Chapter 11 #2
The fluttering of her release began to build, that intangible feeling that something huge was bearing down on her, something bigger than she could control, too large to define, too much for her skin to contain.
The pleasure rushed at her suddenly and then over her, shattering her with brutal efficiency.
She couldn’t stop herself from bearing down on Ty and crying out, the magnitude of what he drew out of her too large for words.
Losing the graceful rhythm he’d kept, he gripped both her hips fiercely. Driving into her with thrusts so powerful he nearly unseated her, he followed her over the edge with a shout.
Kenzie closed her eyes and simply lived in the moment. No past. No future. Just the present existed. It was the only thing that mattered. She’d come too close to losing the chance to experience him even one more time, to losing him, and she didn’t want to go through that ever again.
There had to be a way out of the mess she’d made, a way to ensure everyone got what they most wanted—Ty could keep Gizmo, the brothers could keep Ty whole, and she...she could simply keep Ty.
TY LISTENED TO his heart. The act had become habitual, the first thing he did every morning and the last thing he did at night.
He had to count out one hundred consecutive beats before he could do anything else.
The organ—muscle? Or would it be a morgscle?
—tattooed a repeating design against his rib cage.
He forced his breathing to slow as he discreetly checked his pulse.
One sixty-four.
Not a bad postexertion rate.
Postexertion. He grinned. Postcoital, buddy. That would be postcoital.
His bedroom rodeo queen shifted beside him. She rested her head on his shoulder, her moist breath skating across his sweat-slicked skin.
Chilled, Ty fumbled for the edge of the quilt.
Kenzie sat up and pushed the thick fall of hair over her shoulder. “Any reason you’re manhandling the bedding like that?” She grabbed the edge of the quilt and then paused. “Ty?”
He closed his eyes. “Leave it alone, Kenzie.”
“Can’t.” She traced his stubbled jaw with the pads of her fingers.
“I mean it.”
“Still can’t,” she murmured. “It’s okay to be angry.
It’s also okay to admit you’re scared. You suffered a horrific injury.
Makes sense you’d want to use caution as you ease back into things.
” Her thumb drifted over the fullness of his lower lip.
“What doesn’t make sense is why you’re so willing to accept suffering and settle for survival instead of fighting to live. ”
She doesn’t understand.
His heart rate picked up speed, and Ty wondered that the morgscle didn’t bruise as it threw itself against his sternum harder and harder. That would be bad in its own right, having a bruised morgscle. Fixated on the repeating thump of his heart, he started counting out the beats.
One, two, three, four, five—
“Ty?” She cupped his jaw.
Shit. Have to start over.
He pulled free of her touch.
One, two, three—
“Seriously, Ty.” Completely unself-conscious, Kenzie moved to straddle his hips before putting a hand on either side of his face. “You have to slow down. You’re going to have a full-blown panic attack if you don’t.”
“You don’t get it,” he said through clenched teeth, his nose flaring on each exhale and nearly sucking closed on every harsh inhale. “You don’t know what it’s like, Mackenzie.”
“What what’s like?” she asked with undisguised concern.
“You can’t understand how it feels.” He dropped his fist to his chest, daring that damn morgscle to defy him again, to fail to carry out its responsibility.
“You haven’t ever...” An invisible band around his chest began to crank down, cutting off his air supply and making his heart pound so loudly in his head he struggled to hear anything else. “I think I’m having a heart attack.”
Her grip on his face tightened. “Look at me, Tyson.”
He shook his head, two short, fast jerks of the chin. “Get off me. Go get help. Please.”
“If I call your brothers, they’re going to bring in paramedics.
Given the remoteness of the ranch, you’re going to end up with a Life Flight helicopter in your front yard and guests ogling the cowboy they’ve only heard about but haven’t ever seen.
They’re going to airlift you to Amarillo where they’re going to give you something from the benzodiazepine family of meds to get you to calm down. ”
“Move!” he wheezed. He pulled her biceps and twisted his hips, trying to move her.
No luck.
“First you have to look at me.” The unforgiving authority in her voice demanded he comply.
Fear gripped him with all the fury of a pit bull after a fresh bone.
All his life he’d been written off as someone who needed micromanagement, a dreamy-eyed kid with his head in the clouds and a quick smile that lacked substance.
That stopped now. He was a grown man, and it was about time people started treating him like one.
He’d survived more in the past two months than most people encountered in a lifetime, from the injury to the loss of memory to the pain of recovery.
Resentment burned in him as he met her stolid stare.
“Tell me where you are.”
“Under you.”
One corner of her mouth kicked up. “Do you remember the last time you were there? It was in Fort Worth.”
“I can’t—”
She continued, talking over him. “You said it wasn’t where you wanted to be then, either.”
“Clearly, I was an idiot. Now move.”
“Clearly.” She stroked his hair off his forehead.
“I didn’t hurt you then, and I won’t hurt you now.
” Continuing with the soothing motion, she talked.
And talked. And talked some more. She told him about her favorite nice restaurant—San Francisco Steak House—and how she’d once driven seventy miles just to get to her favorite drive-through burger joint—Whataburger.
She told him how she’d had to argue with the salesman when she’d bought her last pickup truck because the man believed “a lady should never need four-wheel drive.” That particular story had been delivered with several eye rolls.
She told him how she’d ended up getting drunk in college one night when she and some friends had gone bowling.
She’d allegedly bowled the best game of her life—274—chomping on an unlit cigar and sporting a Hawaiian shirt she’d won off an elderly man on the neighboring lane.
It was all alleged because she couldn’t remember anything after the third game.
And then she’d grimaced as she recounted the raging hangover the following morning.
She told him how she’d missed her senior prom because, even at seventeen, horses had mattered more than boys, and she insisted she’d never been as boy crazy as her friends had.
“Not until you met me anyway.”
Kenzie smiled down at him, the look in her eyes no longer challenging but rather filled with humor and the warmth of good memories.
“Sweetheart,” she said as she waggled her eyebrows à la Groucho Marx, “you were never a boy.” She leaned forward and gently nipped his chin. “You still drive me crazy, though.”
His hands moved of their own volition, coming to rest on her bare hips. “Feeling’s entirely mutual.”
“What are we going to do about that?” The question, while delivered in a light tone, had a thread of seriousness woven through it.
He considered her, tracing his thumbs over the slight swells of her hips, letting them dip into the shallow depressions in front of her hip bones. “Hard to say. You going to keep talking me down from panic attacks?”
She lifted one shoulder in a casual shrug. “Why not? I can’t do anything with the horses. Not until the snow melts anyway. How long does it usually stay on the ground?”
“Could be days, could be weeks. Never can tell around here.” He shifted under her, settling his burgeoning erection against her core. “About the panic attacks—I suppose we’ll have to work something out. You’re a hell of a lot cheaper than my prescription.”
He had the sinking feeling she would prove herself to be far more addictive, though.