Page 117 of Ironwood Ranch Cowboys

For me.

His mouth is hard and insistent, but not unskilled. With Silas it’s always intentional, like he’s thought through every angle of contact, every inch of pressure that will make me want to come apart beneath his hands.

I don’t just kiss him back. I take as much as he’ll give me, my hands fisted in the hem of his shirt, pulling him closer, needing to press every nerve in my body to the heat of his skin.

He lets me, for one shuddering breath.

Then he takes over.

One hand stays at my jaw, angling my face until he can deepen the kiss; the other slides down, anchoring at the base of my skull, fingers threading through the disaster of my hair with dangerous, proprietary precision, pulling just enough to tip my head back.

Gentle, then not, his grip tightening when my mouth opens for him.

The sound I make is embarrassing. It’s pure, unguarded want, ricocheting off the walls of this office where we have both spent weeks pretending there’s any such thing as professional distance.

He knows it, too.

I feel the way his body goes rigid, every muscle gone taut with the effort of holding himself in check.

He could break me if he wanted to, and that’s the energy around us. Of need so intense it cuts through every defense I have ever thought to build.

I break the kiss, panting, dizzy enough that it takes a second to process the fact that he’s moved me, no, lifted me onto the desk.

I don’t remember my feet leaving the ground but his arms are braced around my hips, forearms caging me in over this mess of invoices and pens and cinderblock space.

My knees are angled wide around his ribs, skirt askew, skin pressed to the cool surface of the desk and the hungry, electric heat of his hands.

I expect him to say something, to issue a command or a warning, or maybe even just a single, unanswerable question the way he sometimes does right before he takes a problem apart molecule by molecule.

Instead, he just looks at me. Seeing what I look like ruined and wanting him, the flush beneath my jaw, the way my pulse stutters so hard it probably shakes the entire desk.

I try to drag in a breath. Fail. “Someone could⁠—”

He cuts me off by kissing me again, mouth hard enough to bruise. One hand is already shoving files and laptop to the side with a sweep that’s neither careful nor apologetic.

Everything scatters until there’s nothing between us and the desk is bare except for my lower back and the frantic, metallic taste of his name burning the back of my tongue.

“Let them,” he says, barely more than a rumble against my neck. “Let them see you like this.”

Heat explodes between my legs. There’s nothing careful about the way he bites down just beneath my ear, enough for me to flinch and then melt, his hand already up my thigh and sweeping the skirt with it.

I can’t stop the moan, don’t try, and in return he gives back this impossible, ferocious satisfaction, like he’s wanted to devour me all along and is only now admitting he’s hungry.

My breath comes in uneven shivers. I feel the anger in his grip, at all the questions he can’t solve, all the ways I have no control, all the times I’ve refused to let him be as selfish as he wants.

Now he’s doing it anyway and I’m the only thing on the agenda.

He doesn’t even bother with a slow build. His fingers are rough as he pushes the skirt higher, grazes bare skin, finds the edge of my underwear and snaps the elastic hard enough to make me gasp.

I want to yank his head down to mine but he’s already ahead of me, mouth on my throat, sucking a line down to my collarbone. His stubble scrapes and the sting is perfect and animal and I can’t think of a single reason to stop him.

He works a hand inside, the heel of his palm exactly where I need it. I clutch at his back, nails leaving red lines I hope he finds tomorrow.

He finds the spot in me that’s already gone slick for him and groans against my ear, the noise so raw it’s almost a plea.

I’m surrendering to a controlled burn, the fire line drawn precisely by his hands and mouth and the sound he makes when my body rocks against him, desperate, demanding.

My thighs flex around his hips. He yanks my underwear down with such savagery that the fabric snaps, the sound impossibly loud in the little office.