A Real Cowboy Rides a Motorcycle (12 page)

His fingers tightened on her arms. "You have shitty luck to find two guys who believe that. Not all men are like that—"

"In their hearts they are. It's human nature." She met his gaze. "I won't take that future away from a man, because someday he'll resent it, and he'll hate me for it." There were tears shimmering in her eyes. "I wasn't expecting to see all the kids there today. I wasn't prepared. Sometimes it hits me hard, you know? I've worked really hard to create a great career and a fulfilling life, and it's enough for me, but sometimes..." She shrugged. "I'm sorry. I just let it get to me." She met his gaze. "Those boys are beautiful," she whispered. "Every single one of them deserves the world."

He saw the honesty in her eyes, and her voice was soft with the kind of genuine passion that could never be faked, and he knew she was telling the truth. She believed in those boys as much as he did, but he'd misinterpreted her response completely. He'd judged her the way he
hated
to be judged by others. He swore at himself, disgusted by how he'd treated her. "I'm such a bastard," he said softly. "I'm so sorry for what I said to you. I had no idea—"

She shook her head, putting her finger across his lips. "No, no apologies. How would you have known?"

He wrapped his hand around hers and pressed a kiss to her fingertips. "I have a huge chip on my shoulder when it comes to being poor and from the undesirable part of society," he said. "I shouldn't have judged you like that just because I have issues. I'm sorry. Really."

She smiled, watching him trail kisses across her palm, tears still glistening on her cheeks. "You and me," she said softly. "No wonder we connect. We're both a mess."

"You're not a mess." He slipped his hands around her waist and tugged her against him. His body relaxed when he felt the heat of her body against his. "But I'm not going to deny that I'm an insensitive, judgmental bastard."

A small, tearful laugh escaped her, and she laced her fingers behind his neck, gazing up at him. "If you could have seen the way you were interacting with those boys today, you would never be able to call yourself an insensitive, judgmental bastard. It was beautiful." Her blue eyes shined with warmth that seemed to wrap around him.

No one had ever said anything like that to him. Ever. They'd praised his skill with the bulls. They'd coveted his bank account. They'd ogled his body. And before that, they'd ridiculed his old clothes and boots. They'd scorned everything about him, and the girls had wanted him only to shock their families or make their boyfriends jealous. No one had ever,
ever,
looked at him and seen anything real that was worth saving.

Until Taylor.

"Thank you." He bent his head and kissed her, brushing his lips over hers in the only way he knew how to tell her what it meant.

She sighed and leaned into him, welcoming the kiss. Her lips were responsive and warm, encircling him with a sense of belonging he wasn't accustomed to having. With a low growl, he tightened his arms around her and deepened the kiss. Her breasts were crushed against his chest, and his palms were tight on her hips. Still kissing her, he ran his hands over the curve of her ass, jamming his hands in the back pockets of her jeans and pressing her against him.

She tasted amazing. Pure, fresh, with a hint of something darker and sexier.

They were alone now.

No one was going to walk in.

No one was going to stop them.

He broke the kiss, his lips whispering against her ear. "I want to take you to bed," he whispered. "My bed. No rules. Just us."

She didn't answer, but she pressed a kiss to his throat, and tightened her arms around his neck. He smiled to himself as he scooped her up, wrapping her legs around his hips as he carried her across the small room to the tiny bedroom off the back. "Sometime," he said between kisses, "I want you to actually tell me that you want me with your words. I can read between the lines with you now, but it's okay to admit you want this, you know?"

"No, it's not." She pulled back to look at him, her hands still loosely linked behind his neck as he carried her. "If I say I want it, then it's harder to deny that it matters to me. I need to protect myself, Zane."

His heart tightened at the pain in her voice as he lowered her to the bed. She fell back into the pillows, and he lowered himself on top of her before she could scoot away, using his weight to pin her to the bed. "You don't need to protect yourself from me, Taylor." Damn, it felt good to have her beneath him. Kissing her in a vertical position had been good, but there was nothing like the sensation of being tangled up with her along the entire length of their bodies.

She laid her hand on his cheek, her eyes searching his. It was dark out, but the streetlights gave just enough illumination for him to see her. "But I do, Zane. You affect me in a way that makes me vulnerable to you."

Satisfaction pulsed through him, and he turned his head into her hand, pressing a kiss to her palm. "I'm not going to lie to you, darlin'," he said, as he kissed the inside of her wrist. "I don't want anything from any woman, and I don't want a relationship, but I can't help it that I absolutely fucking love the fact I affect you." He caught her lips in his before she could answer.

He didn't want to say anything more. He didn't want to make promises, or ask for something which would never fit into his life. He didn't want her vulnerability to bring out some delusional knight-in-shining-armor side of him that he could never deliver on. She'd run into enough bastards, and she didn't need him adding to it by making promises he could never keep.

But he needed her. He needed her kiss, her companionship, and her support.

She broke the kiss. "I'm not staying forever, Zane. We don't have a future." Her voice was desperate, as if she were trying to remind herself of that, not just him.

"No one really has a future," he said. "No one knows whether they have a tomorrow." He tangled his fingers in her hair. "You're the first woman who has mattered to me in a long time," he said. "Maybe ever. You're sure as hell the first one I've ever trusted, so, yeah, I don't really care what might or might not happen someday. I just don't want to miss out on this moment with you, the one we have right now."

She searched his face. "I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to let go of the forever and the future. I just worry that I'll get my heart broken, or that I'll let you down, or that it will be too hard to leave, or that—"

He kissed her, hard, deeply, cutting off her words. He had long ago given up any thoughts of a future, because every one that he could envision sucked. It was better to just be in the present and take it day by day, because then he had a chance to breathe. Anything was endurable in the present. It was when he thought of doing it for a lifetime that it became too much.

He didn't want to think about the future with Taylor, because the future was like trying to hold sand between his fingers. It just slid out of reach, every time, with steady, relentless ruthlessness. But this moment, her kiss, her body...it was real. It was something he could hold onto for the rest of his life.

With a sigh, Taylor wrapped her arms around his neck. He could tell the moment she gave up resisting. Her body softened, and her kiss became more fluid, a searing, heated interplay of lips and tongues.

"I need skin," he whispered, rolling off her long enough to jerk off his jacket and shirt. He was back on top of her before she'd even reached for the hem of her shirt. "Let me." He pulled her up to a sitting position, then slid her jacket off her shoulders, kissing her collarbone as he did so.

"That feels amazing," she whispered, leaning her head against his as he pulled her hands free.

"You ain't seen nothin' yet, darlin'." He slid his hands down her arms to her wrists, then raised her arms, clasping them together over her head. For a moment, he held her there while he kissed her, a deeper, more penetrating kiss than before, one of mounting anticipation. He'd never seen her naked, never kissed her in all the places he wanted to, but he knew it was going to happen tonight. He wanted to tear his clothes off and attack her, but at the same time, now that he knew where this was going, he felt a sense of patience utterly foreign to him. He wanted to take his time and savor every moment, to slow time to a crawl so he could make it last as long as possible.

His cock was already hard and ready, straining against the front of his jeans as he grasped the hem of her shirt and slipped it upwards, his thumbs skimming along her skin as he pulled the fabric along her body, over her arms, and off.

He leaned back, his hands sliding down her arms again as he ran his gaze over her body for the first time. Her bra was pale blue, with just the faintest bit of lace around the edges. Demure, but sinfully sexy. So much better than the black and red overstated and overfilled bras that women used to show him when they'd corner him on the way back to his hotel. "Perfect," he whispered, lowering his head to press a kiss to the swell of her left breast.

She sighed, her fingers sliding through his hair as he kissed his way across her chest to her right breast. "You know what?"

"What?" He hooked his finger over the lace of her bra and tugged it down, exposing her nipple. It was hard and erect as he took the nub into his mouth, swirling his tongue over it as he sucked on it.

She made a small noise that made him grin, as she shifted her hips. "I've been kind of neurotic about sex since Dan left me. Insecure. Uptight, you know? But—"

He bit her nipple, grinning when she yelped and grabbed his shoulders. "But what?" He blew on the taut peak, easing the burn.

"Um...yeah..." She twisted restlessly under him as he lightly tweaked her other nipple between his thumb and forefinger. "With you...I just want more. It just...it's just right, you know? I mean..."

Feeling her gaze on him, he looked up at her. She was staring down at him, her fingers trailing through his hair.

He pressed a light kiss to her mouth. "What is it, Taylor?"

She ran her fingertips across his whiskers. "You make me want to forget all the noise in my life, and just be here. I can't even tell you how amazing it is to be in your arms. I don't want to be anywhere else, but there's so much to consider—"

"Shh." He kissed away her protest. It wasn't until she began to kiss him back that he broke the kiss, stroking her hair back from her face. "I know you want the marriage and kid thing, Taylor, and you deserve it. I'm not going to lie and mislead you. I can't do that. I don't know anything about creating a family, and I don't even know how to stay in the same place for more than a couple nights. If I wanted kids, though, I'd be perfect for you, because I don't give a shit about kids being biologically related to me. My parents were biologically mine, and they sucked beyond words. Biology doesn't create a family or love, or anything good, and I've lived that. I'm not the only man in the world who knows that, either." He cupped her breast. "You're amazing, not broken, and I want to make love to you until neither of us can move, but I have to be honest with you. I'll never be able to be that devoted husband you deserve. I can be your today, but for me, that's all there is anyway. That's what matters, that's where the living is done, so to me, that's everything. My today is my everything, and that's what I can give you."

He kissed her again, deeply, pouring every last bit of who he was into the kiss. He didn't have much to offer her. Shit, he had nothing to offer her. He was the one who was broken, lying in scattered fragments in his past, fragments that could never be rebuilt into anything whole or decent. "I'm not worthy of you," he whispered. "But I'll give you everything I have to give."

She pulled back, searching his face, and for a moment, time seemed to freeze inside his heart. He'd said too much. He never talked like that. He never said words like that. What the hell had he been thinking? He kept things clean, simple, and detached. That was how he lived. That was—

Then she smiled, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him. "Make love to me, Zane," she whispered between kisses. "I'm begging you."

The way Zane kissed Taylor took her breath away. His kiss seemed to sear every cell in her body, burning away all the tension and stress, leaving nothing behind but relentless, untainted need for him. She felt more alive than she had in so long, maybe ever.

His hands were like magic where they roamed her body, gliding over her skin as if she were made of the most beautiful, fragile porcelain, as if he believed he was the luckiest man on earth to be able to touch her.

The kiss was sensual and tempting, a slow, decadent seduction. It wasn't carnal heat, but something deeper and more powerful.

She'd never lived in the present. She was always trying to fix today to make tomorrow better, constantly looking ahead to where she was going, or looking behind her to make sure she didn't wind up in the same place she'd once been. But Zane's words had entranced her, making her want to crawl into his arms and never move, to simply be with him in the moment.

He slid down her body, trailing his lips along her throat, her collarbone, and to the swell of her breasts. His hands spanned her hips, his thumbs sliding below the waistband of her jeans in slow, tantalizing circles. Desire began to roll through her more intensely, and she shifted her hips restlessly. She clasped his shoulders, her fingers digging into his muscles.

She loved having his body against her. The feel of his skin sliding over hers was amazing. So much intimacy, so much sensation. She'd missed this kind of connection. She'd missed it far more than she'd realized. Or maybe, it wasn't simply that she'd missed it. Maybe it was that being touched by Zane was what she'd been waiting for all this time.

He lightly bit her nipple, and she gasped at the flood of desire…then he unfastened the button on her jeans. She tensed. Was she really going to do this? Was she really going to let him get her naked? Because she knew where it was going to lead. The need between them was too great. Nothing was going to stop them once they crossed that line. She closed her eyes, her fingers sliding through his hair as he kissed his way down her belly, pausing to lave her belly button as he unzipped her jeans.