Slow Burn Cowboy Read online

  He knew exactly what it was. But he didn’t want to put a name to it. Not now. Not when there was no point at all in assigning an identity to this roaring need inside of him that would never be satisfied. Not until she was naked. Not until he was buried inside of her and she was crying out his name.

  He didn’t want that. Even as he needed it with a ferocity that made his whole being ache, he didn’t want it. Because it would change everything they were. But at the same time he didn’t know if he had the strength to go back to acting like everything was the same. Like being near her when he wanted to reach out and touch her was easy. Like the pull between them was nothing.

  His life was slowly being wrenched from his control. Like the fist he’d closed around it years ago was being pried open and he was losing his hold bit by bit.

  This was part of it. She was part of it.

  “I know perfectly well that I’m not your brother,” he said. He could feel her pulse racing in the underside of her wrist, could feel the way he affected her. Maybe it was their closeness, maybe it was the shared memory of the kiss. Maybe he had succeeded in making his best friend fear him.

  He had never felt lower than he did at that moment. But he still couldn’t bring himself to release his hold on her.

  “Then stop meddling,” she said, the words sounding like they had come at great cost, each syllable bitten out with purpose.

  “Now you’re going to pretend that I’m acting brotherly? Come on, Lane. I’ve seen people pretty committed to their fictions, but you win right now. We both know I’m not your brother. We both know you feel a lot different about me than you do about him.”

  She shook her head, her eyes wide. “I don’t,” she said, “so whatever you have in your head, whatever crazy thing possessed you to do what you did last night...”

  He released his hold on her and took a step back. “Are you ready to talk about that now?” he asked, knowing he sounded pissed. Not really caring.

  Her cheeks were flushed dark red, anger shimmering around her in a wave. “We have to,” she bit out, “don’t we? You wouldn’t let me put our friendship back the way it should be. Why wouldn’t you let me fix it? You know that I hate this. You know that I don’t want it. I don’t want this between us. I need you, Finn. I need you right now, maybe more than I ever have, and you’re ruining it.”

  “You were going to pretend that it didn’t happen.”

  “You know why.” she hissed. “I need a friend. I don’t need another guy I could date. Those guys are a dime a dozen here. But you’re the only Finn I have.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “I know. It’s what I told myself about you all this time. Even as I was on my way to your house tonight. What I told myself every time I thought about kissing you, in fact. But I need you. Did you ever think of that? You keep talking about going through a hard time, but I haven’t seen any evidence of that. I’m not doubting you, not necessarily, but you know what I’m going through. You can see it. I can’t... I can’t keep being pulled every which way. I can’t be there for you all the time while I push aside what I want.”

  Her throat worked, angry tears glittering in her eyes. “So you want to throw away what we have because you want sex?”

  The words hit hard and twisted inside of him, made him feel guilty when nothing else so far had. “That’s not it.” It wasn’t, but he couldn’t figure out quite how to articulate it. “I just can’t hold it all anymore,” he said simply, finally.

  “And our friendship is such a burden?”

  “No. Our friendship is one of the best things in my life. You have been one of the best things in my life for more than ten years now, Lane Jensen. But pretending I don’t want you? When I fulfill what you want me to... I can’t hold on to that while I try and balance all of this other stuff.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t... What does that even mean? I can’t even deal with the answer. Never mind. I don’t want to know.”

  “I’ll tell you what it means. Right now? If you really want to take care of me I need more than casserole.”

  He felt like a dick. There were no two ways about it. He was a dick. But he wasn’t sure if there was anything he could do to stop himself. To stop this. It was ten years in the making.

  Hell, at this point he didn’t know whose side he was on. Whether or not he wanted her to win, with her logic, her desperate need to protect the friendship at all costs. Or whether he wanted his body to win.

  Mostly because he had no idea what he was doing. He had rationalized his way out of taking this step a thousand times before. And the reasons still stood. It was his resolve that had crumbled.

  Looking at her hurt. All the way down deep. The desire that he felt for her was a yawning, aching void that he knew couldn’t be filled by anyone or anything else, because God knew he had tried.

  He had slept with any number of other women since he had met Lane. None of them had taken the edge off. Sure, sometimes it was enough to allow him to ignore his desire for her for a while. But it always came back. And the moment he found himself checking out Lane instead of the woman he was supposed to be sleeping with, he broke things off.

  And even if he was in another relationship, he hated every man that passed through Lane’s life. Every man she took to her bed. Thinking about it made him rage. Gave everything he did an edge of violence that he had never wanted to explain or deal with.

  It didn’t make sense. And it wasn’t fair. To want his friend physically the way that he did, while knowing it could never be romantic.

  While knowing it would never be permanent.

  He had always known that Lane needed more than that. More than sex with friendship on the side. And he had always valued her too much to ask for that. But he had reached the end of it. The end of himself.

  And if he blew their friendship all to hell, then maybe it was best to deal with it now. While the rest of his life was similarly destroyed. While everything else was basically the worst it had ever been outside of his shitty childhood.

  “I don’t understand why you’re doing this,” she said. “Because you’re sad that your grandpa died? What do you think Callum would say if he knew that you were propositioning me? He would slap you upside your head. He would tell you that’s no way to talk to a lady.”

  “Yes,” Finn said. “You’re right. But he’s not here. The bastard died. And as his last act, he decided to take everything I worked for and I can’t even yell at him about it. He’s gone, like everyone else in my life.”

  “Except for your brothers. And, if you don’t push me away, I’m here too. But is that what you’re doing? You just want everyone to go away and leave you alone in your misery? And you knew the best way to do that with me would be to kiss me?”

  “No, that’s not it at all. It might be a good theory, but only if you didn’t want me to.”

  Lane drew back as though she had been slapped. “I don’t.”

  “That’s why you were looking at me like you did down by the lake last week?”

  Her eyes were shimmering now, anger visible across her cheeks in slashes of red. “I ignore those moments,” she said, her voice trembling. “And I was willing to ignore the kiss too. Dammit, Finn.”

  “If you want it, why is it a bad thing?”

  “I want a lot of bad things. And I’ve had a lot of bad things. For example, I had French fries for lunch. That was a bad thing. It’s not good for you. You shouldn’t eat them. They’re too starchy, and there’s too much oil. I’m not getting any younger. I’m close to thirty. I need to order side salads. And I need to say no to this too.”

  “Are you comparing me to junk food, Lane?”

  “I’m comparing you to any bad decision I can make on a given day. That’s what separates us from the animals. Sometimes we don’t make them. I have to not make this mistake.”

 
“Why is it a mistake?”

  She laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. She crossed her arms, shaking her head. “Are you proposing? And if you are, do you think I’m going to say yes?”

  “Hell, no.”

  “Then how could it be a good idea? Unless it’s going to end somewhere permanent it’s just going to end. And then where does that leave our friendship?”

  He was out of words then. He was out of restraint. He was out of everything. Everything but the need that had eaten at him for so long he didn’t know who he was without it. Didn’t know what it was like to take a breath without wanting Lane Jensen. It had become part of him, and he was so damn tired of it he couldn’t take it for one more second.

  So he wrapped his arms around her, just like he had done yesterday. His hands were pressed into her back, fingers tangling in her hair. It was like silk, she was like silk. He expected her to push away from him, expected her to fight, after all that verbal sparring she had done.

  But she didn’t. Instead she went still, frozen. Like prey that had spotted a predator. Or maybe she was just leaving it up to him. Her breathing was shallow, and slowly, very slowly, he felt her soften beneath his touch.

  Gradually, her breasts met his chest as she leaned against him. But she didn’t move to close the distance between their mouths. He dragged his palm up the line of her back, letting his fingertips drift along her neck. She shivered beneath his touch.

  Lane shivered beneath his touch.

  Other women had done that, he was sure. When it came to his sexual prowess, he had never had a complaint. But it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter what other women had done, what other women had felt. What mattered was that Lane felt this now. For him.

  But he wasn’t going to be the one to close the distance between them. She had to make the move. It had to be her. So that tomorrow she wouldn’t be able to pretend it didn’t happen. So that she wouldn’t be able to get angry at him. So that she wouldn’t be able to pin it all on him. And maybe she would turn away. Maybe she would keep denying all of the electricity that arced between them.

  But he didn’t think she would.

  He wove his fingers more deeply into her hair, tightening his hold on her head, and at the same time he moved the hand on her back down lower, then to the side, grabbing hold of her hip. She gasped, that small reaction worth more to him than he could possibly quantify.

  “Tell me you don’t want me, Lane,” he said, moving just a little bit closer. “You’re going to have to tell me.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t want you,” she said, but she came nearer when she said it.

  “Come on,” he returned, “you’re going to have to do better than that.”

  “I don’t—” she inched closer still “—want you.”

  “Yes,” he affirmed, “I can feel just how bad you don’t want me. The way you’re all pressed up against me proves that.”

  “You’re holding on to me,” she said.

  He released his hold on her, dropping his hands back down to his sides. “Then run away.”

  She swayed slightly, but she didn’t move. Her eyes widened, and for the first time she looked downright terrified. Mostly, he imagined, because she didn’t move back. Because she didn’t run. Because, for whatever reason, she was still standing right there, her breasts pressed tightly against his chest, her mouth only a whisper from his.

  “You’re my friend,” she mumbled. “Running away from you would be almost as stupid as...”

  “Kissing me?”

  “Nothing would be stupider than that,” she said, the words a rushed whisper.

  Then her eyes fluttered closed and she leaned forward, the movement so slow, so slight, if he hadn’t been tuned into every single thing about her, he might have missed it until her lips pressed up against his.

  The sound she made was somewhere between surrender and a wounded animal. Distress and satisfaction reverberating between them as she gave in to the attraction that he had never even bothered to deny. At least to himself.

  He wrapped his arms back around her, forking his fingers into her hair and wasting no time taking the kiss deeper. He wanted this. He wanted her. And he wasn’t going to pretend otherwise. Not while he had her like this. Not while he was finally holding Lane Jensen the way he had always fantasized about doing.

  He knew plenty of guys who would say it was a weakness to want a woman and not claim her. Finn had always seen it as a feat of strength. Which was why this surrender to temptation shamed him in some ways. Why it felt like giving up.

  But it also felt like summer rain falling on his face for the first time after a long cold winter. It felt like that very first flower persevering through the frost. Like life after so much nothing.

  And that won out over anything else.

  He tightened his hold on her, moving back, pressing her up against the edge of the counter as he let her feel the evidence of his desire for her. Let her feel just how hard she made him. Just how much he wanted her.

  She was clinging to him, just as she had done last night, her fingers curled around his shirt as she kissed him back. And when he felt her begin to pull away, he stopped her, sliding his tongue across the seam of her lips, growling as her flavor flooded his mouth.

  She whimpered, an answering sound, an answering surrender. And then the tip of her tongue touched his, that little returned exploration like a lightning bolt that went straight down to his cock.

  He slid his hands down her body, down those curves he had spent so many years pretending not to want, and he moved his hands down to that ass he’d worked for so long not to stare at. And now he was holding it in his palms.

  Just the thought made his knees about buckle.

  He tightened his hold, drawing her forward, and she rolled her hips, a needy sound rising in her throat. She was trying to satisfy herself, trying to get some relief from this heat that was burning between them.

  And then it was Lane who let her fingertips drift down his chest, Lane who rested her hands on his belt buckle for a moment, then pushed her hands up underneath his shirt.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  SHE HAD LOST her mind. It was official. When Finn had showed up at her door radiating all the male energy that she was working so hard to pretend he didn’t have, she had gone into fright mode. She had done what she did best. She pushed things down; she hid them. She pretended that they weren’t happening to her.

  That was the way she handled things. The Lane Jensen method of dealing with trauma. Just pretend there was no trauma. Tell no one. Not even yourself.

  So, she had plastered a grin on her face and proceeded to act like he hadn’t devoured her last night and demolished the walls that she had placed very purposefully between them from the moment they had met.

  Unsurprisingly, that hadn’t gone over very well.

  Surprisingly, she was kissing him.

  More surprising was the fact that once his lips had touched hers, common sense and any capacity for thought had flown completely from her mind.

  She moved her hands down to his belt, rested them there for a moment, and then let her fingertips inch just beneath his shirt. She gasped when her skin met his. When she felt all of that hard, hot muscle beneath her hands at last.

  At last. What a strange way to think of it. A strange way to think of something that she had never really thought about doing until this moment.

  She had never touched a stomach like his. So well defined, and covered with just the right amount of hair. She knew what he looked like without a shirt. She had just seen him without one. And—he was right—she had checked him out. Fully and completely. She had memorized each ridge of muscle, and so now as her hands drifted over them, she had a pretty clear visual to go along with it.

  Part of her was screaming that thi
s was a mistake. But most of her was just lost in the best kiss she had ever experienced in her entire life.

  His hands were so firm and sure on her body, so large and strong. The funny thing was, now that she had accepted they were kissing, she could appreciate the kiss they’d shared yesterday. The fact that he hadn’t been tentative. The fact that he hadn’t asked permission. The fact it had been a claiming rather than an interview.

  No tentative meeting of lips that was tantamount to an awkward handshake. Not for Finn Donnelly. No, he kissed like a master. Like a man who knew exactly what he was doing, and exactly how to make a woman’s body do just what he wanted it to do. Feel just what he wanted it to feel.

  Never, ever had she kissed a man with this kind of skill. Who knew just how to call this level of arousal up in her body this easily. He wasn’t even really touching her intimately. His palms were resting on her denim-covered butt, but that was it.

  Meanwhile, she ached. From her breasts down to her toes, and everywhere in between. She could feel herself getting wet for him, wanting him.

  Wanting Finn.

  That thought, much like the growl that had rescued her sanity last night, jerked her into the moment. Into reality. She wrenched her mouth away from his. “No way,” she said, wiggling out of his hold. “Stop,” she said, more to herself than to him. “This has to stop.”

  “You want me,” he said, the words tortured.

  She held her hand up, her entire body trembling. With need, both to keep going and to get as far away from him as she possibly could.

  “No,” she said. “I was perfectly happy to leave everything the way it was, Finn. You’re the one that’s having a breakdown, or whatever the hell this is.”

  “This isn’t a breakdown. Trust me. None of this is new to me.”

  “Don’t tell me that,” she said, clutching her head. “I trust you. I need you. You’re my... Everything. I can’t deal with this right now. I can’t deal with it ever. I’ve had you in my house. I’ve considered you my closest friend, and knowing that you were looking at me, knowing that you wanted to do this... That’s a betrayal, Finn.”