He said my name and his free hand left my waist to cup one of my br**sts. He brushed his thumb back and forth across the tight and achy point until I was seeing stars and having a really hard time holding on to any kind of regular motion. Pleasure was riding hard at the base of my spine, my skin was glowing and slick with exertion and the need to let go. If he didn’t catch up I was going to go over the edge without him and I wasn’t going to feel bad about it.

I squealed in surprise when he moved rapidly and flipped us over. He used a knee to shove my legs farther apart to make room for him to move as he swiveled his h*ps in a way that made my eyes cross as he picked up his pace as soon as he was situated in the new position. He caught my hands in one of his and stretched them up and over my head. The other he used to brace his weight as he thrust and pounded into me like he was chasing all the desire he had built up between us to claim as his own. The pressure of his thick c**k in my swollen channel was already enough to have me ready to come, but the added sensation of those metal balls dragging and massaging along every wall, every nerve ending, and I was sure he was going to have my head exploding on top of having a body breaking apart in a blinding orgasm. Rowdy let his head fall so that it was resting in the crook of my neck and I felt the sharp sting of his teeth in the delicate skin there, and that was all it took for it to be over for me.

I felt my inner walls grab him, felt the bottom drop out of his control, and suddenly he was moving just as desperately and frantically as I had been. I loved the way his heart thundered in tune with my own. I loved the way his strong body bowed and felt like stone all along my much softer curves. I loved the way he panted his completion in my ear and the way he collapsed on top of me when he was all wrung out and empty. I loved that sex with him was everything that sex should be and then some. He was really good with a lot more than just his mouth and had just shown me everything I had been searching for when I set off blindly for Colorado.

It might be wild, uninhibited, and a little dirty, but sex with him still felt like a safer place than I had ever been before.

He hefted himself up in a push-up and I shamelessly watched the way it made his biceps bulge.

“Probably the best touchdown I can ever remember.” He was trying to make a joke but his eyes were dead serious, so I didn’t answer. I just lifted a hand and cupped his cheek while we watched each other.

It was a nice moment, another sweet memory that I could tuck away and add to the ones I already had because of him, but it was broken by the keening whine of a puppy.

I sucked in a breath as Rowdy moved off of me and rolled to look over the edge of the bed.

“I think we might have scandalized him.” He scooped up the dog and put him on the bed as he swung his long legs over and rose to his feet. “I forgot all about him when I saw you licking that damn knife.”

I had forgotten about him, too. I was a terrible puppy mom. Jimbo licked my chin and he did indeed look like he was giving Rowdy a jealous-puppy-dog glare.

“I made some sandwiches. I’ll let him out and we can eat.”

He nodded and looked back over his shoulder at me with a flash of white teeth.

“Now ask me if I won, Salem.”

I groaned and threw a pillow at his smug face. “I think we both won, smartass.”

He went toward the bathroom laughing the entire way.

CHAPTER 9

Rowdy

I DIDN’T LEAVE SALEM’S place until it was time for me to go back to work on Tuesday. By then we were both worn out, and the idea that it was just some down and dirty sex to get the urge gone was a joke.

All the reasons I had adored her, needed her, admired her when I was younger came back in a knee-weakening flash right on top of the fact that no girl ever in my extensive history of fooling around had ever blown my mind in bed the way Salem did. She was funny. She was quick and sharp tongued. She was wicked street-smart and called things plainly as she saw them but that never made her seem harsh. She was also sweet, sexy as all hell, and absolutely the most beautiful thing I had ever seen stripped na**d and writhing under me. If ever there was a friend I wanted to have benefits with, it was her.

I was also grateful she had let our weekend together pass without a single mention of the elephant in the room—her sister. We joked around about Texas, talked about some of the good things we both remembered, and basically tried to cram a decade of catching up into two days between bouts of sex that made me hot and bothered thinking about them. We reminisced about Phil and compared the tattoos he had left on us to remember him by. For her it was an intricately done Lady of Guadalupe—the patron saint of Mexico—a shout-out to her heritage and traditional tattooing. Mine was the memorial tattoo for my mom. Considering Phil was the only other parental figure I had ever had in my life, it seemed fitting he was the one to pay homage to my late mother with his craft.

Salem just got me. She got my art and why it was so much more important to me than football had ever been. It was nice to spend time with someone that I didn’t have to try and justify all my life choices to. It also kind of nice to spend more than one day with the same girl even if I was scared of getting too close, of ending up too wrapped up in her because she had a history of leaving. I didn’t tell her any of that, though, because I didn’t want to put a damper on the time we had together.

When I worked at the new shop for my shift on Wednesday it was a little awkward. Mostly because I wanted to bend her over the front desk and plow into her over and over again. She kept things professional but far more pleasant than they had been when we worked together up to this point. She asked me if I wanted to go to lunch with her, and while my idea of lunch would’ve been a quickie in the backseat of my SUV, I agreed to go with her anyway, and having burgers and fries turned out to be almost as enjoyable as the quickie would’ve been. I really did like hanging out with her. I always had.

The rest of the week was busy. I had a full schedule plus Rule and Nash had finally gotten me a set of sketches to work with for the apparel and I had handed them off to Salem to get to work. That meant any night I thought about calling her up she was working late and I didn’t want to pull her away from her project. It was a weird thing to be running around after a girl. I was used to them coming to me, and when one didn’t have the time I usually just found another one that did. I couldn’t do that with her. No one would be a substitute for all her bronze beauty and endless-night eyes. I wasn’t going to sell myself short on getting what I really wanted even if it meant my pants got a little too tight every time I looked at her.

I was back at the new shop on Friday and I would have been lying if I didn’t admit I was more than looking forward to spending a day ogling Salem’s backside while working. I had every intention of asking her if she wanted to do something with me when we got off of work as well. Of course by “do something,” I meant go to bed and not leave until the next morning but I would let her fill in the blanks.

I was on the corner at a stoplight, getting ready to cross the street to the shop in LoDo, when the classy blonde that had bailed on getting a tattoo a few weeks ago was suddenly hovering at my elbow. I nodded at her and gave her a friendly grin. She looked like she cost a million bucks and could give Shaw a run for her money in terms of having the bluest blood.

I figured I would say hello since she looked like she was trying to figure out something to say to me in order to break the awkward silence hovering between the two of us.

“Hello again.”

She blinked at me and I saw her gulp like she was extremely nervous. She looked like she was afraid I was going to mug her or something.

It happened. I wasn’t exactly petite and I did have a giant tattoo on the side of my neck and a couple scattered across my knuckles, so I knew that I could come across as intimidating. Especially to a single woman alone on the street with me. However, I had a weird feeling she was standing on this corner specifically for me.

“Hello.” Her voice actually had a quiver in it and her blue eyes were darting around as she looked everywhere but directly at me. She was really attractive in a high-class way and she looked familiar beyond the fact I remembered her from the shop. She shifted on shoes that looked like they probably cost more than I made in a month and fiddled with an earring that was undoubtedly a real diamond.

“Are these your stomping grounds or are you working your nerve back up to get some ink?” I was always fairly slick around a pretty lady and I wanted to set her at ease.

“I work around the corner. I’m a lawyer. I practice family law.”

She looked like a lawyer. “That sounds boring.” The idea of being trapped in an office or in court all day sounded like my own personal vision of hell.

She laughed a little and stopped fidgeting with her earring. “I do a lot of work with kids and children’s rights, so it’s okay. I’m Sayer by the way.”

She stuck out her hand and I shook it to be polite. She even had a highbrow name. “Rowdy.”

Something crossed her gaze and she gave me a smile that was shaded with a sadness that I didn’t understand. She was kind of an odd bird.

“That’s unusual.”

I shrugged. “I grew up in Texas. Everyone gets a nickname.”

She made another strange face and sort of sounded like she was choking. She lifted her hand to her throat and I thought for a second her eyes filled with tears, but she blinked them away.

I frowned at her and asked her if she was okay. She nodded at me and took a deep breath.

“I’m sorry. I just . . .” She shook her head a little and clutched the strap of her purse. “Have you ever thought you knew someone—like knew everything about them—and then—poof—it turns out they were a total stranger all along?”

I had no idea why she was asking me that, or who she was, or what she was all about, but I felt kind of bad for her because she seemed a little lost and that was something I could entirely relate to. Not everyone got a pristine backstory.

“More than once.”

I had thought Poppy was the one and I had been wrong about her and who I thought she was. I had needed Salem, relied on her to be my calm in the storm, but she had left me adrift in the treacherous ocean of uncertainty, and now I didn’t know what to do with her and the way I wanted to cling to her in a dangerous way all over again. She wasn’t who I had thought she was either—then or now. Probably the most important person I had thought I knew inside and out was myself. It wasn’t until Poppy broke my heart, left me empty, that I had to really look at myself and figure out who I was going to be without her and without the love I had nurtured for years and years. It took striking out on my own, giving myself over to art and a new life in a new place, for me to figure out who Rowdy really was.

“Did it make you feel like you should have known better all along?”

“It made me feel like I should have paid closer attention to the signs that were already there.”

This was an odd conversation to be having with a stranger on the corner of a busy intersection.

“Maybe that’s what I should’ve done.”

I smiled at her, after all she was good-looking, and a few weeks ago I probably would have asked her out even though she was miles out of my league and not even slightly my type.

“If it was a guy that pulled one over on you, don’t sweat it. You’re a pretty girl and we’re generally not worth it.”

She shifted a little and gave me that smile laced with soul-deep sadness again. “Oh, he definitely isn’t worth it.”

My phone beeped in my pocket and I pulled it out to see a text from Salem saying my first appointment was waiting on me. I swore under my breath a little and gave the blonde one last grin.

“I always say things happen for a reason. If he fooled you for a while there was a reason behind it. You weren’t meant to know the truth until it was the right time. I gotta run, but take care, okay?”