The Cowboy's Texas Heart (The Dixons of Legacy Ranch 3)

Over one shoulder blade, down her spine, to the rise of her rear semi hidden beneath his sheets, his fingers migrated over her back contemplatively. Sure, he admired her body in the stark moonlight and summertime constellations out his window, but her misty eyes at the gift of that silly sticker, her words, I think we’re beyond attachments, were hot on his mind still, despite it being so late that even the crickets through the open window had quieted.

He had to get her to open up, too. Relationships didn’t work when both partners weren’t all-in. He should know.

That made it twice he’d opened up to her, both times, spontaneous, unusual for him and skirting that NDA line, as if these secrets held at heart begged for release, pressure on a cracked dam. He didn’t talk about the car accident or his boys. Too many things he might slip up on and accidently divulge. And yet, with her, they seemed to flow out. Then she’d turn around each time and refuse to let him in. He kept pricking his vein, bleeding a drop, and getting nothing in return.

Around his finger went on the silk of her skin, contemplating her in his bed, going on half a week now and hating that he loved it so much. What would it feel like when she left and he got his favorite pillow back? Relief? Would it smell like her ice cream shampoo? Would he ever want to wash the sheets? His bed would feel empty. Miles of barren king-sized mattress. He wasn’t sure he liked the thought, but what was the alternative? She wouldn’t allow herself to be more than a friend with benefits. What exactly would he miss? Besides the sex?

Soft lifts of the diaphragm beneath his finger expanded her back, soft exhales depressed it. She hadn’t moved in a while and was probably asleep. His finger lingered on the details of the tattooed wing. The childish butterflies weren’t childish. They were symbolic. He suspected they had nothing to do with actual butterflies, but something deep within her, perhaps, the thing that kept her from attaching herself to a man. She was beautiful. Easygoing. Weird, yeah, but he was beginning to feel like he synced with it. Smart and funny. What the hell was there for a guy not to like? Why had her fiancé broken up with her? Was the man stupid or blind? Maybe Tyler knew Heart—Heather—better than he thought. Her silence spoke volumes.

She shifted.

He stopped his caress. He was probably annoying her, and he’d been bordering on sentimental after his phone call with Seth, which was his cue to power his brain the hell down and knock himself out. He dragged his hand away and rolled onto his back, the pain from those glass wounds no longer intrusive, and closed his eyes, tossing his arm over his head—

“Why’d you stop?” Her words were groggy, husky in that just-woke-up way that only served to harden his pecker, which was amazing that he could even get it up, considering the workout it had been getting each night. “It felt good.”

Her hand reached out and caressed his bare chest sleepily to draw his attention, brushing over the hair that led from his navel to his shaft sending spirals of tingling down south to his stones, which he couldn’t control. All the responsibility in the world didn’t diminish that his body ran on hormones and that this woman stoked them as if to agitate a beehive until he exploded. He lolled his head and noticed she’d turned her head toward him so her nose was adorably smushed and her eyes glittered, crystalline and gray in the darkness, her hair tangled around her head.

Instinctively, he rolled toward her again. Resumed his caress of her butterfly. But this time, their gazes held.

“You seem contemplative,” she added, her finger still on his chest.

“Got a lot on my mind.”

“Wanna talk about it?”

He eyed her lips. “Why the butterflies?”

Her gaze widened innocently at his directness. For the first time, she didn’t look like a seductress. She looked surprised. His finger continued its revolution around her tattoo. His hunch was right. They were symbolic. He watched goose bumps rise on her skin, noted how the pillow of her breast bulged beneath her against the mattress. God, she had the most delicious breasts and natural beauty, not born from a bottle or sculpted in a gym or beneath a plastic surgeon’s knife. Isabella had had implants, and he’d never understood why, because she’d been sexy, too. A young guy’s fantasy hookup on a Friday night at a swanky East Coast club kind of sexy, after a week of lectures on constitutional law, torts, advanced logic for his philosophy minor.

“Who made you feel unwanted? Was it your ex-fiancé? Because if so, he was a douche.”

Maybe she’d been too wild for the man, refusing to live in a box. Maybe if Tyler wanted her, he needed to break out of his. Her eyes remained wide. Yet her face drained of color, even though she tried to smile. She cleared her throat, then schooled her face. “Is this really about your son? Are you still worried?”

That wasn’t what this was about, and he was beginning to realize: she was great at the pivot. He recognized his own avoidance techniques when he saw them.

“I’m asking about you,” he murmured, his thumb migrating from her shoulder to her pouty mouth, pressing it inside until she placed a kiss upon it, and he rubbed the kiss into her lower lip.

He shifted closer. Her eyes fluttered to his mouth as he leaned in and stole a kiss. Ever since she’d kissed him, he’d been unable to hold back. She returned it, her fingers migrating down his trail of hair, gingerly caressing his shaft which was thickening to half-mast despite them already doing this an hour earlier. It kicked at her touch. He wasn’t going to get anything out of her. Sex was a convenient distraction for them both.

“Sooner or later, you’re gonna trust me enough to tell me,” he murmured against her lips, feeling her palm slide onto his hip to guide him over her, feeling himself relent and roll atop her backside, the sheet twisting around him.

“You might not like me for it.”

He rolled himself along the seam of her silky rear, relishing the warm feeling, brushing her hair over her shoulder as his phone lit up with a silent text on his nightstand. He ignored it, leaned down on his forearm and nuzzled his face into her neck, wishing he could sink into her bareback, like this, knowing too damn well that that would be the most foolish, most risky thing for him to do, but still wishing he could feel that skin-on-skin sensation.

“Try me.” He nipped her ear. “We all got scars, Tie-Dye.”

His phone illuminated the room again.

She kissed him back as he nipped her lips now, pinned beneath him in such a primal way, her body supple and flexible and content to be blanketed by his bulk.

“Who’s texting so late?”

“Probably my baby bro. Wants to know who my plus-one is gonna be for our brother’s wedding. His fiancée wants a final headcount.” Toby’d texted him tonight about it and he’d written back the same, that he didn’t have a date, as he’d gotten ready for bed, tripping over Heather’s obstacle course of books laid out on the floor and propped open to dry. Hell, that was the only good reason to look forward to her leaving. His house wouldn’t be cluttered anymore.

Heather stilled beneath him. “Who’s your date going to be?” she murmured.

He pretended he didn’t hear her, as he leaned over her to his bedside drawer and withdrew a foil square, as he rolled within her heat, pinned her arms over her head and sifted his fingers into her hair and listened to her breath hitch as he hit the spots within her that he was discovering, one by one, made her moan and wiggle her core down deep upon him, until they were both sated and breathless and he was slumped around her from behind, with his face buried in her hair, arms cinched around her chest in a post-coital fog, still connected within her body.

She burrowed into his warmth and gripped his forearm beneath her chin and fell asleep, and he didn’t have the heart to jostle her by extracting himself, he told himself, but that pinch in his chest remained. She’d be gone by the time of the wedding. Life would go back to normal. Seth would come home angry. Fossyl would start pumping if he didn’t find a way to throw off this lease his granddad had signed and never told anyone about, and he wasn’t sure he’d be content in his box again, which he was starting to notice was lonelier than he’d realized.

He wanted his law career back. Wanted to chase his old dreams anew. Wanted a family. Wanted her.

“Dammit, Heart,” he whispered, knowing she was asleep and couldn’t hear him as he cupped her breast in his hand and pressed harder into her backside, relenting to the bliss of cuddling. Shit. He was in emotional nickname territory. Which rule did this break? It didn’t matter. “I’m not supposed to fall for anyone.”