"You," he says.
He stands.
I don't move because I can't.
He's slow about it, the way a man who has decided is slow about anything, and by the time he's on his feet I'm against the tack room wall and I don't remember walking there.
His hand comes up to the side of my neck.
Thumb at my jaw. Not gripping. Just there.
The pad of his thumb on the soft place under my ear and his eyes on mine and the smell of him—leather, soap, the cedar from the floor and something else under it, something male and warm and his—filling up the small room.
"Spur," I say.
"Yeah."
"Don't pull back this time."
He doesn't answer. He kisses me.
His mouth is hot and not gentle.
His thumb stays at my jaw and his other hand comes around my waist and grips like he's been waiting a decade to grip something, and he has.
My hand is in the front of his cut before I know it's there. I'm pulling him closer. He's already there. I'm on my toes. He's bending.
His thigh pushes between mine and my body rolls into it, and the sound I make against his mouth isn't a sound I knew I had.
Eight years of this man holding still while I rode past him, and days of him sleeping on my couch with the door open, and one stalker note he stayed up all night to make sure didn't become anything worse.
It's the way he saidget in the roomin the rain in Stephenville.
It's the way he saidnot for thison his knee at my saddle ten seconds ago.
It's the patience of a man who has been outwaiting me for nearly a decade meeting the patience of a woman who has been wanting him right back, and both of us deciding at the same time that the waiting is finally over.
He pulls back first.
His forehead’s against mine. His breathing is rough. His hand still at my jaw and his thumb moving once, slow, across my cheekbone like he's checking I'm real.
"Dakota."
"Don't."
"Your father?—"
"Is not in this tack room."
"I gave him my word."
"You gave him your word years ago. I’m a grown-ass woman. I can make my own decisions."
He breathes once, looks at the wall behind my head, and looks back at me.
He doesn't say it a second time.
I watch him almost say it and then watch him decide not to.
