Rodeo Christmas at Evergreen Ranch (Gold Valley #13)(36)

It made her body feel less like an enemy, this moment. Less like something to be subdued. She had been trying to teach her body all kinds of tricks. All kinds of things over the last few years. Make it stronger. Make it faster. And this... She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know what any of it was about. She didn’t know what any of it meant. But her body seemed to know what to do.

This felt like instinct.

The rodeo might be in her blood, but this felt like it might be coming from her very bones. From her soul. And it was the strangest sort of right, and at the same time it felt outrageously, dangerously wrong.

Jake.

It’s Jake.

And that jolted her. Brought her back to reality. Because she was standing there, touching her best friend. Like that. And he wasn’t pretending, and neither was she. And it had to stop. One of them had to be sane.

She jerked her hand away. “No,” she said. “It doesn’t have anything to do with that.”

“But it’s there,” he said.

She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

He took a step away. “You’re right. It doesn’t matter. But to be clear, we are about to go see your family, who does think this is a real marriage. So it’s not like being with my family. I’m going to have to touch you. Because that’s what I would do with my wife.”

She shivered. And then she found she couldn’t stop shivering. Because her sweat had cooled off, and now she was freezing. And that was why. It wasn’t because of anything else. It wasn’t because he’d touched her hand. It wasn’t because he was making her question all the things she thought she knew about herself. It wasn’t because she was afraid. Because she couldn’t afford to be afraid. She had to be stronger. She had to be better and faster. She had to be fearless. And one... Dang stupid cowboy couldn’t make her afraid.

“Doesn’t matter to me.”

“You can’t even handle holding my hand,” he said.

“I’m not used to it. That’s different. I’ll be able to do it when it’s time.”

“You have a lot of confidence, Callie Carson, and I have to tell you, it seems to be misplaced.”

“Misplaced?”

“You think you know everything. You think you know a whole hell of a lot. But at this point, you’re just writing checks your ass hasn’t even tried to cash. You think you can do saddle bronc because you’ve done some practice runs. You think you can pretend to be my wife just because you do.”

“Fine. If you need me to prove it.”

And she took two big steps toward him, flung her arms around his neck, went up on her toes and planted a kiss on his lips.





CHAPTER TEN


CALLIE HAD NEVER been kissed before. And she’d been about to lay one on his mouth and pull away. But then his arm went around her waist like a vise, and whatever control she had slipped away. Because he put his forefinger underneath her chin and held her face steady as he angled his own, changed the slant on their mouths and slid his tongue past her lips.

She gasped, because it was so strange. So slick, and it made her... Everything in her body went tight. Muscles that she’d never been aware of before—and she was pretty sure she was aware of all her muscles before this moment—rippled. And she could feel the moment spiraling away from her. Turning into something she didn’t recognize. Turning into something she didn’t understand. She could feel the control getting farther and farther away from her grasp. As he kissed her, took it deeper. Took her to a place she hadn’t known existed.

Jake.

Jake’s mouth. Jake was kissing her. Really kissing her.

And she was letting him. She didn’t know what to do in return, so she was just letting him. And suddenly she realized her face was wet, because tears were streaming down her cheeks, and she didn’t even know why. She didn’t understand what was happening.

And she couldn’t breathe past it.

There was something bright and hot burning down between her thighs, and then he shifted, and brought her body close to his, and he was like a wall of rock. She knew that he was big. She knew that he was muscular. But he was so...so hard.

Everything about him was hard.

His chest, his stomach, his thighs—and for all that bold talk she’d made about anatomy, she could feel that the most male part of him was hard, too, and that scared the hell out of her.

And she was the one who wrenched herself away. She was the one who proved that she couldn’t handle it. She was the one who ended it, because it was way over her head. And way above her pay grade.

Because he was right. It was a check her ass did not know how to cash.

“You won’t have to kiss me like that,” she said, stumbling back with big steps.

“You’re going to have to not freak out if I do.”

“Is that just how it is for you? Is it just how it is for men? You grab ahold of a woman, any mouth will do, and you get all excited?”

He chuckled. But there was no humor in it. It was hard, and she didn’t like it at all. Because he was like a stranger, and she just wanted her friend back. This man...this man that was her husband... She didn’t know if she liked him.

“That’s what you think? That’s the only thing that you can come up with to explain it? That any port will do in whatever storm I’m going through? That I’m basically no better than an inexperienced teenager? Anything female will rev the engine?”