A Real Cowboy Knows How to Kiss (11 page)

He shrugged noncommittally, as if the question didn't matter to him. "He was an abusive alcoholic who knocked up women as fast as he could. He allowed all his bastards to run around the house trying to find food while he drank, smoked, and took his hatred of life out on all of us, so yeah, not a good guy. He had no expectations for any of us, except to get out of his way, or to be target practice for his fists."

She felt her jaw drop open. "Really? He punched you?"

"When I was little, he did, but when I got bigger, no." He flexed his arm mockingly. "One of the advantages of being in prime physical condition is that an out of shape bum can't push you around, even when you're fifteen."

She felt like such a complainer. Her heart broke for what he'd endured, and for the casual way he blew it off. There was no way a child could endure that and not bear the scars on his heart. "I'm so sorry. Your situation was so much worse than mine. I had no idea what you were going through—"

"No. Don't belittle yourself." He leaned over her again, his face intense as he stared at her. "My life was easier, because by the time I came to live with him full-time, I knew he was a bastard and I didn't care what he thought. I stayed out of his way and lived my life. Your parents controlled you from the time you were a baby, and that's a hell of a lot harder to deal with. Conditional love is more destructive than no love, because they can use it to manipulate and destroy you. Just because they didn't shove cigarettes into your arm doesn't mean they weren't equally as shitty."

Her heart turned. "Your dad burned you with his cigarettes?"

"Once. I never let him do it again." There was a hardness to Steen's face that made her shiver. He may have been her childhood crush and the only boy in school that made her feel noticed, but there was a side to him that was so tough and hard, a world she had no experience with at all.

"I'm so sorry." She reached up and pressed her hand to his face. His whiskers prickled her palm, but she didn't mind. "You deserved so much more, Steen. I'm so glad that you were able to find your path and find a life with people who do see your value."

Something flickered in his eyes, something dark and dangerous.

He didn't answer, but instead, he took her hand and pressed his lips to her palm, tracing kisses across her skin. One kiss. Then another. Then another.

The moment he felt her hand against his lips, Steen knew he was lost. No one had ever looked at him the way Erin did, as if her heart was breaking for his pain. No one had ever assumed that he was the good guy that had found his path. He was so used to being the scum, and he knew that with his prison record, that would follow him throughout his life.

He had a feeling he should tell Erin about his stint in prison so she wouldn't hate him when she found out how wrong she'd been about him, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. He desperately needed her to look at him like he was a worthwhile human being. He'd thought he was long past caring what anyone thought about him, but he'd been wrong. He needed Erin to think he was okay, and he needed it with every fiber of his soul.

He couldn't break this moment, and this connection by poisoning it with who he really was. He wanted to be the guy who Erin saw when she looked at him, and he wanted to erase all the damage her parents and her ex had done to her.

She was watching him carefully, her gaze riveted to his as he kissed her palm. "That feels really good," she whispered.

"It's supposed to." He kissed the underside of her wrist, then pressed another kiss slightly further along her arm. "Touching is good."

She shook her head. "My family never hugged, and Louis never touched me. I'm not used to it. I didn't think I needed it." Her eyes were wide and vulnerable as she watched him. "But my whole body is crying out for you right now."

Her words were so honest and vulnerable that they seemed to plunge right past his shields, deep into the part of him that he'd shut down for so long. He went still, staring at her, searching her face for some kind of deception or manipulation, but there was nothing. Just stark honesty and need. He swore under his breath as he released her hand and leaned over her. He pressed a light kiss to her cheek.

Her eyes fluttered shut, and she put her hand over his, where it was still resting on her belly. "Why are you doing this?" she whispered, her voice breathy and shaky.

"Because I need to. I need to wipe away all the taint from your parents and Louis, and I need to feel what it's like to be with the one woman on this earth who has a good soul." He kissed the corner of her mouth, barely able to keep himself from rolling on top of her and taking her the way he wanted to. They were alone out in the wilderness, and their horses were tethered nearby. There was no one around for miles, and he knew that they had complete privacy under the brilliant blue sky that he'd barely seen for those four years in prison. "Tell me no," he said, kissing the other side of her mouth. "Tell me to stop. I won't stop on my own, but I know you deserve so much more than me."

Her eyes opened. "What do I deserve?"

He lightly bit her lower lip, then traced the tip of his tongue across it. "You deserve to feel like you are the sexiest, most treasured, and most brilliant woman on the face of the earth." He kissed along her jaw toward her ear. "You deserve to be kissed like the world will stop turning if the kiss ever ends." He grazed his teeth over her earlobe. "You deserve to be kissed by a man who makes you feel like there is no woman on earth who will ever, ever, matter to him, except for you."

Her fingers tightened around his hand. "Steen."

He pulled back far enough to look at her. "Yeah?"

"That's how you make me feel."

He went still, his heart suddenly thundering through him. He knew then that he was going to have to tell her right then, right there, who he really was and what he'd done. It didn't matter that he'd lose out on the way she looked at him. There was no way he was going to be one more black mark on her soul by betraying her. Swearing, he pulled back. "I'm not that guy, Erin. I swear, I'm not that guy. I can't be what you deserve—"

She put her finger over his lips, silencing him. "I know you have secrets, Steen. So do I. But right now, do they matter? Can't this moment just be what it is? I know who you are in your soul, and you see me for who I am. Isn't that enough?" Her eyes were shining with unshed tears. "Can't you just be who you are for now? Can't we forget about all the baggage and secrets, and put them aside for this moment? Can't you just kiss me? Please? I want this moment with you. It's the only way I'll ever know what it's supposed to be like to be kissed by someone who actually wants me just for me. I don't want anyone else. Just you."

Something shifted inside him, something that broke through his need to shield her from who he really was and made him want to be that guy, for her, right now. He knew that he saw in her things that no one else saw. He
knew
that. Yeah, he'd stand back and let her go home in ten days, but she knew she was leaving as well, so there were limits to what she could expect of this, and of him, especially when it came to a promise of forever. Could ten days change her life? His?

She smiled and slid her hands behind his neck, gently tugging him closer. "Face it, Steen, you need this as much as I do. There's always been something between us, and we both know it." She traced her fingers on the back of his neck, a gesture so tender and seductive that it almost broke him.

He had two choices right now. Get on his horse and get as far away as he could from her, or kiss her the way he wanted to.

There was no way he was going to reject her, not when what she wanted from him was exactly what he wanted to give her. He slid his free hand behind her head, tangling his fingers in her hair. "If you had any idea how much I want you, you'd never offer yourself up like this," he said softly, flicking the hem of her shirt aside so that his palm was spread on her bare skin.

Her stomach shuddered under his touch, and she sucked in her breath. "The fact that you want to touch me is the most incredible feeling," she said. "The fact you want me is...amazing."

"Oh, sweetheart, you have no idea." He finally succumbed to the need that had been coursing through him for so long, and he kissed her. It wasn't a chaste, innocent kiss. He was long past being able to do that. It was a kiss with no boundaries, a kiss that shattered any last remnant of resistance, a kiss that promised every inch of his soul.

The moment Steen kissed her, Erin felt like everything she understood about the world had shattered. His kiss was so intense, so demanding, so incredibly intoxicating that she knew instantly that she was being kissed by a man who had never lived behind walls like those that had constrained her for so long.

He kissed her with an untamed, unashamed intensity that held nothing back. His lips were hot and demanding, coaxing her to let him in. The moment she parted her lips to kiss him back, he invaded her mouth with his tongue, a seductive, sensual assault that streaked through her body, tearing her from its protective, dead shell and catapulting her into a world of sensation and emotion that she'd never felt before.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, holding on desperately as she kissed him back, swept into passion so intense she could barely even think, let alone resist it. As he kissed her, he slid his hand across her torso, caressing every inch. His fingers brushed against the underside of her breast, and she almost gasped at the intensity of the sensation.

He gave her no time to react, and before she knew what he'd done, he'd unhooked the front clasp of her bra. Her breasts fell free, and exhilaration rushed through her at the sensation of being utterly free from constraint. He cupped her left breast and thumbed her nipple. The bud became hard instantly, and she squirmed, barely able to stand the intensity of her response to him.

"Sit up for a sec." His voice was low and thick as he grabbed her hands and pulled her upright.

She barely had time to find her balance before he'd grabbed her shirt and pulled it and her bra over her head. Embarrassment flooded her cheeks when his gaze went to her breasts, but before she could hide them, his face softened with such emotion that she was no longer afraid.

"They're beautiful," he whispered as he bent his head and pressed a kiss to each breast, his kiss so tender that she wanted to cry.

She ran her fingers through his hair. "How are you like this? How do you make me feel so beautiful and appealing? And wanted?"

He sat up, put his hands on her hips, and pulled her onto his lap. She wrapped her legs around his waist, faintly embarrassed to be sitting on his lap half-naked while they were outside in plain sight of anyone who happened by. At the same time, she felt wildly exhilarated to feel the breeze and the warm sun on her back, and the press of his erection against the juncture of her thighs through her jeans.

"Because I think you're amazing," he said. "I'm just letting you feel what I feel." Then, before she could talk more, he kissed her again, deeply, passionately, like a man who had been starved for her touch and couldn't go one more minute without her.

His hands were all over her upper body, tracing along her spine, cupping her breasts, and even sliding down over her hips to her butt. The sensation of skin on skin was incredible, and she wanted more. She wanted to touch him like he was touching her, to feel his skin beneath her palms, to taste him the way he was tasting her.

"Go ahead," he whispered against her ear. "Do it."

She realized suddenly that she'd been gripping the hem of his shirt, her fingers nearly shredding the material she was holding it so hard. "Is it okay?"

Steen laughed under his breath as he pulled back from her. "Sweetheart, it's more than okay." He peeled her hand from his shirt and pressed it to the front of his jeans. "Feel that?"

Her cheeks turned red. "Yes."

"That's your green light. You can do anything you want to me." He framed her face. "I'm not like Louis," he said, searching her face. "There's no chance on God's green earth that I would
eve
r prefer to have your hands off my body instead of on it. Do you understand? I want this. I want your kiss. I want your touch. I want you to feel how amazing you are and how much I want you."

She stared at him in wonderment. "You mean that."

"Hell, yeah, I mean it." With a low groan, he released her face, grabbed the hem of his shirt, and ripped it over his head, just as he'd done in the barn. But this time, she wasn't looking at him as a patient. She was seeing him as a man, a man she'd been in love with since she was fourteen years old, a man who
wanted
her to touch him.

After growing up with parents who never hugged and living with a husband who'd banished her from physical proximity, let alone intimacy, it was so foreign to be with a man who didn't shut her out.

Tentatively, almost afraid he was going to stop her, she ran her fingers across his chest. His muscles were cut and defined, despite how lean he was, and she could only imagine the raw breadth of him when he hadn't been weeks from almost dying. She brushed her fingers through the hair on his chest, tracing its path toward the waistband of his jeans. His stomach tightened as she ran her fingers across his abs, and she felt the rock hard muscles beneath his skin. She glanced up at his face and saw he was watching her with smoldering eyes, as if he were doing everything in his power not to tear the rest of her clothes off and plunge right into her.

Exhilaration rippled through her, and a heady sense of empowerment. She worked her way back up his chest, then lightly pushed on him. "Lie down." His body was so rigid with need that she didn't expect him to acquiesce.

In fact, for a brief moment, all he did was quirk one eyebrow at her. "You're bossing me around?"

"I'm trying."