Twenty-Seven | Colson
Gravel crunches below my truck tires, the sound grating against my skin. We should both be ecstatic about the outcome of this last event in Salt Lake City. Harlow placed fourth, and I placed second. Honestly, I’m more excited for her than I am for myself, and that’s saying a lot.
Things have been relatively silent between Harlow and me since I kissed her. The worst thing is that I can’t tell what’s going through her head.
Unfortunately, I know what’s going through mine.
That was the best fucking kiss I’ve ever had in my life, and I’ve been trying to keep my dick from waking just thinking about it. Her lips. Her delicate tongue. The way she gasped and moaned when my finger brushed against her sensitive core that was begging for more.
Her mouth may feed me lies, but her body gives her away.
It’s been two nights since that moment transpired between us in the back of the arena, and each day when we got back to the hotel, I ended up with my fist wrapped around my cock.
I tried not to think of her, but she seeped through my skin with the scalding water as I pumped my overly hardened dick to the thought of her under me on that barrel.
When I came, I told myself that when it disappeared down the drain, it would cleanse her from my system.
Then my fingers choked my cock the next night to the thought of her hotel room being a floor under mine. And then I pleasured myself again this morning, before we met at the airport, so I could suppress the urge to kiss her again.
I want her.
I want her so badly that it’s painful to look at her.
We pass under the sign with the Payne family brand hanging over the driveway, and the ranch house comes into view. I can sense her eyes on me, but when I glance over, she instantly looks away. When I finally park in the driveway, I hop out and round the hood, opening her door for her.
Her hair is down and straight today. The sun overhead illuminates the strands, making them appear like sparkling champagne falling over her shoulders.
I want to massage the lines that form between her brows with my thumb. “Thank you,” she says in shock at my courtesy. When she hops out, the front of her body brushing against my front traps her breath in her lungs.
She steps away from me and the door, and I close it.
There’s no point in avoiding this very necessary conversation any longer. We need to have it, whether she wants to or not. “Want to talk about it?”
She shuts the idea down real fast. “Nope.”
“Come on, Harlow, we need to discuss what happened.”
“Not much to discuss. We kissed. That’s it.”
My head cocks, and I blow out an exasperated laugh. “That’s it?”
I take a step forward, her back hitting the passenger door when she retreats one. “Yes.”
“I must be mistaken then.” I prop my hand above her on the window, caging her below me. “Because I remember my fingers acquainting themselves with your pussy. That’s not nothing.”
Her jaw clenches at the same time her eyes widen. She places her hands on my chest, shoving me backward. “I’m not doing this with you. You need to forget it happened, just like I’m going to.”
“One problem, I can’t. And I don’t want to.” I want to discuss what this means.
Fuck our rivalry. Forget about the competition between us. We tainted both the moment we snapped, and if it leaves us scarred, then what’s adding a few more? We already have them, the imperfections binding us together in a way nothing else can.
She blows past me toward the porch, yelling, “That’s your problem. Not mine.”
Like fuck it is.
She opens the front door and storms inside, leaving me to haul our suitcases out of the truck bed.
As I’m pulling them inside, I hear her upstairs, and I’m all too curious about the commotion.
When I get to the second floor, I stand in her doorway with my arms folded across my chest, watching her untangle the lasso that had been hanging on the wall as a piece of décor.
I lean against the frame. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m putting a stop to this.”
She stomps past me, putting one end of the rope at the edge of the stairs and the other end of the lasso at the end of the hall.
She’s split the hallway in two.
Her room on one side, mine on the other.
“I’m drawing the line. No more kissing, no more … whatever it was that happened between us in Salt Lake City. None of it, Colson.” She braces her hands on her hips. “I’m serious.”
I find her amusing.
Harlow walks toward me, placing both hands on my shoulder blades as she pushes me back toward my bedroom door. Then, she takes a pronounced, large step over to her side of the hallway to prove her point.
For a moment, I try to keep my eyes from falling to the soft swells of her breasts in her low-cut, long-sleeved shirt. But then I realize, I don’t care. I eye-fuck the hell out of them, not giving a damn.
“Stop that,” she scolds.
I point to the rope and release a manic laugh.
“You think that’s going to solve this? Drawing a physical line between us doesn’t change anything!
” I lower my voice. “Because I bet, when you pull out your vibrator later tonight and hold it between your legs, you’re going to imagine it’s my head between your thighs. ”
The flush of bright pink that blooms across her chest and cheeks pulls at the smug grin on my lips.
She swallows, her voice cracking. “I won’t.”
I shrug nonchalantly. “Okay. But just so you know, while you’re pleasuring yourself in there, I’ll be in my room with my fist around my cock, pretending it’s your beautiful throat taking every inch.
” She noticeably trembles, and I take a step, letting the lasso touch the toe of my boots, but I don’t cross it.
Her face is a hair away from mine. “And when you come tonight, I’m considering that orgasm mine. ”
She sinks her teeth into her plush bottom lip. They say the eyes are the window to the soul, and I can see she wants me as much as I want her.
She’s just too fucking stubborn to admit it.
Retreating a step, I blow out a frustrated breath. How I went from loathing this woman to wanting her in more ways than just in my bed, I’ll never understand. Our banter makes me want to slam my mouth to hers—to shut her up and kiss her till she’s melting in my arms like she was in Salt Lake.
I bet the sex would be as explosive as we are.
Harlow will come to realize that sooner or later.
“Are you hungry?”
Harlow searches my expression. “Are you about to make a sexual joke?”
“No. But if that’s what’s on your mind—”
“It’s not.”
Bullshit.
She huffs, giving me an answer. “Yes, I’m hungry. But after traveling, I want to shower first and check on Cosmos.”
Her growing fascination with Paisley’s horse pulls at the frayed and rotting rope in my chest. Whenever I look at Cosmos, hundreds of memories flash across my vision. Visions of hot summer days when toys were sprawled across the front porch, when my sister and I were just two young kids.
When Paisley chose her first horse, she wanted one that looked exactly like that plastic white-and-brown paint horse that she took with her everywhere.
Church.
Camping.
The lake.
School—shoving it into her backpack as kids do.
That toy shifted before our eyes into a living, breathing thing when my dad took us to an auction. She begged my dad for the young mare as she trotted around the pen. Before we knew what was happening, my dad’s hand flew up, and the announcer was saying, “Sold to paddle number 547.”
Paisley’s accident might have changed our family dynamic, but Cosmos hasn’t been the same either since Paisley can’t ride her.
I’ve tried to work with Cosmos, but she won’t have anything to do with me.
Before Harlow, I struggled with the thought of keeping something so beautiful and wild contained within four stall walls when she’s not grazing the pastures.
However, the idea of selling her didn’t sit right with me, given she’s not my horse.
When I walked into the stable that day to see Harlow’s arms braced on the stall door and Cosmos before her as they shared the same string of breath, it gave me confidence that maybe she could be tamed again—find someone new to trust and give her devoted loyalty to.
Ironic, considering the woman before her can’t seem to be tamed either.
Cosmos and Harlow are one and the same.
I nod, shoving my hands in my pockets. “I’ll make us some sandwiches.”
At some point, while I’m in the kitchen, moving about and collecting things to make our sandwiches, the front door closes.
I peer out the kitchen window, watching Harlow walk to the stable in her usual lazy day outfit—sweats, her boots, and a maroon Carhartt jacket with her hair tossed up into a high ponytail.
I haven’t had a woman who isn’t blood invade my space in the way Harlow has.
One-night stands happened, but they were rare.
It’s the reason I would partake in entertaining myself with a buckle bunny or fan each weekend on the road, but this year that urge hasn’t been there.
If I’m being honest, not since I saw Harlow at that first event in Tucson at the bar at the start of the season.
It might be dangerous, but I’m getting used to having her flood my home with her warmth and bright smiles. She effortlessly fits in with my property, like she was always meant to be here, working with my horses, baking in my kitchen, and driving me goddamn wild.
She opens the double doors to the stable and slips inside, closing them behind her, but not before looking up toward me as if she knows she’s being watched. My head falls between my shoulders.
Like her, I should be cautious. God, if kissing her—feeling her—is branding me this way, I should be concerned about what this might mean for us if it goes further.
However, I can’t bring myself to care.
I don’t particularly enjoy being patient, but I will.
One time with her wasn’t enough.