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"Good." Then I bent, hooked an arm beneath her knees, and lifted her into my arms.

She squealed. "Damon!"

"What?"

"What are you doing?"

I started walking. "Taking you home."

Her arms tightened around my neck. "What about the wedding? What if people notice?"

"Baby, I just threatened to rearrange your ex's face. I think subtlety left the building a while ago."

She laughed. And for the first time in my life, forever didn’t seem long enough.

She pressed her forehead against my cheek. "Damon?"

"Yeah, sweetheart?"

"I'm still scared."

I kissed her temple. "I know."

"You can't just kiss me and make everything okay."

"I know that too." But that wasn’t going to stop me trying.

She leaned back to look at me. "Then what are we doing?"

I stopped beneath the fairy lights and looked straight into those big, brown, beautiful, terrified eyes.

"Finally being real."

Her arms tightened around my neck. And when she kissed me again, I let myself hope that maybe, just maybe, she was finally ready to believe it.

30

LOAD-BEARING COWBOY

Mikayla

Damon carried me across the threshold as though every muscle in his body had been coiled for this moment, every nerve alight. The door thudded closed behind us, the echo ricocheting through me. By the time I registered the sound, I was already pinned against the wall with such force that my breath left me in a surprised gasp. The hard slap of my spine against the cold surface radiated through my dress as his body pressed into mine.

My dress bunched at my hips, the thin material offering zero insulation from the wall’s chill, and the sensation only made me more aware of the heat radiating from every inch of him.

Our mouths clashed—hungry, open, no pretense—his lips crushing mine, teeth grazing my bottom lip. The sting only heightened the need that had been building between us all day.

I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him back, grateful for the distraction. Because the second I stopped kissing him, I was going to have to think. And thinking was the last thing I wanted to do.

He said he loved me. That I was what love felt like. I wanted to believe him. I did. But there was another voice in the back of my head saying this could never work.

I didn’t want to listen to that voice. Not tonight. Tonight, I just wanted to feel.

His hands were everywhere, all at once. He cupped my jaw, his thumbs grazing my cheekbones before trailing down the column of my neck. He stroked beneath my hairline, and the featherlight gentleness was at odds with the roughness of everything else, and it nearly undid me. He gripped my waist, fingers splaying, claiming territory as if marking the lines in a map he intended to memorize forever. When he reached the small of my back, he pressed me impossibly closer, our bodies flush, every plane of his frame colliding with mine. The friction sang up my spine, and I felt my entire focus narrow to the pinpoint where his chest and mine met, where his hips ground against me with dizzying inevitability.

He broke the kiss just long enough to drag in a ragged breath. His forehead rested against mine, eyes squeezed shut, like he was trying to collect himself or maybe remind himself not to break me in half. I could feel the tremor in his arms, the way his hands shook as he slid them up the back of my thighs. His restraint was barely holding, and the threat of its collapse was as thrilling as it was terrifying.

He ducked his head, mouth finding the side of my neck, and I arched for him involuntarily. His tongue flicked over the spot where my pulse hammered, his lips grazing up to my jaw, nipping beneath my ear, his breath hot and unsteady and my entire body jolted like he’d found a hidden switch.