Page 3 of Promised to the Cowboy

Then she sets her glass down. “One night,” she says. “No strings. No last names. No complications.” She checks my face for the flinch. “That a problem?”

The careful man I’ve spent years building screams at me to walk away.

I don’t.

Chapter 2

Evie

I wasn’t sure I’d be brave enough to ask for what I wanted.

The answer turns out to be yes as the words leave my mouth.

Gabriel’s mismatched eyes darken—one blue, one green—and I feel it low in my stomach, a hot pulse that makes my thighs press together under the bar. I want his hands on me. I want the weight of that quiet, careful strength. I’ve wanted it since I first caught him watching me from the rail like I was the only thing in the arena that mattered.

Most of the cowboys in this bar are still buzzing from the arena, hats tilted at an angle that means “look at me,” voices a half-notch too loud.

But not this man.

He’s big through the shoulders and long through the legs. Dark hair that curls at his nape. Firm jaw, high cheekbones. A man who takes up space without announcing it.

Gabriel’s been careful with me all night. Paying attention the whole time to what I say and what I don’t. When I stop talking,he doesn’t fill it. When I laugh, he doesn’t push for more. When my hand brushes his, he goes still but doesn’t move away.

He saidthe best run of the night,like a man who wasn’t trying to get anything out of it.

I’m not unused to compliments. You win enough times, you get used to people telling you that you’re good, and you learn to absorb it without it landing. But with Gabriel, it lands because he makes me feel like he sees the woman beneath the barrel racer.

And somehow, that’s far more dangerous.

The circuit is loud and temporary. You win, you collect, you drive on. People only stay long enough to see what you can do on a horse, and then they’re gone. I taught myself not to want more than that. But tonight I wantthis—his careful attention, the heat under all that restraint—for a few private hours. No strings. No tomorrow. Just once, to be wanted without the titles or the dirt under my nails or the next trailer hitch waiting.

That’s why I say, “I have a room. At the motel off the highway.”

He goes still, his mismatched eyes holding mine.

My courage almost flees. Almost. “I want this. If you do.”

He pauses, not rushing his answer. “Are you sure?”

Somehow, I know he’s not asking for appearances’ sake. He’s asking because the answer matters to him. Because if I said no right now, he wouldn’t push, not even a little. I’d walk out of this bar, and he’d let me go.

But you don’t want him to let you go.

No, I don’t, and that’s the scary part.

“Yes,” I say. “I’m sure.”

Gabriel nods. He leaves money on the table that covers both our drinks and tips Emmett without being seen. Then he holds the door—he doesn’t put his hand on the small of my back the way men do when they’re claiming a thing; he just holds it open—and we walk out into the Montana night with a foot of cool air between us and the whole dark sky overhead.

The parking lot is quiet. My truck is by the fence.

Somehow, despite all the empty spaces, his is parked next to mine. I choose not to examine that coincidence too closely.

He follows me, and five minutes later we’re at the motel. The door barely clicks shut behind us before the careful restraint we’ve both been holding cracks.

Gabriel crowds me against the wall, not rough butintent, one big hand sliding to my waist like he’s been dying to touch me all night. His mouth finds mine, and the kiss is immediate, deep, and starving. A low sound escapes me—half moan, half relief—and he drinks it down, tongue stroking against mine until my knees turn to liquid. He tastes like beer and heat and something darker that makes me ache.

“Still sure?” he murmurs roughly against my lips.