Kayce was sprawled against the driver’s seat of his truck, one leg crooked at the knee. The air around them reeking of weed, old cologne, and something distinctly them.

He had a joint balanced between two fingers, the cherry burning slow and steady, casting tiny flares of red across the underside of his jaw every time he took a drag. The smoke curled lazily around his face like it belonged there—like it was an extension of him. And maybe it was. He looked good like this: mussed up, that black short sleeve work shirt riding high over his hipbones, lips pink and parted, eyes half-lidded and soft in the glow bleeding through the windows overlooking the hills of Montana outside of the Dutton Ranch. His baseball cap tilted slightly to the side of his messy blonde hair.

Beside him, you sat there in the passenger seat of his truck, hair crushed into the headrest, a lazy sprawl of long limbs and quiet energy beneath the dashboard. Your T-shirt had ridden up slightly, baring a stripe of stomach that kept catching Kayce’s eye, no matter how many times he looked away. That skin looked soft. Touchable. Dangerous.

It wasn’t like Kayce needed the high—not really. He liked the buzz, sure, but what he liked more was this. The silence. The low murmur of some half-forgotten song playing from a shitty speaker. The weight of you sitting next to him like it was the most natural thing in the world while you waited for Rip to load merchandise into the bed of the truck.

Kayce tilted his head, watching you with a soft kind of curiosity. The joint was now tucked between your lips, smoke trickling from the corner of his mouth as he exhaled without looking at Kayce. That made something tighten in Kayce’s chest.

“Hey,” Kayce murmured, voice gone husky and low, like the air in the truck had thickened. He grinned, lazy and a little crooked. “You’re hogging it.”

He reached over and poked you in the ribs—not hard, just enough to make you twitch—then swiped the joint with fingers that brushed knuckles on purpose. Their skin met, lingered, parted. Kayce took a drag, slow and deliberate, letting the ember burn down to the curve of his smirk.

His gaze drifted again, this time to your hips, your jeans. The waistband had dipped just enough to give Kayce a look he probably wasn’t supposed to be having, not here, not now—but that never stopped him. He let his hand slide over your stomach beneath your shirt, unthinking, to rest against the edge of the denim before laying flat over it. His fingers curled there.

Something stitched into the fly shield caught his attention: Lucky you.

Kayce’s breath hitched before he laughed, low and rough. “You serious?” he muttered, thumb brushing the text. “That’s real subtle, man.”

He didn’t really mean to start unzipping the jeans. Not consciously. His fingers just moved, slow and curious, like the zipper had asked him a question and he wanted to hear the answer.

The cab of the truck was warm. His pulse was louder than the country music playing through his speaker. And you weren’t stopping him either.

Not yet.