Runaway Cowboy Bodyguard Bonus Scene

One year together, and I know a lot of her looks now. The one that means she’s about to laugh. The one that means I’m about to lose an argument. The one she gives me when I’ve said something stupid and she hasn’t decided whether it’s worth correcting. And the one that usually ends with my clothes on the floor.

This isn’t that one.

Probably.

“You know where to find the scissors and trimmer,” I say.

Her eyebrows climb. “You’re making it that easy?”

I shrug.

She stares at me.

I take a drink of beer then stand and grab a chair, leading it to the middle of the room. “That about right?”

“You moved quickly from refusal to cooperative acceptance.”

“Got better things to fight with you about.”

She puts a hand on her hip. “As in?”

“Music. Grits. Bandanas versus silk scarves.”

She snorts, heading down the hallway to grab her gear.

I take a seat and resign myself to my fate. What did I expect marrying a beauty salon owner anyway?

Maybe it’s exactly what I expected.

Her fingers slide through my hair. Fuck. I put both hands on my thighs.

Rosie stops. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“You just went weird.”

“Didn’t.”

“You did.”

I look straight ahead.

She watches me in the mirror. Then her eyes drop. To my hands. “Wait.”

No.

Her mouth falls open. “You did that last time.”

“Did what?”

“That.”

I glance down like I don’t know what she’s talking about. Hands flat against my thighs. “Sat?”

She starts laughing.

“Rosie.”

“Oh my God.”

“Cut my hair.”

“You were losing your mind.”

“No.”

“You were.”

“Haircut.”

She has to put the clippers down because she’s laughing too hard to hold them.

I wait. Patiently. Mostly.

Finally, she wipes beneath one eye. “And then you needed wood.”

I go still.

Her laughter stops. Slowly, the smile comes back. “There wasn’t anything wrong with that fire, was there?”

I look toward the hearth. Perfectly healthy. Plenty of wood stacked beside it. “Needed another log.”

“Beckett.”

“September.”

“What?”

“Night. Cold.”

She makes a strangled sound.

“Getting low.”

“BECKETT.”

What I don’t say? How fucking tied in knots she had me. How much I wanted her and how goddamn obvious my body had made it. More wood, indeed.

Her thumb brushes near my temple. Then she stops. “Scar okay?”

Same question. Same soft voice. Something in my chest pulls tight.

She asked me the first time, too. Didn’t ask where I got it. Didn’t ask what happened. Just whether she could touch it.

I didn’t know what to do with that then. Might not know now. “Yeah.”

She starts the clippers again.

I watch her concentrate, biting her bottom lip.

“Got it defending her.”

The clippers stop. Rosie’s eyes drop to mine.

I don’t have to say who. Maybe that’s why I said it.

“Your mom.”

“Yeah.”

She waits.

I look at my hands. “Wasn’t big enough yet.”

Her face changes.

“You were a kid.”

“Yeah.”

Then her fingers touch the hair beside the scar. Not the scar itself. “Can I?”

My throat works. “Yeah.”

Her thumb brushes lightly over it.

She doesn’t make it a thing. Doesn’t start asking questions. What happened. Which stepfather. Why.

She just lets it be.

Lets me be.

Fuck.

Exactly what I need.

She brushes the last loose hairs from my neck.

“There.”

“Good?”

She studies me. “Handsome.”

“Was before.”

“There’s Mr. Humble.”

“You noticed my hands on my thighs,” I say. “Before.” My eyes meet hers. “Where’d you want them the last time?”

A wicked grin seizes her generous lips. “Thought you’d never ask,” she says in sultry tones, setting down the scissors and reaching for me. One hand settles on each hip.

“Fuck,” I say, thinking back on before. How this would’ve short-circuited my goddamn brain. Still kinda does, especially looking up at her breathtaking face. The face I learned to love from a photo.

“You okay?”

“Don’t know,” I confess. “Can’t think.”

“Fortunately, you don’t have to.” Her nose scrunches looking at the chair. “Pretty sure you already don’t fit this thing. Pretty sure if I sat in your lap, we’d both end up on the floor.”

“Floor?”

Before she can say another word, I’ve got fur blankets and pillows placed strategically in front of the fireplace and two fresh bottles of beer.

“This okay?”

“I like the way you think,” she purrs, grabbing a bottle and sitting cross-legged on the floor.

“Not like that,” I say.

Her brows knit.

“Reclining. Massage.”

She laughs. “You really can’t get more than a few words out at a time when you’re thinking about what I’m thinking about? Can you?”

“Yep.”

“Good.” She smiles like the fucking sunshine breaking through clouds. “Because you’ve got better things to do with your mouth anyway.”

“I do,” I say, heat climbing up the back of my neck.

My hands slide over her slowly. She moans as I work out the knots in her shoulders and neck. All the places she gets tight from hairdressing. Fingers kneading the tight bundles at the base of her skull then working down slow until she’s loose and jointless beneath me.

“If I had known you knew how to do this last time.”

I chuckle. “We’d have never left Jarbidge.”

“No, we wouldn’t have.”

I wrap my arms around her, and she giggles when my beard tickles her cheek. I lean in, feathering my lips over her jawline. “Sexy,” I whisper, sucking her earlobe.

“Could say the same about you,” she whispers in silky tones, moaning and snuggling back against me.

My hand slides down her stomach, slipping beneath her waistband for slow, easy circles. Just the way she likes them.

“Mmm,” she says, hips arching toward me. “You know how to spoil a girl, don’t you?”

“My girl,” I murmur. “I know how to spoil my girl.” My lips descend to her neck and shoulders as I slowly unravel her with my hands.

I add a finger, sliding slowly against her drawing pleasure until she’s drenched and quivering.

“So close,” I growl.

“It’s because my body loves you,” she whispers.

“That all?” I ask, lifting my head, eyeing her for a moment.

She giggles. “Maybe more than my body.”

My hands still.

“What?”

I shake my head.

“Beckett.”

“Still gets me.” My voice sounds raw.

“What does?”

My arms tighten around her.

“That you stayed.”

 “I didn’t just stay.”

“No.”

“I married you.”

“Yeah.”

“You gonna recover from that eventually?”

“Nope.”

The fire crackles. Golden light burnishes her skin—the curve of her lips, the delicate sweep of her cheekbones, the warm cinnamon of her eyes.

“I love you, Husband.”

Fuck.

Still does something to me.

Probably always will.

I wrap her tight, whispering in her ear… the thing I only tell her.

Her lips find mine, and I’m gone. Breathless, hungry, lost in her. I push her to the edge again and again, teasing and making her beg. Savoring her, memorizing her heat, her softness, her smell, everything I love about her. Then finally, I let her fly, sliding home as she screams my name into the silence of the forest.

Afterward, we lie in a tangled heap on the floor. In and out of sleep. In and out of each other’s arms as the fire gets low.

Actually low this time.

I can tell by the cold starting at the windows and the way the light has dropped across the floor. There’s wood outside. Plenty of it.

Rosie’s asleep against me, one leg tangled with mine, cheek on my chest. I could get up. Should probably get up. Instead, I pull the blanket higher over her shoulder.

The fire can wait. I spent a long time thinking I was good at the dangerous part. Finding people. Keeping them alive. Getting them home. The after was the part I didn’t know what to do with.

Turns out it’s this. Rosie’s hair against my chin. Her hand curled against my chest. A cabin we don’t have to hide in. A door neither one of us needs to run through.

The fire burns lower.

I stay.

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