stop,” he said.
“Don’t stop.”
He kissed me and the world went liquid. His mouth was warm and sure and he tasted faintly of coffee and I made a sound into his mouth that I would deny in court and under oath. My hands found his chest, solid and hot through the cotton. His arm wrapped around my waist and pulled me flush, all of me against all of him. I could feel exactly what I was doing to him pressing hard into my stomach through his jeans. The knowledge that Wade Bishop was this hard because of me — because of my skin and my curves and my voice — sent wet heat flooding through my hips that buckled my knees.
His free hand slid up my back, into my hair, and he tugged the floral scarf free and dropped it without breaking the kiss. His fingers wound through my hair and he kissed me deeper, one hand in my hair, one spread wide across the small of my back. The low throb between my legs turned urgent, and my hipsrocked forward into him before I could decide whether I was the kind of woman who did that.
Apparently I was.
He broke the kiss just far enough to look at me. His breathing was ragged. “Layla. I need to be clear about what’s happening right now because if we keep going I’m not going to be able to think.”
“Good,” I said, and pulled his mouth back to mine.
He lifted me onto the edge of the stage and I gasped at the sudden height, my knees bracketing his hips. He stepped between my thighs and his hands went to the buttons of my blouse, slow, his eyes on mine the whole time. Each button was a question. I answered by pulling the fabric off my shoulders and letting it drop behind me on the stage floor.
His gaze moved over me — my breasts in the plain cotton bra, the freckles scattering down my chest, the soft curve of my belly — and he wasn’t politely appreciating me. He wasn’t being nice. He was looking at me with his lips parted, his chest heaving, raw hunger darkening his face. I felt it land in my body — nipples tightening, thighs pressing together around his hips.
“I have been thinking about this,” he said, his voice rough and low, “since you walked into this Saloon yesterday with your camera and your scarf and those hazel eyes.”
His finger caught my bra strap and eased it off my shoulder. “You sat down across from me and opened your mouth and sang, and I haven’t stopped since.” His focus never left me. “All of you. I want to see all of you.”
He unhooked the clasp and my bra followed the blouse. The air hit my bare skin and I shivered, not from cold, because the space was warm, the light low and close, but from how he was looking at me. He was looking at me the way I looked through a viewfinder when I found a frame I wanted to keep. His gaze traced the roundness of my breasts, the dip of my waist, the swellof my stomach, and I watched him look at me and did not cover myself. I let him see.
“Beautiful,” he said, and the word landed in my chest with a weight I’d never felt before, because no one had ever said it while proving it this much. He cupped my breast, his thumb brushing across my nipple, and I arched into his hand with a sharp breath. He kissed my throat, the collarbone he’d been photographing ten minutes ago. He trailed lower, and when his lips closed around my nipple and sucked, I stopped thinking in complete sentences. His other hand cupped my other breast, his thumb rolling my nipple in lazy circles. The twin sensation of his mouth on one and his hand on the other sent a pulse of heat straight to my clit and I gasped.
“You have no idea,” he said against my skin, “what you sound like right now.”
