He didn’t know if he’d ever get enough of touching her. It didn’t seem to be possible.

She pressed her hand to his chest. Her hands... They were all Jamie. Just like her. Delicate in their way, but strong. Soft skin, but calloused in places, from all the work that she did.

A true kind of cowgirl who didn’t shy away from any challenge.

Who rode horses better than anyone he’d ever seen. Who sensed what the animals felt.

Who’d brought him back to a place where he did, too.

Who looked beautiful with her hair and her makeup done, and knew how to catch and clean a fish. Who looked beautiful without makeup, and with nothing at all.

Strong as steel and hard as flint. And wept in his arms.

And somehow gave him the feeling it was the only place she cried.

And that should terrify him. But it didn’t.

Because there was just no damned way to be terrified when Jamie Dodge had her hands on his body.

He kissed her and captured her hands in his, laying her back on the sleeping bags, the motion rocking the tent, rocking the lantern above them, stripes of white dancing over her body, teasing him, giving him glimpses without revealing all. He lowered his head and sucked her nipple deep into his mouth. She was beautiful. Was it possible she hadn’t always known that? He could barely believe it.

And he certainly didn’t deserve any kind of adoration or credit for that. And yet she seemed to give it to him. And he didn’t want her to stop, because he wanted all that adoration.

The way she looked at him...

Like his hands were magic and like his mouth had told her the secret to life... Well, no man was ever going to want that to stop.

He moved his fingertips slowly down her stomach, to the waistband of those flannel pajamas, and he made quick work of those, leaving her naked before him, watching as the light painted shapes over her skin. And then letting his hands trace the path. Tasting her, touching her. Listening to every sigh, every moan, every sound she made. She was a revelation. And he wished...

He wished that he could be the man that she seemed to think he was. The way she looked at him... He didn’t know a man that deserved to be looked at like that.

He couldn’t have her forever. And he knew it. But he could have her tonight. Bathed in light and nothing else, and he would damn well take it.

She was different. His hard-riding girl who didn’t mind if things got sweaty, didn’t mind if things got rough.

Tonight she was soft. Open.

And it made his knees weak.

It made him weak all through.

And when he thrust inside her body he was lost. And found, all at the same time.

It was a fitting thing, because it was just like Jamie herself. That soft, strong creature made of contradiction and glory. She was a woman who might wonder what she could have been, but in his mind, there was no doubt she knew who she was. And for a man who had lost that anchor, who had no earthly clue what tethered him to his life anymore, what the hell choices had brought him to where he was, it was a beautiful, terrible thing.