"Do you?" His other hand comes up to the door frame on my opposite side, boxing me in, and I didn't see him move, the way a storm front builds without any single moment where you can saythat's when it started.
"Because from where I'm standing, staying means you're choosing to be in a room with a man who's been thinking about what you taste like since the night you showed up behind the chutes, and that's information you should probably factor into your decision."
My breath catches. Not from fear.
From the direct, unapologetic honesty of it. No games. No pretense. Just a man telling me exactly what he wants and giving me the chance to leave before it happens.
"You don't know what you're getting into," he says.
"I know exactly what I'm getting into."
His eyes go flat in a way that's not angry. Focused. Predatory.
The same concentration I watched him bring to the back of an eighteen-hundred-pound bull.
"One question," he says. "Birth control?"
"IUD." My voice comes out steadier than it has any right to. "And I'm clean."
"Same." He holds my gaze. "This is a bad idea."
"The worst."
"You want to stop?"
"No."
He doesn't wait for more. His mouth comes down on mine hard enough to push my head back against the door, and I taste coffee and heat and the raw edge of a man who has stopped holding back. His hand slides from the door frame into my hair, fisting at the base of my skull, tilting my head to the angle he wants, and the pull of it sends a bolt of heat straight down my spine.
I grab fistfuls of his shirt and drag him closer because if his mouth is on mine then I'm not thinking about Grant and he's not drowning in guilt and for thirty seconds neither of us is carrying a dead man's unfinished war.
He breaks the kiss long enough to pull my shirt over my head, then his. The bare skin of his chest presses against mine, all hard muscle layered with scar tissue, raised ridges of old breaks and the smooth planes between them. My hands map the damage before my brain catches up, tracing the long rope burn across his left shoulder, the knot of a badly healed rib beneath his pec. He sucks in a breath when my thumb drags across his nipple, and the sound of Colt losing a sliver of composure does something dangerous to my self-control.
His hands span my ribcage, calloused and rough, and the scrape of them against the soft skin of my stomach pulls a shiver up through my whole body that I couldn't hide if I wanted to.
"You're shaking," he says against my mouth.
"So make it stop."
He unclasps my bra with one hand and lets it fall. For a second he just looks at me, his gaze dragging down from my throat to my bare breasts with an intensity that makes my skin flush hot under the attention. Then his mouth drops to mycollarbone. His tongue traces the line of it, slow, tasting, before his lips close around my nipple and the wet heat of his mouth pulls a gasp out of me that echoes off the cheap motel walls.
He works me with his tongue, circling and sucking, his teeth catching just enough to blur the line between pleasure and sting, and when he switches to the other breast and gives it the same treatment, my hips roll forward against him on pure instinct. His hand comes up to cover what his mouth left, rolling the wet peak between his fingers, and the dual sensation makes my knees buckle.
He catches me. One arm under my thighs, effortless, and my legs wrap around his waist. The door is behind us and then the mattress hits my back and he's over me, braced on one forearm, his other hand already working the button of my jeans.
He strips the denim down my legs with the same controlled efficiency he brings to everything, and stops. His hands are still on my hips and his gaze drops to the bare skin where underwear should be and isn't.
The corner of his mouth twitches. "Commando."
"Problem?"
"Opposite of a problem." His thumb drags across my hip bone, slow and proprietary. "Gonna think about this every time you're sitting in my truck from now on."
I reach for his belt and he catches my wrist. Pins it above my head against the pillow.
"Not yet," he says.
His free hand slides between my thighs, and his fingers part me, stroking through the slick heat he finds there. The first touch against my clit is light enough to make me arch off the mattress trying to chase it, and the second is firm enough to pull a moan out of me that is loud enough to hear over the rattling AC unit.
