It was a spark. Interest. Intrigue.

She made him want.

It had been a long damn time since he’d wanted.

It had all started with her. Her and the horses. Her on the ranch.

Just her.

Jamie Dodge had brought something to life inside him, and she was the one who had to manage it now.

And he didn’t think much beyond the next step he took, and he didn’t let himself think beyond the next one, or the next. He threw the door open and went back outside, and Jamie looked up, her ponytail whipping around as she did.

“What?” she asked.

He looked up and down the street and saw that it was mostly empty. Then he grabbed hold of her arm and pulled her around the corner, pushing her up against the brick wall of the saloon.

“You sure like coming up to me guns blazing, Jamie Dodge. Just saying whatever it is that’s on your mind. No concern for the fallout of it. Well, all things considered, I’m pretty sick of keeping myself on a leash.”

He cupped her face, and in the dim light he could see that she was staring up at him, her eyes wide. And then, without letting another breath go by, he dipped his head, and his lips crushed up against Jamie Dodge’s.

They were soft.

Good God, she was soft.

He didn’t know what he had expected.

Prickles, maybe.

But no, her lips were the softest, sweetest thing he’d felt in a long time. It was like a flash of light had gone off and erased everything in his brain like all his thoughts had been printed on an old-school film roll.

There was nothing.

Nothing beyond the sensation of her skin beneath his fingertips, the feel of her mouth under his. She was frozen beneath his touch, and he shifted, tilting his head to the side and darting his tongue out, flicking it against the seam of her lips.

She gasped, and he took advantage of that, getting entry into that pretty mouth so he could taste her, deep and long, and exactly how he’d been fantasizing about.

Oh, those fantasies hadn’t been a fully realized scroll of images. No. It had been a feeling.

An invisible band of tension that had stretched between them in small spaces of time.

In the leap of panic in his heart when he’d seen her fall from the horse earlier today.

It had been embedded in all of those things and he hadn’t realized exactly what it meant he wanted until the right moment. And then suddenly, it was like her shock transformed into something else entirely.

She arched toward him, her breasts pressing against his chest, her hands coming up to his face. She thrust her chin upward, making the kiss harder, deeper. He drove his tongue deep, sliding it against hers, and she made a small sound like a whimpering kitten. The smallest sound he’d ever heard Jamie Dodge make.