The Bourbon Thief

“Like me. You can’t go around kissing guys like me.”

“Why not?”

“You’re sixteen, Tamara.”

“I was fifteen yesterday.”

“That’s the opposite thing of what you should say.”

“What should I say?”

“Maybe that you won’t kiss me on the mouth again. Or anywhere else. I think that would be a good start.”

He crossed his arms over his chest.

“But it’s my birthday.”

“You don’t get to do everything you want to do just because it’s your birthday.” He sounded wildly exasperated with her, and wildly exasperated Levi was her favorite version of Levi. “Try telling a police officer you’re allowed to kill anybody and everybody you want just because it’s your birthday. That duck won’t fly.”

“I didn’t kill anyone. I kissed. Two S’s, not two L’s. Makes all the difference.”

“Rotten, I’m way too old for you. I work for your granddaddy. He’d have my hide if he caught me messing around with you.”

“I want a kiss, Levi, not a marriage proposal. I’ve never been kissed before. Not really. And that didn’t count because you didn’t know it was happening.”

“I think I knew. Parts of me sure did.”

She bounced up and down in her boots.

“Just one? Please? A real kiss?”

“What do you consider a real kiss?” he asked.

She shrugged her shoulders, shook her head. “I don’t know. Like the way they kiss on The Young and the Restless?”

“Which one am I? The young or the restless?”

“You’re the restless, obviously,” she said. “Because you’re so so so old, and I’m so so so young.”

“Will it shut you up if I kiss you?”

“Can’t talk with a tongue in my mouth, right?”

He took the box from her hand and tossed it on the pile of hay. He took her hand and pulled her flush against his body.

“Finally,” he said, smiling down at her. “Now we have a persuasive argument.”

4 (#ulink_0f48a72b-233c-55ab-ac8c-9b60e68d2f1f)

Tamara hadn’t expected him to go through with it. She’d only expected she would tease him and beg him to do it until he kicked her giggling and pouting spoiled rotten self out of the barn. Making him mad was the next best thing to making him laugh. When he actually took her in his arms, she froze in surprise. He didn’t kiss her—he did something better and worse at the same time.

Levi pushed her up against the rough wood of Kermit’s stall wall and held her there with his entire body.

“Your grandfather pays me to take care of his horses,” Levi said. “I am not paid to indulge you.”

“Then do it for free.”

Levi gave her a flat hard stare that scared her. Everything scared her right now. Being in such close quarters revealed the disparity in their sizes. Her shoulders spanned half his width. He stood a head taller. She could push against him with everything she had in her and she wouldn’t be able to budge the solid pillar of his body that held her pinned in place.

Oh, but she didn’t want to push against him. That was, in fact, the very last thing she wanted to do right now.

A teardrop of rainwater slid from Tamara’s temple down her face. Levi pressed his lips to that drop. They warmed her cold skin, and she’d never felt anything like that in her life, never felt something so sensual and threatening all at once. She closed her eyes and prayed for more rain, so much rain it would trap them in the stable. So much rain it would form a moat to keep the world out. So much rain everyone on earth would drown in it but her and Levi.

“Levi.” She pushed her hips against his. He had something she needed and her body had to tell him that.

“You are playing with fire, little girl,” Levi said into her ear.

“I’m not a little girl anymore,” she said, looking up at him. It was a brash thing to say, but it had to be said. Her voice quavered as she spoke the words. Tamara studied his face. She’d never seen him this close-up, inches away, close enough to smell him, close enough to see the freckle on his bottom lip. She could have counted his eyelashes.

Levi pushed his hips back into hers, and she felt something hard against her, something that demanded her attention.

Oh, dear. She had made a terrible miscalculation. Levi wasn’t a boy. Levi was a man. An adult man twelve years older than her. Older, wiser and so much bigger than she was. She really ought to stop him. She really ought to. Yes, she should do that.

“I love you,” Tamara said instead.

“Do you?” Levi asked, barely batting an eyelash at her declaration, which made her madder than being pinned to the wall. How dare he not take her seriously when she told him she was in love with him.

“I do. I swear I do.”

“You don’t even know who I am. You don’t know who you think you love.”

“I don’t care. I know I love you. You’re perfect and handsome and I think about you all the time and I want you all the time and I love you.”

“All the time?”

She nodded. “All the time.”

She pressed her mouth hard against his, kissing him like she had a loaded gun pointed at her head and only kissing could save her life. It felt so good she sighed, and when the sigh parted her lips, Levi’s tongue slipped between her teeth. She’d been kidding about the tongue in her mouth, but Levi wasn’t laughing. Not anymore and not about anything. Levi dug a hand into the back of her braid and pushed her mouth harder against his. His tongue tasted so good she wanted to suck on it. When she did, he made a noise in the back of his throat, a dirty noise that made her want to make him do it again.

Levi pulled back from the kiss like he was ripping off a Band-Aid. And yet she remained pinned in place. He had her pushed so hard against the wall she could lift her boots off the ground and not fall.

“Do you have any idea how many girls I’ve fucked in my life?” he asked her. “Or do you think my entire life is brushing your grandfather’s horses and putting up with you?”

She didn’t know how to answer that. She panted and shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“You want to know?” he asked. His voice was menacing now, not seductive, and yet she felt utterly seduced. She didn’t want to be anywhere but here against this wall. “You want to know how many girls I’ve fucked?”

“Yes,” she said because she thought that was what he wanted to hear.