Remember Arizona: A Second Chance Romance (Country Love Collection)

by Dr. Rebecca Sharp

  Deft fingers flicked open the clasp of my bra before he laid me down. When he rose to pull it off me, I reached for the waist of his boxer briefs, hooking my thumbs into the dark fabric and shoving them down. Growling, he finished discarding my underwear while I stared at the giant, thick rod that bobbed out from a nest of dark curls. It took several seconds before I realized he’d caught me staring, a devious grin tugging on his lips.

  “Trouble,” I murmured, biting the corner of my lower lip, wondering how well this was going to work.

  “The good kind,” he said, the deep rumble of his voice making the flesh between his legs tremble.

  He bent over me, his lips beelining straight for my nipple and sucking it so hard my back bowed off the bed, and I gasped in painful delight. He continued to tease and toy with one breast with his mouth while his free hand captured and kneaded the other.

  My hands roamed like lost nomads over his back. Lost in pleasure. Searching for him.

  “Sam,” I whimpered, gasping for air when he bit my nipple, sending a straight shot of molten desire leaking from my sex.

  Desperately, my hand searched between our bodies, finding his swollen erection and clasping it hard.

  “Fuck, Tally,” he hissed, a hot stream of torture rushing against my skin when I pumped him hard.

  I’d always had some kind of power over Sam, but never this kind. Never the mind-numbing, earth-shattering, feral kind. And it made my core clench violently.

  With rough movements, he shifted, forcing me to release him from my grasp and allowing his fingers to slide down from my breast to where I needed him. The trace of his fingers along my stomach was the spark working its way down the fuse, closer and closer to the tightly packed explosive between my thighs.

  “I want to be gentle,” he groaned, his forehead resting on my clavicle. His fingers slipped under the edge of my lace thong, toying with the last barrier between us. “But I need you too bad.”

  “So don’t be.” I bucked my hips up, my body gasping for his touch.

  A feral sound rushed over my skin before the distinct sound of stitches popping like tiny firecrackers before the main event, echoed in the heavy silence. His arm flung behind him, sending the destroyed lace onto the floor somewhere.

  “Jesus, Tally…” He nipped my skin, his hand working back along my thigh before rewarding himself with a touch of the treasure he’d revealed.

  My mouth opened but no noise came out, all my nerves too strung out on the sensation of his fingers slipping through my slickness and swirling around my clit. My hands found their way back into his hair, spearing through the thickness as he feasted on one breast then the other while his fingers stroked me without respite toward the cliff of release. And, though I could see it approaching with every flick of his tongue on my nipple and every rub and pull of his fingers on my clit, there was nothing I could do to prepare for the way my body smoothly flung itself over the edge of my orgasm, every muscle flexing tight as I freely fell into the sweet abyss and cried out his name.

  Long seconds coaxed the lingering trembles from my body, but just before I was close enough to land gently back into reality, Sam jerked up and, for a harsh second, I thought he was going to pull away. Instead, he stood over me, his hands gripping my knees like he had to force himself to hold back, so his gaze could corner mine like it was his prey.

  “This is it,” he bit out with a low voice. “Once I fuck you, you’re mine. Once I fuck you, it will only ever be me that fills your sweet pussy.”

  I shivered, reveling in the hot words that dripped from his mouth. I loved when this part of him came out—the part that was too strong, too uncivilized, too possessive to be held back.

  “I only ever wanted it to be you,” I confessed, broken with a need that went beyond the physical.

  Everything was only ever supposed to be with him.

  The drawer on his nightstand opened with a thud and he fished out a condom.

  I tried to remember the things I’d carried with me when I came here—the hurt, the betrayal. I tried to think about if I would regret this—him, tonight, our whole arrangement—in the morning, but I couldn’t. Deep in my soul, I knew I was supposed to come back here—back to Bisbee. And I was supposed to find my way back to him.

  Shuddering, I spoke with soft thunder, “I’m on the pill.”

  His eyes snapped to mine, his hands stilling their movements for a split second before he tossed it to the side, gripping his fat cock and angling it between my swollen folds until the tip disappeared.

  “This is you and me, Tally.” The gentle pressure wedged me open and warned of how much more was to come.

  My lips parted and the rapid firing in my chest boomed. “Against the world.”

  His hands on my knees forced them wide. I didn’t even have time to gasp before he slammed all the way inside me with one splitting stroke. The mattress gave under the force and Sam’s head tipped back, the cords of his neck vibrating with tension as my body molded around his invading flesh, sheathing him in hot, slick velvet.

  His hands slid up my thighs and along my body until he was over me once more.

  Cupping the side of my face, his fingers threaded into my hair and he tipped my mouth to his.

  “You’re going to get me in trouble.”

  He groaned as I flexed my inner muscles around him.

  “You’re the one who decided to fuck me,” I taunted harshly, knowing it hadn’t been a decision at all; it had been fate.

  With a feral growl, he brought his lips to mine in a scorching kiss.

  Locking my legs around his waist, I held on as he drove inside me in deep, demanding strokes. With each thrust, he bumped up against my womb and wedged my body farther into the mattress.

  “Sam,” I whimpered, my hips rising to meet the demands of his.

  Like a man-made machine, he was merciless. Not only that, but the length I’d gripped in my fist seemed to grow inside my body, watered by the thick coat of my desire, and drawn longer by the tight pull of my muscles.

  I wondered if my core would ever recover from the weight of him wedged in there or if, at some point, my body would finally fracture in half from the friction of his cock steadily stretching me wider.

  Everything blended together. Every shade of the past. Every color of the present. Sam’s hard lines. My soft curves. It all came together into the most beautiful masterpiece I’d ever felt.

  At some point, he no longer kissed me, our lungs taking turns to steal the air between our lips. My legs inched higher until he pulled one knee between our chests, giving his thrusts access to an impossible depth inside me.

  This time, I saw the cliff coming, and I clawed for it like a savage. I clung to each burst of pleasure when the tip of his cock pressed against that spot deep inside my pussy. I grappled to hold tighter onto the hard, massive flesh that created such hot friction I swore he was going to start a fire that would incinerate me from the inside out.

  “That’s it, Tally, baby,” he grunted, spearing into me hard, unrestrained shoves. “Take all of me.”

  I gasped loudly, feeling his cock swell just as his words catapulted me over the edge of release. Crying out his name, my body seized, violently clamping around him with an orgasm so strong I thought it would destroy me.

  He muttered a string of curses against my mouth before he sealed his hips to mine, and I felt the jerk of his cock and the hot jet of his release jet inside.

  It took several lagging minutes to remember how to breathe again, to remember how to relax—to feel anything except the way we were joined.

  “I’m crushing you,” Sam grumbled, even his steel-like muscles trembling as he pushed himself up with a groan.

  “I like it.”

  He chuckled, pressing a kiss to my forehead. “Hang on.”

  Before I could open my mouth, Sam pulled back and pulled me up with him and carried me into his master bathroom, his length wedged inside me.

  “Let me clean you,” he comman
ded, refusing to put me down and using his cock as a stopper, bottling everything inside me until he had a warm washcloth waiting to cup over my tender flesh as soon as he pulled himself free.

  I watched him—his tenderness as he cared for the destruction he’d caused. And with one deep breath, I felt suddenly consumed.

  Sam Deschenes was a force of nature—a creator of stars and fire. He was calm and controlled one minute and savage and raw the next. And it was that spectrum of breathtaking that had defined him from the earliest moments I’d known him.

  I teased my fingers through his hair, prompting his focus to break from his task between my legs to grasp my wrist, his eyes catching on the turquoise ring still wrapped around my finger. His gaze flashed with recognition as he touched it.

  “You still have it,” he muttered coarsely.

  I swallowed over the well of feelings in my throat. “Turns out, I still have a lot of things I thought I’d left behind.”

  Including how I felt about him.

  And that was the most frightening of all, knowing I’d fallen in love with Sam Deschenes when I was young, and I’d just as readily tumbled back to that state hoping the outcome would be different this time around.

  I wasn’t sure my heart could survive the same break twice.

  “Tally…” He rose up in front of me and with him, a need to have him inside me all over again.

  “Do you think it would’ve been like that before?” I asked quietly, afraid to talk about feelings now. “Or do you think it was just a decade of denial that made it like that?”

  His deep eyes bored into mine, carving new trails of lust through my ravaged body. Stepping forward, he pressed my palm to the hard plane of his chest and crowded me back toward the shower, reaching over my shoulder to turn on the water. I sucked in a breath, feeling the soft, cool spray mist against my back.

  He grinned and lifted me once more. “There’s only one way to find out.”

  For a fool, at least Carlos had enough brain cells to not show up to the last excursion that Tally had planned for the following day.

  It was both déjà vu mixed with a strange sense of completion, returning to the Lavender Pit with Tally. The last time we’d come here together, I’d looked at her as mine with our whole future together in front of us. Like I was doing now. But then I’d gone back to the Navajo, and my father, and my future gave way to the needs of my family.

  “Oh my.” Nico fanned himself. “Why isn’t it lavender?”

  Tally burst out laughing, covering her mouth and looking at me with her eyes dancing.

  “What? What did I say?” the sweating artists asked, looking around him.

  “Lavender is the name of the man who discovered this copper pit,” Mee-Maw explained, patting his arm. “Harrison Lavender.”

  “But Tally also thought this place was going to be purple the first time we came here,” I broke in, grinning.

  Wiping her eyes, Tally replied, “I’m not the only one.”

  “Would be much more magnificent if it were lavender,” Nico grumbled, pulling out his phone to snap a few quick photos.

  “It would be much more magnificent if it were blue, isn’t that right, Sam?” Mee-Maw asked with a very pointed stare.

  I flashed her a tight smile. One truth at a time. “This is where the majority of the Bisbee turquoise is from,” I replied in explanation.

  “Quite a process too,” the older woman mused with a coy smile.

  Nico reached for his waist. “Like my belt?”

  My confirmation was quick before Mee-Maw broke in, resuming her role as honorary guide to give a brief history of the Lavender Pit until it was closed in 1974.

  She liked to give gentle reminders that it wasn’t just my past Tally didn’t fully know about, it was also my present. I’d told her I was a fabricator, working at my own shop in town; it wasn’t a lie. I just didn’t describe in detail that what I fabricated was Bisbee Blue jewelry, and my ‘shop’ was the store where Mee-Maw worked.

  Reaching the peak of the walking path that overlooked the three hundred acres of the open mine, the small group dispersed, free to explore at their own pace and take in the sight of the red walls of the pit that stepped down like a carved funnel to the base which sat nine hundred feet below.

  Without speaking, Tally and I drifted closer to each other and away from the group.

  Snagging my arm around her waist, I tugged her against me when we reached the familiar overgrown brush that led up to our favorite secluded overlook.

  “Sam!” she playfully scolded and didn’t shy away in the slightest when I pressed my lips to hers.

  It was a strange kind of addiction, finally having everything I’d ever wanted. Before, I couldn’t have her. Now, I couldn’t have enough.

  I hadn’t lost count of the number of times I’d claimed her body, but I was well on my way with no complaints from her end either.

  “One day, I’m going to take you here,” I murmured against her lips. “At the end of the day, and from behind, so you can watch the sunset while I make you mine.”

  She moaned, swaying against me until I felt her nipples tighten against my chest.

  “Today?” The hopeful hunger in her sultry voice went straight to my cock, turning it to granite in my jeans.

  “Soon,” I promised, clasping her waist and rubbing my thumbs against the base of her ribs. “Today, we need to talk.”

  Her eyes widened, knowing exactly what I meant. And knowing it was time.

  Linking my fingers in hers, I lifted the back of her hand to my lips, pressing a firm kiss to her skin and leading her to our favorite spot. It figured that this was the place where our conversation would happen—a place that was characterized as a process of unearthing. The expulsion of tons of waste rock in search of precious ore—or the mining of our past so that the truth could break free.

  “You were always my happy place, Tally,” I rasped, facing her once we reached the top.

  She smiled. I’d never seen anything more beautiful than that smile on her sun-kissed face and knowing it was for me.

  “As much as I love my people and the reservation, the truth is, it’s not a happy place. At least it wasn’t for me.”

  There was no sugarcoating it. Not even the media could get it right, and unless you’d been there, it was hard to fathom and impossible to understand. That was why I never really talked about the reservation—not like this. And now that I was, I had her attention.

  Her weight shifted and she leaned in; and I prepared for the first detonation.

  “You know how I told you we didn’t have good service at my house?” I folded my arms.

  She nodded and recalled, “Sometimes, it took you so long to message me back.”

  “We didn’t have any service at my house, Tally.” I sighed. “Or running water.”

  She flinched. “What?”

  “Almost half of the reservation doesn’t have running water or cell towers to supply the people who don’t live in the larger towns,” I rasped, searching for any trace of pity that usually appeared on hearing about the conditions on the reservation. “I only had service when my dad and I would take his truck into town to fill up our two-hundred-and-fifty-gallon water tank. It usually lasted us about a month, sometimes less if my dad wasn’t careful.”

  “Sam, I had no idea…”

  “I know,” I broke in. “I didn’t want you to. There is a richness of culture, but it’s darkened by the poverty of living.” I backed away from her, walking to the edge of our lookout and staring off into the crater that didn’t seem big enough to hold the truth I’d bottled inside me.

  “What happened, Sam?” she probed, sensing my pain.

  “The summer before I didn’t come back, they built a casino on the reservation.” My head ducked. “And by the time summer was over and I went back, my dad had lost everything.”

  I heard her harsh inhale and the warm weight of her palm against my arm. Still, I couldn’t look at her.

&
nbsp; “He lost everything, and they were going to take his shop. His truck—our only way to get water.” I let out a harsh laugh. “Everything I’d worked for and saved—everything I had set aside to go to school in New York with you—to use it for that would’ve meant knowingly sacrificing his home… his livelihood… his life.”

  “What?” she gasped, gripping and forcibly tugging me to face her.

  Turning, my gut jolted with the sight of her, palm cupped over her mouth, twin pools of despair blurring her bright blues.

  “He gambled away everything, Tally. Those few short months was all it took when you don’t have much. Everything.” I shuddered, the twin tips of embarrassment and shame piercing my chest. “And I had to choose between coming back to you or helping him pick up the pieces.”

  Tears leaked down her flushed cheeks, her head swaying with disbelief.

  “That’s why you didn’t come back? Why y-you lied to me about not getting in?”

  I let out a ragged exhale, grabbing my hair where it was tied up and pulling until it made my scalp burn.

  “I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want anyone to know.” My lips firmed. “He was my father. It was my duty to take care of him.”

  “Oh, Sam.” A sob broke loose and my body swayed forward, instinctively wanting to pull her close. But I couldn’t. Not now. “Always taking care of everyone.”

  Her head jerked with more than sadness and I knew her next question was coming like I knew the sun would rise in the morning. This was the moment I’d feared and the moment I’d envisioned for so many years—the one where my rationale would be tested under the fire that was Tally Kerr’s wrath.

  “Why didn’t you just tell me the truth?” she demanded with a low voice. “I know you didn’t get my gift or the note. I know that wasn’t your fault, but this… Why didn’t you just tell me you couldn’t afford school because you needed to help your dad?”

  A growl rumbled in my chest like a brewing thunderstorm, and the reason I’d replayed a thousand times with calm, measured tones, instead came out like a lash of lightning, bright and harsh, but unable to withstand the test of time.