Home > Bounty (Colorado Mountain #7)(3)

Bounty (Colorado Mountain #7)(3)
Author: Kristen Ashley

Yet he was not the guy next door.

He also was far from average.

It was just that you’d look twice, absolutely.

Maybe because of his size.

Mostly because, with one look, I knew he was that nut a girl itched to crack. Just watching him laugh, he made you be the girl who wanted to make him laugh like that. Who wanted to pull out the teddy bear cuddler within from the rough exterior that was without. Who wanted to live her life knowing no one would harm her because he’d sweat and bleed to make that so. Who wanted to strip that, “take me as I am, I don’t give a shit, my life is mine and I’m gonna live it,” clean away—not in everything, only in the sense you wanted him as he was, but he did give a shit about what you thought, and more importantly, his life was yours.

In my life I’d seen many a player, rocker, club rat, cowboy, jock, biker, businessman.

And with all I’d seen, all I’d met, all I’d had…

It was him.

A man in faded jeans and a white tee at a chain link fence in a biker bar in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming, sucking back a beer, laughing with his bud.

And I didn’t know his name.

What I knew was that I wanted him to take me wherever it was he lived his life, plant me in it so deep I could never pull at the roots, flourish in the life we built together, and wither to dust by his side.

I also knew this would never happen. No way in hell.

That man would not touch me with a ten-foot pole. He’d find out who I was and cut me so quickly, I wouldn’t feel the bleed until after he was long gone.

As I realized I’d stopped dead to stare at him, and I didn’t want him (or anyone) catching me staring at him, I tore my eyes away, casting them to my feet, and moved quickly to the vacant table, around it, putting my ass on a stool with my back to the corner. I tossed my purse on the table and set my drink there.

And I felt the bleed.

He’d never speak to me.

I’d never know his name.

It was him. Only him. But even if there was another him in the miracle of life, I couldn’t have that him either.

I’d never have that him.

I was what I was, who I was, and finally having that knowledge that the less I was thinking I wanted actually was more, much more, and I’d never have it…

Yeah, I felt the bleed.

I sipped my Jack and Coke and then did the only thing I knew how to do to staunch the flow when it all got too much. When what my dad called “the curse of the Lonesome” reared its head, making me think things like I thought about that man, just at a glance. Making me feel deeper than was healthy.

Making me bleed for no reason that was every reason.

I pulled out the tiny notebook in my purse, sucked back more Jack and Coke so it was nothing but ice, tugged the band from around the embossed leather covering the notebook and opened it to a fresh page. The page where I always kept my pencil at the ready for times like these.

I bent my head and began.

Wither to dust

Crumble like rust

Do it at your side

Fresh air

Cold beer

Root myself in you

Together kiss the morning dew

Breathless to bring on the night

Memorizing you, the only thing that’s right.

Wither to dust

Crumble like rust

Do it at your side

You, the only thing I need when I have everything

You, the breath I breathe I only get when you’re laughing

Chain links

Worn jeans

Wither to dust

Crumble like rust

Do it at your side

It didn’t flow this time. I had to work at it.

Sometimes it did. This time, it didn’t.

There were strikeouts. Written over words. Lines blackened, a new one added at the side.

For this, it had to be perfect.

On that thought, my head shot up when a plastic cup with an iced beverage that looked like Jack and Coke was slid across the table toward my notebook.

I looked sideways. My gaze hit a white-T-shirt-covered wall of chest, my back went straight, my head turned fully that way, and I looked up, up and up.

And then I was mired in somber hazel eyes.

The man at the fence.

I forgot how to breathe.

A deep, coarse voice assaulted my ears.

“Pretty woman like you shouldn’t be suckin’ the dregs of a drink.”

I said nothing. I couldn’t. I was frozen in time, never wanting to be thawed.

Those hazel eyes dropped to my notebook then came back up to lock on mine.

“Pretty woman like you shouldn’t be sittin’ in a bar alone in a corner writin’ in her diary, either.”

“It’s not a diary,” my mouth blurted, fortunately working since nothing else on or in my body was.

“Then what is it?”

I had no reply to that because I knew it wasn’t a diary but my brain had quit functioning so I forgot what it was.

His gaze stayed locked to mine.

I remained silent.

His brows shot together over narrowed eyes.

My heart skipped once, luckily pushing blood through my veins, but then it halted again.

“You in there?” he asked.

God, I was being an idiot!

“I…uh, write thoughts in it,” I told him.

“Like a diary,” he returned.

“Not those kinds of thoughts. I mean, they are, but they’re not. If you know what I mean.”

“I don’t,” he shared brusquely.

“Lyrics,” I admitted, it came out soft because I didn’t give that to anyone and I had no clue why I gave it to him. The only ones who knew I still did that were Dad, Lacey and Bianca. “Kinda poetry, I guess,” I finished.

   
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