Chapter 27

27

Holy bananas, Fletcher was kissing her. For real .

Not just her imagining him wanting to, he was in her bed, his arms were around her holding her in place, and he was kissing her like crazy.

And Dylan had never felt like this when a man kissed her before. She just hadn’t. She probably never would, either.

This was Fletcher , after all.

And there was no other man in the world just like him.

It was time she accepted that little fact. There was no other man on earth just like this one holding her now.

She had been kissed before. By a few different guys. But none had felt like this. Like she was exactly what the man wanted forever. But Fletcher was holding her like she mattered, like she was precious to him.

Like…this was where she belonged.

Dylan felt more rocked by that than she had anything in a long time. The last place she should feel like she belonged was right on top of Fletcher Tyler or anything like that.

That was just insane.

This is not what she’d intended at all.

This was all a bet, that was all. That was all. She should remember that. A bet, and a way for her to get away from the inn for a little while until she figured a few other things out.

But his hands were on her bottom, and she was somehow not under the thick quilts that had been in Nikki’s old closet when she’d first moved in.

No, Dylan was straddling Nikki’s brother. Who was practically naked beneath her; she knew he just slept in gym shorts and nothing else. The man burned hot, after all. She suspected the shorts were just because she lived there now too. His chest was right beneath her palms.

Her fingers ran over the perfect muscles of his chest. Cowboy Fletcher was built.

Of course, she had to touch. What woman wouldn’t? He had the most perfect man chest ever. With just the...right amount of chest hair. He smelled warm and male and perfect. She could probably stay right where she was and kiss him all day.

And Dylan was kissing him back. When had that happened? When had she ended up straddling him, anyway? How had that even happened? And…were Fletcher’s hands copping a feel under her top here now?

Dylan stayed right where she was and kissed the man like she had never been kissed before.

Who cares if it was insane? This was right where she felt like she belonged.

* * *

Now…now was the time to stop. Fletcher knew that even as she made a little sound and pushed closer. But the last thing he wanted to do was stop .

Still, he had come into her room in the middle of the night. She worked for him. She’d been upset. Not the best circumstances for what they were on the verge of doing at the moment.

He pulled back. “I am going to stop now. I won’t take advantage of you, like a jerk or anything.”

“I’m not sure who would be taking advantage of whom here, Fletchie. How did this even happen?”

She leaned back. Fletcher could feel every perfect inch of her under those silky little shorts she had no business wearing in his house. In his orbit. Hell, on the same planet they were on. Those shorts were just too damned tempting.

The top was unbuttoned halfway now. His doing. He vaguely remembered doing that. It just reiterated one thing: when he finally did get her in his bed where she belonged, they were going to light the place on fire.

He kept that thought to himself. “I think you are the most dangerous woman I have ever met.”

“Even more than Ch?—”

He covered her lips with one finger. “No. Don’t bring her into here. Not tonight.”

Green eyes just watched him. That was when he got it—she felt insecure. Especially when it came to Charlotte.

How in the hell was he going to get past that little stumbling block?

He had been romantically, intimately involved with her cousin. Yes, it was almost ten years ago, but it had happened. There was no denying that. And he loved Charlotte, always would. But it wasn’t like that with him and Charlotte any longer.

Would not, could not, ever be again.

They were just two completely different kinds of people. He wasn’t what Charlotte had needed—and Charlotte wasn’t what he had needed, either. No. But the Talley in his arms now— she was the one meant for him. Period.

How was he going to make Dylan believe that?

“Charlotte is a part of my past. I don’t regret that we were together, but she is not the woman I want now.”

It was unstated, but they both knew it.

Dylan was the one he wanted.

But he bet only he was the one who knew that it was forever.