Smooth-Talking Cowboy

He paid Laz, and then put his hand on her lower back as they headed toward the door. She gritted her teeth, trying her best to keep her expression neutral until that first blast of night air hit her in the face as they walked out onto the street.

Then, she pulled away from him. She shoved her hands in her pockets and walked down the sidewalk, looking for the first crosswalk before making her way across toward the truck. He was already there. Because he had just gone directly across the street.

“That’s jaywalking,” she said.

“Do I look like I care?” he asked, rounding to the passenger side of the truck and jerking the door open for her.

“It doesn’t seem to me like you care about much,” she said, getting in and grabbing hold of the door handle, slamming it shut before he could do the honors.

He got in and started the engine, pulling away from the curb quickly, before she managed to get herself buckled.

“For the record,” she said, once they were on the road, “it’s illegal to start driving before the passenger is buckled, too. Like jaywalking.”

She didn’t know if that was actually true. But it sounded legitimate enough.

“Again,” he said, “I don’t care.”

Now he was starting to sound snippy, and he had no right to sound snippy. He wasn’t the one who had been kissed in the middle of the bar in front of everyone. Okay, so he had been. But it was different for him. Different for him because he was Luke Hollister, and he had kissed any number of women, and his kissing her wouldn’t reflect badly on him. She was the one who had kissed only the second man she had ever kissed in her entire life, and then seen his name carved on the wall because he had...

They headed out of town, the glow of the streetlights fading in the distance behind them, the evergreen trees that lined the side of the road absorbing any light that was coming from the moon or the stars, making them feel ensconced in darkness, only the narrow glow of the headlights illuminating a very tight path in front of them.

She kept her eyes on the double yellow line on the road, something comforting about having that familiar sight to rest her eyes on while the rest of the world felt wild, untamed and unknowable.

And she couldn’t even pretend it was because of the darkness. It was because of Luke. And the way it had felt when his lips had touched hers.

There was a certain point where she’d stopped worrying about unknown things in the darkness, because she had been convinced that she knew herself well enough she could find her way through anything. That she had decided firmly who she was, and who she would be, and had been at peace with that choice. But all of that assurance had crumbled around her in a bar tonight, and she didn’t know quite what to do with that.

So she stared at the yellow line and hoped that it would guide her home, because God knew she didn’t trust herself to do it. She certainly didn’t trust Luke.

“What exactly are you mad about, Olivia?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“You’re a terrible liar,” he said. “Things were going okay, and now you’re mad at me.”

“What does it matter? Nothing that happened tonight is real.”

“Something made you mad. I want to know what.”

“Like you care when I’m mad. You like making me mad.”

“Sure,” he said. “I like making you mad on purpose. Just a little bit mad. A bit of annoyance here and there. But when I do that, you can bet I do it for fun, and you can bet I don’t do it on accident. This is different.”

“Did you honestly have... Did you do...” She stumbled over the words, too embarrassed to talk about it in front of him. Which made her feel silly, and childish. She had no idea how to combat it. She cleared her throat. “With a woman. In that bathroom?”

He chuckled, the sound somehow absent of humor, flat in the cab of the truck, the only other sound the engine and the tires on the road. “You’re mad about that?”

“You kissed me,” she said. “I think I have a right to know where you’ve been.”

“I’m well traveled, kiddo, and I think you already know that.”

“In the bathroom?” she asked, incredulous. “And everybody in the bar knew what you were doing?”

“We didn’t have sex technically speaking.” He paused for a moment. “At least, not in the bathroom.”

“Then why is your name on the wall?” she pressed.

“Something happened in there, not going to lie to you about that. And Wyatt Dodge is a dick when he’s drunk.”

She could hardly imagine Wyatt, who was like a steady older brother to her in many ways, behaving like such a... Such a juvenile frat boy. “Wyatt carved your name onto the sex wall?”

Luke huffed out a laugh. “Yes. But seriously, Olivia, I was like twenty-four years old, and so was he.”

“I’m twenty-five,” she said. “And I think it’s immature.”

“You’re eighty down to your soul,” he said.

“Still,” she snapped, feeling particularly annoyed by that last comment. Mostly because it skimmed a little bit too close to the truth. “That doesn’t make you less gross, and it doesn’t mean that I want you to kiss me to prove points, unless we talk about it beforehand.”

Suddenly, Luke slammed on the brakes and the truck lurched forward. “That does it.” He steered the car off the road onto the shoulder, throwing it into Park, and then turned toward her.

Olivia shrank back, her heart thundering hard from the adrenaline of the abrupt stop, and from the sudden realization of just how small the interior of the truck was. How close he was to her.

“Not everything that happened tonight was fake,” he said.

Her stomach lurched, so hard, so far up that she was afraid it might come out of her mouth. “Yes, it was,” she insisted.

“No,” he said, his voice as rough as the road they’d just been driving on. “It wasn’t.”

Before she could protest, he reached out, wrapping his large hand around the back of her head, drawing her forward. And then Luke was kissing her again. but this wasn’t like The kiss in the bar. There was no audience; there was no excuse for it.

And this time, he wasn’t still. He wasn’t chaste or simple or careful.

He angled his head, forcing her lips apart with his tongue, and her world exploded behind her eyes.

This was Luke. Even in the dark there was no pretending any different.

She lifted her hand, with every intention of pushing him away, but then her fingertips made contact with the scruff on his face, those whiskers that had caught her attention on all those close examinations of him that she caught herself engaged in over the past week. She was touching it. Touching him.

There was only one word that echoed inside of her. A word that didn’t make any sense, but one that shouted loudly nonetheless.

Finally.

She squeezed her eyes shut, so tight that a tear leaked out from one corner. Only because of how tightly she had closed them, not because of emotion. Of course not because of that. This was Luke and she didn’t feel emotions for Luke.

Luke.

Instead of pushing him, she dragged her fingertips along that sharp edge of his jaw, tracing the line of his face down to his chin, brushing her thumb beneath his lower lip as he widened his mouth to taste her even deeper.

She could feel the motion of the kiss under her hand, and somehow, that added to the intensity of the moment.

Which seemed impossible, really. Because the kiss itself was so slick, so hot, so all consuming in a way that she had never imagined a kiss could be.

It eradicated her sense of responsibility, her sense of self. The reason that she was here in this truck with Luke in the first place. The fact that they were on the side of the road—a public road just outside of town where anyone might spot the vehicle and be able to identify it.

None of that seemed as important as what he might do next. As the way he might angle his head, the way the tip of his tongue might trace her lip, might slide against hers.

She was hot all over, her breasts heavy, the ache between her legs a fierce and unrelenting thing that made her feel hollow all the way through.

Luke shifted, pressing both of his hands between her shoulder blades before moving them down her back, coming to rest on her hips. He gripped her hard, his fingertips digging into her skin, through the thin fabric of her dress and her leggings.

Then, suddenly she found herself being hauled across the cab of the truck, as Luke quickly undid her seat belt and drew her up onto his lap, positioning them both at the center of the bench seat, her back to the dashboard.

He pulled her hard against him, until she could feel that telltale, uncompromising ridge between her legs. There was one moment where she thought about protesting. Where she had a spare brain cell in her head that told her she needed to put an end to this.

But it was only a moment. And when he flexed his hips forward, meeting that place at the apex of her thighs that was so desperate, so needy for some satisfaction, it burst into blinding brilliant light, lost completely in the heat and intensity of the moment.

He kept one hand placed at her hip, raised the other one and cupped her face, his hand sliding around behind her head, sifting through her hair as he continued to kiss her, deep and slick.

Then he abandoned her lips, and she groaned, her sound of regret quickly replaced by one of pleasure when that hot mouth of his made contact with the vulnerable skin on the side of her neck, down farther, down all the way to the neckline of her dress. And back up again.

She didn’t know what was happening to her. Didn’t know what had possessed her. She felt like a stranger inside of her skin, one who had no control over the reactions happening inside of her. One who had no understanding of them.

Of course she had been kissed. She had been kissed quite passionately before. But she had been so very aware of herself, so very aware of what was happening, of what might happen next and what she would allow.

Here, now, all of that had been blown apart. Reduced to such tiny fragments that she would never be able to piece them back together. In the moment, she didn’t want to.

In the moment, all she wanted to do was feel.

There was no sound apart from their breath, hard and heavy, mingling together. A sign that the two of them were completely lost in this. Together. It was so intimate. Yes, of course, her tongue against his was intimate, her most sensitive place pressed against his was intimate. But their breath, their heartbeats, that evidence of what this did to them... Somehow that was even more. Even deeper. Even more impactful.

Something dark, delicious and unfamiliar was building inside of her. Dimly, she thought she should fight it. That it was something she had fought against before. But his hands were so warm, so large and masculine and wonderful holding her head, holding her hip. The whiskers on his face burning delicate skin on her cheek, her neck, her collarbone, too wonderful to pull away from. She rocked her hips against his, the rhythm natural, seeming to blend with the rhythm of their kiss as he licked a path down to the very edge of her dress, then lifted a hand and flicked open the top button, then the second.

Until he revealed the edge of her bra and licked around the edge of that, his tongue tantalizing the sensitive, aroused skin there.

She rolled her hips forward, the tension low in her midsection drawing up even tighter, that place between her legs slick and sensitive. He moved the hand on her hip lower, around to grip her butt, pulling her hard against him. And then the world burst into brilliant color behind her eyelids. She pressed her hips forward, rubbing herself against that hard ridge in his jeans as wave after wave of pleasure rolled over her, as internal muscles she hadn’t been aware of before clenched tight.

She buried her face into the curve of his neck, a hoarse cry on her lips as she shivered through the onslaught of release that seemed to be unraveling her, pulling at some previously unseen thread deep inside of her, undoing everything that had been Olivia Logan before. Leaving behind a worn, threadbare stranger that was sweating and panting in a man’s arms.

In a truck. On the side of the road.

And then it hit her. Fully hit her.

She had been making out with Luke Hollister on the side of the road.

She’d...

She scrambled out of his hold, pinning herself against the passenger door, her heart pounding so hard she was afraid it was going to break into a million pieces as it slammed itself against her breastbone. As if it were trying to escape, or trying to destroy itself, to release her from this moment. From this humiliation.

She grabbed hold of the door handle and opened the door. And before she could fully think her next action through, she jumped out of the truck and started to walk back toward her house. Away from Luke.

Away from the kind of insanity she knew had the power to ruin her carefully laid plans.

CHAPTER EIGHT

LUKE WAS OUT of the truck and heading after Olivia before he had time to process what had just happened.

They had been kissing, of that much he was certain. An explosion of restraint that had reached its breaking point. At least on his end.

He was pretty sure he wasn’t the only one, though. Judging by her response to the kiss. If he wasn’t mistaken, she’d had an orgasm. And then she had tumbled out of his truck like he was an ax murderer chasing her down, and not the man who had just made her come.

“Olivia,” he called after her retreating figure. He could just barely make out the shape of her, fluttery and small in the darkness.

She didn’t stop moving away from him.

“Olivia Logan,” he called again, taking three steps and catching up with her, grabbing hold of her arm and stopping her progress. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m walking home,” she said, jerking out of his grasp and starting down the road again.

“You are not,” he said. “Get your ass back in the truck.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” she said. “I’d rather take my chances out here than get back into that truck with you.”

“Don’t do that,” he said. “Don’t act like I did something to you that you didn’t like. Don’t hide behind all your prickles and indignation. We both know you wanted that.”

She laughed, a kind of hysterical hoot, her brown eyes glittering in the pale light. Her hair was a wreck, and he’d place a bet her cheeks were flushed from the pleasure he’d just given her. She looked like a woman who’d been ravished. He imagined she wouldn’t like that one bit. “I did not want that. I have actively avoided things like that my entire life. Nothing in me wanted that.”

“Then why did you respond the way you did?”

“Good night, Luke,” she said, whirling away from him again and stalking down the road.

“It’s dangerous out here. You can’t see, any car driving on the road isn’t going to be able to see and you’re basically cougar bait.”

“The way I see it, it’s one predator or another, Luke, and I’m happy to take my chances on the ones with claws.”

“Olivia, I would never do anything you didn’t want,” he called after her.

She turned toward him. “I’m just going to go home,” she said, her voice tremulous.

“Let me take you home, Liv,” he said through gritted teeth. “The last thing I want is for something to happen to you because I let you run off having a tantrum.”

“I am not having a tantrum,” she said, stomping her foot in the dirt.

“Honey,” he said, “this is a tantrum. And I’m about over it. So either you get back into the truck, or I’m going to throw you over my shoulder and carry you back.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Try me, kiddo. Ask yourself if there’s one threat I haven’t made good on. I might be a jerk, Olivia, but I’m an honest one. And I swear to you if you don’t get that pretty ass of yours back in my truck I will put it there myself.”

He wasn’t bluffing. There was no way in hell he was letting her wander around in the forest without a flashlight, with her purse back in his truck... Hell, he doubted she even had her cell phone.

She stood for a moment, and there was no making out her facial expression in the darkness. But he could sense her rage. Had a pretty good idea she was staring daggers through him, even though she probably couldn’t see him very well, either.

“Don’t touch me,” she said, walking back toward the truck, careful not to brush him as she went past.

“I’d rather stick my hand in a badger den,” he commented, walking behind her.

“I’d happily watch.”

She climbed back into the truck and shut the door behind her. And he waited until she was buckled up before he got in and started the engine up again. He checked for headlights, and then pulled back out onto the highway.

His pulse was pounding, and only once they were back on the road did he realize that he was still hard and aching from that kiss. Olivia had come, but he had not. And he wanted to.

He gritted his teeth. He needed to get himself under control. Needed to get his libido reined in. Because he didn’t do things like this. He didn’t go after women who didn’t want him; he didn’t work this hard for a simple orgasm.

And he sure as hell wasn’t going to try and coerce Olivia into his bed. He could have most any woman back at the bar that he wanted. Why was he going to get embroiled in something this complicated? Sure. He wanted her. But he wanted a lot of things he didn’t have.

Life was tricky enough at the moment. He was not going to add her to the mix. Her and her uptight demeanor. Why the hell would he want to take a woman like her to bed anyway? He could have a woman who was enthusiastically on board with everything, rather than little miss prim and prissy.

Thankfully, they weren’t actually that far from her little house.

He saw the little half stone wall with the reflective address number on it and turned in. He followed the main drive for a while, then took a right, where he knew the road led to Olivia’s cottage, rather than to her parents’ house.

He pulled up in front of the little white-and-yellow cottage, illuminated by the small light on the porch, and didn’t even bother to put his truck in Park. Just pressed his foot down on the brake.

“See you later,” he said.

“Sure,” she said, opening up the passenger door, the overhead light casting a glow on her face.

She was pale. More than that, she looked terrified. Not just angry. But honest to God scared.

He groaned, putting the truck in Park. Then he reached out, brushing his thumb over her cheekbone. “Olivia...”

For a moment she froze. For a moment she just stared at him, and he could see a small war being waged behind those pretty brown eyes. Then she jerked away from him, away from his touch. “Don’t.”

She shook her head, climbing down from the truck and slamming the door, clutching her purse and her sweater to her chest as she walked up to her front door. He watched until she was safely inside, and then shook his head, throwing the truck in Reverse and pulling out of the driveway too damned fast. But if he didn’t leave now, he was going to be tempted to go after her, and he knew that would be a bad idea.

His heart was raging like he had just run a marathon, his whole body so on edge he had a feeling a strong breeze could push him over.

No. Only Olivia.

He gritted his teeth against that thought. That regrettably true thought.

There was no point wanting her. There never had been. She was Olivia Logan, of the Logans of Logan County. As close to royalty as you could find in rural Oregon.

He did not have an inferiority complex. That wasn’t the issue. He was sure on her end those would be on her list of issues. As far as his went... She wanted love. She wanted marriage. She had made that abundantly clear. She was twenty-five years old and he was thirty-six. He had a hunch that she was inexperienced, and he sure as hell was not.

He was wrong for her in a thousand different ways, and his damned body couldn’t seem to hold on to that reality.

No, he wasn’t going after her. He was going home. He was getting in a cold shower.

And then he was getting blind-ass drunk so that he could forget he had ever put his hands on Olivia Logan.

Because he sure as hell wasn’t going to do it again.

* * *

OLIVIA STUMBLED INTO the house on shaking legs. A great, gasping sob escaping as she shut the door behind her and locked it. She didn’t know if she was locking it against Luke, to keep him outside, or locking it to keep herself inside.

Apparently, she didn’t know anything. Not about herself, not about a man who had been in her life in some capacity for close to twenty years.

She hadn’t known she could want like that. She hadn’t known she wanted him like that.

But that word had played itself over and over in her mind. Finally. Finally. Finally.

She couldn’t scrub it out of her brain even now.

Even now, as she walked through the living room and dumped her purse and her sweater on the couch, unbearably conscious of the fact that her stomach felt nauseous and that she was wet between her legs.

She heard her phone vibrate and she scrambled to grab hold of it. She had three texts from her mother. Asking if she was home yet.

And then another one rolled in.

Why were you with Luke Hollister at Gold Valley Saloon tonight?

She threw her phone on the couch like it was a rabid varmint and took a step away from it, scrubbing her face with her hands. She couldn’t have this conversation. Not now. She couldn’t answer these questions she didn’t have an answer to.

There’s a very simple answer. It’s to get Bennett back.

She was a liar. Even her head was a liar. She certainly hadn’t made out with Luke in his truck to get Bennett back. She hadn’t...

She pressed a hand to her stomach. She had kissed him and had an orgasm.

She’d never had an orgasm before in her life.

She was a good girl. She had worked so hard to be a good girl. And to be everything that Vanessa wasn’t.

To justify her existence. To justify the fact that Olivia the tattletale had ruined Vanessa the rebel’s life. Hadn’t it been essential to be good after that? To show it was possible to live the kind of life their parents wanted them to have? That it led to better places?

Or she was a hypocrite. She had to keep everything locked down so tight. She couldn’t even let go of it in private.

But a few minutes in private with Luke, a few minutes in his arms, with his hands on her body, and she had let go of everything she had worked so hard for. Everything that she had trained herself to be.

Without thinking, she stumbled back toward the bathroom, flicking on the switch, flooding the room with light that was far too bright. Far too revealing of everything that had happened over the space of the last half hour. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips were swollen. Her eyes were bright and fevered.

She was suddenly aware of the fact that her neck burned, and she angled her head to the side, looking at her reflection, looking at the trail of red that ran down her skin.

Whisker burn, she realized.

Those whiskers that had been captivating her for all this time had left their mark, that was sure.

Who was she? She didn’t have an answer to that. Or at least, not one she liked.

She pulled her dress up over her head, whirling around and turning on the hot water knob in her shower. Then she wrestled with her bra, extricating herself clumsily before shoving her leggings and her underwear down her thighs.

She stepped beneath the spray of water before it was warm, shivering as it slowly grew hotter and hotter, sluicing over her bare shoulders.

She was determined to stand there until she felt normal again. Until she could no longer feel the impression of his lips on hers, his stubble against her neck, his hands on her hips.