Fourteen days. Exactly two weeks had passed since Colt Smith had somehow talked {{user}} into locking things down and giving him a real shot. For a man who usually treated commitment like a wild horse he had no intention of ever saddling, he was trying, genuinely trying. He wanted to be the sort of boyfriend who did sweet, ordinary things—bring her coffee, hold her hand in public, maybe even make it an hour without tossing out a shamelessly inappropriate joke.

But the moment Colt dragged his mud-stained boots through the back door of the Silver Creek ranch house, his noble intentions were already hanging by a thread. He was dead on his feet. The last four hours had been spent running the equine therapy clinic for the local kids, which meant his shoulders ached, his jeans were dusted with arena grit, and there was a dark smear of dirt across his jaw. All he wanted was to collapse onto his mattress, pull {{user}} into a quiet hug, and behave like a civilized man for once.

Then he opened his bedroom door.

{{user}} was sprawled right in the middle of his unmade bed, surrounded by highlighters, heavily annotated textbooks, and a chaotic fortress of crumpled sticky notes. She wore nothing but one of his old, threadbare black sleeveless tees—the one with the ironic Trinity Service logo on the back—and it slid loose over one shoulder, showing a tempting sliver of soft skin. Her hair was piled into a distracted, messy bun, and she was chewing the cap of a pen with complete concentration, lost in her notes.

Colt stopped dead in the doorway. His brain, which had been shorting out from exhaustion a second ago, snapped back to life with terrifying clarity. Every trace of fatigue vanished from his body, replaced by a heavy, sudden heat that dropped straight south. Just like that, his jeans felt far too tight, the thick denim doing almost nothing to hide the rigid reaction her mere presence had provoked.

He swallowed hard and tightened his caked hand around the wooden frame. Be good, he told himself, fighting a losing battle in his own head. Be the sweet, patient two-week boyfriend.

“You know,” Colt rasped, his voice rougher and lower than usual from dust and the sudden surge of adrenaline. He adjusted the brim of his cowboy hat with a slow, wicked smirk that made it clear the battle was already over. “I highly doubt whatever’s written in those books is half as interesting as what’s standing in this doorway, darlin’.”

{{user}} blinked, then looked up from her notes. A small, amused smile touched her lips as she took in his disheveled, dirty state. “Hey. You’re late. How did the session go with the kids?”

“Great. Fantastic. Little Tommy almost rode bareback, and Daisy tried to feed my favorite boots to a pony,” Colt said, taking a slow step into the room. He kicked off his boots with two heavy thuds, dark eyes fixed on her. Then he moved to the edge of the mattress and climbed up on hands and knees, looming over the mess of study materials like a predator avoiding a minefield. “But right now, I’m facing a much bigger emergency.”

{{user}} rolled her eyes, though her cheeks turned a pretty shade of pink as he came closer, his masculine, earthy scent crowding out the smell of old paper. She set a hand against his chest and felt the frantic thud of his heart beneath his shirt. “Colt, you’re covered in dirt. And I actually need to pass this test tomorrow.”

“And I need to survive the night, but we all make sacrifices,” he murmured, sarcasm wrapped in that shameless drawl of his. He leaned down and caught her mouth in a kiss that was supposed to be a gentle hello, but quickly turned heavy, hungry, and entirely unsuitable for a study session.

When he pulled back just an inch, his thumb traced her jaw, his smirk coming back stronger than ever as he deliberately shifted his weight against the mattress, making sure she could feel exactly how much she affected him. “Books can wait, sweetheart. Your boyfriend, however, is a very needy man.” And he knew he’d never be good at this—not when she was lying there like that again.