by Maisey Yates
His breath hissed through his teeth as she lowered the zipper, reaching her hand inside his underwear and curling her fingers around him. His hips bucked forward, his body in a state of shock over the skin-on-skin contact after being without it for so long. She made a sound that was somewhere between a feral growl and the noise you might make if you got a good bite of ice cream.
And he felt it, it went down his spine like electricity, making his cock jerk. His eyes met hers again, and she bit her lip, working her hand over his length.
There was a strange expression on her face, something like wonder, and it filled his vision, filled his brain. Filled his every last need.
Dimly, he realized this was a terrible idea. Because they had to work together.
Because neither of them knew each other well enough to know how the other might react to a one-night stand.
Because he hadn’t been with anyone in long enough that it felt a little bit like a watershed moment, when in the past, encounters like this were perfunctory at best.
She leaned in, capturing his lower lip with her teeth and biting down.
Damn.
He was wrong.
Encounters like this had never been perfunctory. Because encounters like this didn’t exist.
There was no use trying to compare her to hookups from the past because they hadn’t been like this. He moved his own hands, pushing her skirt up past her hips and pressing his hand between her legs, finding her wet and ready for him.
He swept her panties to the side, and she moved her hand, letting him push his flesh against hers. Her head fell back, and she gasped.
“You want this?” he asked, his speech slurred as if he’d been drinking, as he moved against her.
“So much,” she sobbed, shifting and parting her legs, wrapping one around the back of his calf and opening herself to him so he could test her readiness with the head of his cock.
He almost bit out a curse when her moisture bathed his aching body.
She was perfect. She was just so damn perfect. Then he moved his hands down, gripped hold of her thighs and lifted her as he thrust inside her, pressing her against the wall.
He swallowed her cry of pleasure as he thrust inside her, again and again, his need like a wildfire. It roared through his veins, wrapped itself around his bones, made it impossible for him to do anything but burn.
He felt good. Damn good. All through his body. And he couldn’t remember the last time that was true. He pounded into her, and she met him for every thrust, her hips grinding against his, little gasps of pleasure on her lips, ripples of need deep inside her, squeezing down on his dick as he continued to chase his release, as he continued to try to find release for them both.
Somewhere in the fog of his brain, he remembered that he was a gentleman. And that meant the lady was gonna come first.
He moved his hand between their bodies, centering his thumb over her clit and pressing firmly, making a slow circle and then a faster one.
She gripped his shoulders, her fingernails digging into him, even to the fabric of his shirt. And she screamed in his ear as she came hard around him.
And thank God. Because he had reached the end. He let go completely, thrusting into her, hard and deep, and then going still as his release ripped through him.
He shuddered hard, gritting his teeth so tightly he thought they might break, hell, he thought his whole body might break.
With the force of his release. With the force of the pleasure that woman had made him feel.
It took a few moments. Quite a few. But he began to become aware of where he was. And of the ghosts that still haunted him.
Two lost friends.
A little girl without a father.
A woman without a husband.
Countless failures besides.
And he just wished that he could go back to a few moments before, when everything had been perfect.
Because that had been a fantasy made real. And now that it was over, reality was the only thing that was left.
And it was pretty damn terrible.
* * *
VANESSA WAS STILL holding on to Jacob when her breathing returned to normal. He was still inside her.
Dammit.
She had no idea what she had been thinking. She hadn’t been thinking. Not at all. She had just been feeling. Wanting.
And everything had been so big and bright and foreign, she hadn’t known what to do with it. And she really hadn’t known how to resist it.
Right. It didn’t occur to you to resist it until it was finished.
The idea made her feel panicky and a little bit sick.
Because it was true. She hadn’t even considered turning away from it. It had been too compelling. Too shiny and neat and gloriously tempting. And she had gone headfirst into it.
With a man she was going to have to see every day for the foreseeable future. Because she was an idiot. An absolute idiot.
Pleasure was still vibrating down her bones even as she cursed herself, even as he moved away from her, and she stayed pressed against the wall. She had a feeling she was going to have siding embossed along her skin.
Jacob was righting his clothes, and she made an effort to do the same, realizing that they were outside, with only the porch light shining on them.
“Good thing your neighbors don’t live very close,” he said.
“Yeah,” she responded.
“I...”
“Do you want to come in for lemonade?” The question escaped her lips before she could fully process it.
Then she realized this was the second time the man had come to her home and she had offered him lemonade.
Though he had put out an entirely different kind of fire tonight.
Or maybe he had started it. She had no idea.
She felt like a foreigner in her own skin right now, so she really didn’t have much of an idea of anything.
“I... Probably not.”
“Yeah. That’s fine.”
“We have to work tomorrow morning.”
“Right,” she said. “We have to work.”
“I’ll see you.”
“Yeah,” she said. She didn’t wait to watch him walk to his car. She just unlocked her front door with shaking fingers and went into the house, ignoring the sick thudding in her heart, the restless ache between her legs. She felt overwhelmed. Stunned. Completely overwhelmed by the entire thing.
And the images of what had happened played in her head, over and over again.
It was different. The sex had been so different.
It was so bright and loud and physical. There was nothing hazy about it.
She could remember it.
She swallowed hard, sinking onto the couch, tears building in her eyes.
She’d never been with a man while sober before.
Ever.
She’d never had to replay the uncomfortable moments, the time that had led up to the encounter. She had never been so aware of why different parts of her felt lit up.
Hell, parts of her had never felt lit up before.
Because whatever the sex she had before had been like—and she really couldn’t remember—she knew it wasn’t like that.
The way he touched her. The way he looked at her with such intent.
He decided to get her off, and he damn well had. She sucked in a shaking breath. Today had been... She couldn’t believe it had been one day.
Painting class. A fight with her sister. Sex against a wall.
There were so many emotions inside her, and she didn’t know quite how to process them.
She flopped backward, spreading her arms wide, one over the back of the couch, the other resting listlessly on the floor.
There was nothing to do but simply sit there with the feelings.
And maybe by tomorrow morning sometime, she would have an answer for them. Maybe by then she could figure it out.
She would have to. Because whether or not she did, she would have to see Jacob
again. He would be in the back of her class, his arms crossed over his chest, his feet kicked out in front of him as he leaned against that counter.
His eyes would be on her, and she would have to try to not imagine the way they blazed with heat.
When he used his hands, she would have to try to not stare at them, try to do her best not to remember what it felt like when he put them between her legs and used them with superior effectiveness.
“Get a grip,” she said to herself. “You’ve made way bigger mistakes than this.”
It was true. This was just sex. And he was that kind of guy. It would be okay. It would be. Because it had to be.
She laughed. Because what else could she do. She supposed her one consolation was that at least now his memory of her screaming would be in pleasure rather than in pain.
And maybe that was it. Maybe she had been reclaiming something.
Reclaiming the narrative that she had with Jacob.
Maybe that was the theme of the day. Reclaiming narratives.
Anyway, thinking that was better than admitting to herself that maybe she had just lost all of her control.
CHAPTER NINE
VANESSA KNEW THAT the day was going to be interesting, to say the least, when she woke up the next morning, feeling raw and sensitive, then practically shouted at her own reflection in the mirror, “I will not feel shame for being a woman.”
When she opened being overdramatic with her own self, she had a feeling that everything was going to be downhill from there.
But while it took some time to gather her thoughts, and her sanity, she held on to that same feeling as she got ready for work, got in her car and made her way toward the Dalton Ranch.
She wasn’t going to feel shame about a sexual encounter.
For some very good reasons, she had decided to abstain from sexual relationships while she got herself together.
It had gone on a little longer than she had anticipated, but she had been in a very serious process of removing various crutches from her life.
Learning how to be alone. Learning how to be lonely. How to be upset. How to sit in her feelings.
She had done that. So it was fine that she was making changes.
All of this was about making changes. Coming back to Gold Valley. It was about finding a way to reconcile with the past.
And yes, her attempt at doing that last night with Olivia had been terrible. But maybe her encounter with Jacob hadn’t actually been a bad idea.
Reclamation.
She had decided that last night before she’d gone to sleep.
And she had spent the entire night turning all that over, hence her early-morning pep talk with her reflection.
She pulled her car up to the classroom and got out. She took a deep breath and walked toward the room, grateful that she had a little bit of time before she actually had students in her class.
She needed to get a grip on her brain.
No shame. No shame.
Shame was something imposed on her by other people. People who couldn’t handle her.
People who needed shame to exist around difficult choices, so they wouldn’t feel quite so bad about their own lives.
The more they could stigmatize certain people, the more they could make them other.
Suddenly, she wanted to claw her own brain out of her head. Her internal therapist was getting to be a little bit much.
Sometimes it was very helpful. She relied on it.
She used it to distance herself handily from confrontation—like when she had tried it out on Olivia yesterday.
But sometimes...sometimes it was just a whole bunch of bullshit oatmeal. Bland and lumpy, and not anything she was in the mood to try to digest.
She growled at herself as she pushed the door open, then shrieked and jumped backward like a scalded cat when she caught sight of the large, looming figure in the back of the room.
“You seemed happier to see me last night.”
Jacob was standing there against the wall, that hot, built body of his in a tight black T-shirt and very nicely fitted jeans. He was wearing his cowboy hat indoors, which seemed egregious in many ways.
And it took her a full few minutes to realize he didn’t even mean when they had sex.
He meant when she had been yelling at him in the car.
Probably.
“You startled me,” she said.
“Sorry. But I’m exactly where I said I was going to be. Exactly where I’m supposed to be.”
“True,” she said. “I just didn’t expect you here so early.”
“I thought it would be best if we had a chance to see each other.”
Well, he wasn’t going to pretend nothing happened. Okay. That was probably good.
Therapist Vanessa was completely sure that they needed to have an adult dialogue where they got everything out in the open and set parameters, like the ones that said that what had happened last night was never going to happen again. Because it wasn’t. Ever again.
Why not?
She shut that thought down.
Everything was tangled up enough. She had needed a release last night. She had been angry, and she had needed desperately to lash out, and then...well, what had happened had happened. There was no pretending it hadn’t.
“So obviously we need to set some parameters for work,” she said.
“Do we?” he asked.
“I assumed that was why you were here.”
“We screwed. We won’t do it here.”
She swallowed hard, completely unsure as to why she felt like clutching at pearls she didn’t even own because of his statement. She was not a prude. Not remotely. But there was something about the way he said it. Casual and intentionally crass, that got to her.
“We’re not going to do it again,” she said.
“Works for me,” he responded.
That made her even madder. Which was silly because she was saying no more, and he was agreeing, and really, she should be happy with that.
“I’m not in a space where I can have a relationship.”
He laughed. “Did I give you an indication that I was looking to settle down?”
“No,” she said. “It’s just...casual sex is not something that I... I’m not currently in a space where I can do a physical relationship with someone.”
“That’s fine.”
“I haven’t been with anyone in a long time,” she said.
She was not going to tell him that she hadn’t been with anyone since she’d gotten sober.
That she never had sex sober, not once in her life.
And that the differences were rioting through her body like dissatisfied civilians, demanding attention. Demanding that she look at them.
She didn’t want to. She wanted to ignore all of it. Pretend it hadn’t happened and give thanks for the fact that it had been quick.
It wasn’t because she was ashamed. She wasn’t. But it was a whole lot of intensity that she just didn’t have a place for. Not even remotely.
“Well, glad I could break the dry spell,” he said.
There was something strange and guarded about him today. She wasn’t sure she liked it. In fact, she knew she didn’t.
The man was impossible when he wanted to be. And it seemed that he wanted to be often.
“Control is very important to me,” she said. And of course she realized he hadn’t asked, but oh well.
“Okay,” he said.
“Control is very important to me,” she reiterated. “I lost control last night. I’m not...ashamed. Because sexual desire is good and healthy.”
“Yeah, I sure as hell feel healthy.”
“But that doesn’t mean it was a good idea. And it definitely means it’s something that I should...think better of.”
“What happened last night?”
“I could ask you the same thing. You weren’t in any better of a mood than I was.”
“Show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”
&nb
sp; “We already did that,” she said.
The corner of his mouth lifted up into a lopsided grin, and she decided she liked this Jacob much better than the one that had first been in the room when she’d appeared.
“Fair enough. But how about this? I’ll give you a little, and you can give me a little.”
“All right. I’m happy to do that.”
“Okay,” she said slowly. “My sister is a sanctimonious ass. And out of all the people in the entire world, she’s probably the one most able to pick up a rock during a sermon on how ‘he that is without sin can cast the first stone.’ So, it’s even a little bit earned.”
“I see.” But it was pretty clear that he didn’t.
She sighed. “We haven’t exactly been close the past few years.”
“I feel like I kind of knew that.”
“Yeah, I imagine word gets around.” She looked past him, over the white fence, to where horses were meandering around the paddock, and beyond them, the mountains rose up high, looking like a refuge. An escape. A place to lose yourself.
“People think addicts are narcissists,” she said. “But I just felt like a black hole. I didn’t exist. I felt nothing. I was nothing. So why not just throw as much as you can into the pit and see what hits the bottom? See what...feels like something. You can reduce the whole world and all of your anxiety and all of your pain into a little ball, and shove it down deep. Just live in the moment. You don’t think about anyone. It’s true. But you don’t really think about yourself either.” She took a breath and looked at him, met his eyes. “I wanted to lose myself.”
She could tell he didn’t know what to say. She was glad he didn’t try to say something anyway.
She continued, “I’m gathering that my family has a lot of their identity tied up in me leaving. In me being an addict. It’s a huge part of who they are. A huge part of their...pain, I guess.”
His forehead wrinkled, his brows drawing together slightly. “Families hurt each other,” he said. “It’s kind of what we do.”
“Yeah. I did a whole lot of work on myself in the last few years. And I figured out a lot of things about myself. But I kind of... In my head I have all of these scenarios. The way that conversations with my mother will go, my father. My sister. A guy I dated in high school. But I think sometimes I forget they haven’t had to think about themselves in the same way I’ve had to.”
