▍ AN ORIGINAL ╱ western romance
There's a kind of wild you can't outrun.
Lemon Odell knows this better than anyone-the kind that lives under your skin, that shapes the way you move, the way you fight, the way you break. Born into a bloodline stitch...
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The world blurred—the firelight smeared into gold and the rain smudging everything soft—and all I could see was him. The way the water slicked down his jaw, how it pooled in the hollow of his throat before vanishing beneath the collar of his shirt. The way his mouth hovered close enough to taste the breath between us.
I didn't move.
I didn't have to.
Because before I could think, before I could remind myself who I was and what I didn't survive last time I trusted hands like his—
He kissed me.
And it wasn't careful.
It wasn't slow.
It was wildfire meeting a river and refusing to be put out.
Rhett's mouth crashed into mine like a force that had been building for longer than either of us wanted to admit.
No hesitation. No second-guessing.
Just raw, reckless need—like he knew if he gave either of us a second to think, we'd tear ourselves away and lose this forever.
His hands locked around my waist, rough and steady, pulling me hard against him until every rain-soaked inch of me was pressed flush to every burning inch of him. I could feel the solid weight of his chest rising and falling, the flex of muscle beneath drenched cotton, the sheer, devastating presence of him anchoring me to a world that had otherwise slipped sideways.
And I let him.
My fingers, clumsy and desperate, fisted into the front of his shirt, dragging him closer even though there was no room left between us.
The fabric was soaked straight through, plastered against the planes of his body, but I wasn't thinking about the cold anymore.
I wasn't thinking at all.
There was only him—only Rhett—the way his mouth claimed mine like he already knew how I tasted, the way his fingers dug into the small of my back like he needed the proof of me in his hands.
The rain blurred everything else—the fire, the crowd, the night itself—until the only thing real was the heat building between us, too sharp, too urgent, cutting through the chill like a blade.
I could feel the earth tilting, the gravity between us pulling stronger, harder, spinning me out of anything I could name and into something that tasted like surrender.
He kissed like he was trying to memorize me—every tremble, every breath, every broken sound that slipped from my lips against his—and damn it, I let him. I gave him that.
Because somewhere deep down, past the part of me that knew better, past the part that remembered every time I'd been burned, something older was clawing its way to the surface.
Something that didn't care about consequences.
Something that just wanted to feel.
And I did, I felt it. Felt the way I burned into him, the way the heat between us didn't just flare—it devoured. Like maybe if he touched me long enough, kissed me hard enough, there'd be nothing left but smoke and the shape of where I used to be.
