Quickdraw Slow Burn (Battle of the Bulls #3) - T. S. Joyce Page 0,12

mean, if I were a chick and liked that kind of stuff. High heels and purses and shit. Your last known relationship was three years ago, and from Matthew Maholin’s social media pages, he looks like a boring douchebag, so I know your taste in men is questionable. Which is good for me because I’m a pretty bad call.”

“Well, that’s a good sales pitch,” she uttered sarcastically.

“Thank you. I have plans, though.”

“Oh yeah? What plans?”

“Get you addicted to feeling safe, show you an opening in the herd that could be yours, completely bribe and manipulate you with more time with Raven, set up girl dates with Cheyenne, too, so you want to spend more time on the road with me, make you come at least three times every time I fuck you—”

“So that I get addicted to your dick, too?”

“Exactly, and then when you’re nice and comfortable and in love with me, I’m gonna drop my red flags on you.”

“Or…” she said, curling her legs up to her stomach and leaning on the console, “we could skip straight to the red flags, and you and I could both decide early if we even match.”

He narrowed his dark brown eyes at her. “That’s not part of my plan. My red flags are very big.”

“Maybe mine are, too.”

“Hmmm.” He drove in silence for a couple of miles up a main road.

She let him have his silence, let him get lost in his thoughts, because some men needed that. They needed to process thoughts when they were thrown a curveball. And from the interviews she’d seen of him, he was very careful when he answered questions, if he answered them at all.

“I got married a year after I started my bucking career. It was a bad match. Toxic or whatever. We were either full of joy or full of hate, and there was never a day that was in between. Lookin’ back, it was just as much my fault as hers, and I had to learn some really heavy lessons. Now, I ain’t opposed to caring about a woman again. That’s new for me—moving forward enough to want to try. But caring for you is where we will stop. It’s the max you’ll get. Do you understand?”

“No,” she murmured. “You mean you won’t ever get married again?”

He shook his head. “Never in this lifetime.”

“Truth,” she said softly. Inside her chest cavity, an ache unfurled. His tone had been so easy to read the honesty. He truly believed he would never get married again, and so that was his truth. She’d been here before. Been burned before. Wasted her time before.

“I want to get married someday,” she said.

“Truth.” His voice was all gritty. “There’s my big red flag, Annabelle. From the look on your face, it may be a deal breaker. I wish I would’ve done my plan instead.”

“Get me addicted to you and a life with you?”

He dipped his chin in a single nod.

“You wanted to trap me?”

Another nod. Well, at least he was honest.

“But you barely know me.”

“You got a ride to a hospital in an unfamiliar town to stand watch over three poisoned bull shifters you’d never met in your life.” He glanced over at her with an eyebrow cocked high. “I know all I need to know.”

She allowed a couple minutes to pass as she watched the trees blur by out of her window. “What did your ex-wife do to you that you waited so long to open up again?”

Quickdraw ran a quick hand through his hair and stretched his neck to the side. She’d seen him do that in interviews when he didn’t want to answer questions, so she expected him to shut down on her. But…he didn’t. “Her name was Maren, and she was nice in the beginning. I think she liked the attention that my career gave her. She liked being seen with me, having that sense of power, and claiming me in front of the crowds. But as she watched me rising in my career, she got bored. Less of the attention was on her. She figured out she didn’t like the life, didn’t like moving around, didn’t like traveling to arenas, didn’t care that it was important to me, and she started distancing herself from me. It hurt. It hurts shifters. You ever bonded to a man before?”

She nodded her head. “Bonding to a man ruined my favorite parts of myself. It made me loyal to someone who never figured out how to be loyal