Lone Wolf Cowboy

by Maisey Yates

  Because she would be enough. This would be enough. As long as the moment didn’t have to move on.

  But time was a bitch. It made sad lonely boys into lonelier men who were hard around the heart. Made wives into widows. Friends into cold stone grave markers.

  And he didn’t know how to stop that. He didn’t know but he wished he could. He wished he could stop right here, because this made sense.

  This made him feel good.

  And very little in his life had. Not at his own hand.

  But her hands were good.

  Soft and sweet as they skimmed over his shoulders and down his back, as she pushed her fingers beneath his jeans and belt and scanned his ass. As she grabbed him and dug her fingernails into his skin. He moved his hands down her hips, lifted up her thigh and draped it over his lower back, moving forward slowly, back and forth until she cried out against his mouth, until she came again.

  It still wasn’t enough. But he needed to be inside her, and he didn’t know how to fight that.

  Wasn’t that the thing? The fact that he just didn’t know how to fight himself. Not at the end of the day. He didn’t know how to do anything but get in, and that was part of why time slipped through his hands. He couldn’t stop it. Even with that realization. Even as he shucked his jeans and underwear and came back to her body, every inch of his naked flesh against every inch of hers.

  She reached between them, wrapped her hand around his cock and explored him thoroughly, moving her hand up and down, over the head, down underneath, and he saw stars. He growled, his mouth crashing down over hers, as he thrust inside her, into her warm, welcoming heat.

  She arched up against him, and he went deeper, silver light flashing behind his eyelids and giving the impressions of stars as he gave up all his control and surrendered. To the moment, to the passing time, the end of tonight, which came closer with each thrust. As if each increment of pleasure cost him precious moments.

  But he didn’t know how to fight it.

  And ultimately, he didn’t want to. She shuddered against him, her internal muscles pulsing around his cock as she found her release again, her fingernails making half-moons on his skin to mirror the one in the sky.

  And that was when it slipped from his hands completely, time unraveling all around him as the world splintered and the world shattered like a glass pane, raining down pleasure on him in a thousand glittering pieces.

  When it was over, he lay there with her, not alone, in this cabin for the first time.

  With someone who knew all of his secrets.

  Who knew what had happened to him when he was a boy. Who knew the guilt he carried as a man.

  Who knew his body, and every fractured piece of his heart. The enormity of it was so big he couldn’t breathe.

  So he turned away from her and closed his eyes, like he might sleep, because he didn’t know what else to do.

  Because if there was one thing he’d proved to be consistently, it was a man who avoided things he couldn’t handle.

  But she didn’t leave him there.

  Her hand stretched across the space between them, and soft fingertips came to rest on his arm.

  She stayed like that. All night. Just touching him gently, never breaking contact. And he stayed awake. And when the sky began to turn gray, and the morning light began to show through, he felt a sense of dread growing in his chest.

  The night was over, and damned if he knew why, but it felt significant. Damn Vanessa Logan and that sense of faith she seemed to carry around with her. Damn Vanessa and the fact she made him believe in things he would have said he didn’t. Made him want things he would’ve said he never could.

  And that hand. Damn that hand that rested on his shoulder. It belonged to a woman who knew all that he was, and was still there in his bed.

  He didn’t know what to do with it. If time was still moving forward.

  They couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t control it. Couldn’t slow it, not with any amount of pleasure, pain or alcohol, because he had tried.

  This woman had reached into his chest and wrapped her hand around his heart, and he had no idea what he was supposed to do with that. It choked him. Terrified him. Made it so he couldn’t breathe.

  He needed to breathe.

  He needed distance.

  He couldn’t stop time.

  But one thing he thought he might be able to do was speed it up.

  So Jacob sat up and swung his legs over the side of the mattress. Then he got out of bed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “JACOB?” VANESSA WAS GROGGY. She could hardly think. Even this long after her third orgasm she was fuzzy.

  There had been an intensity to Jacob that she couldn’t quite untangle. But she couldn’t complain either.

  Because he had been amazing. A leader and a partner all at the same time. The man was magic in ways she hadn’t realized a person could be. He was so dear and precious, and she didn’t know how he had become all of that.

  She thought that with him she’d made a mistake of some kind. But she hadn’t. Not really. She had come home to Gold Valley, but she hadn’t really come home until she had been in Jacob’s arms. This man, who had been a constant to her for so long. This man, who had been an anchor and hope on the worst night of her life.

  The man who had become, not just her past, but her future.

  But something had happened in the past few moments. Something had shifted. She could feel it in his body language.

  In everything.

  Really, she’d felt it when he had turned over after they’d finished last night.

  He had put deliberate distance between them, and she wasn’t sure if she knew why that was.

  * * *

  “GO BACK TO BED,” he said.

  He was hunting for his clothes, and he pulled his jeans on, then pulled his T-shirt over his head.

  “Where are you going? I rode up here with you.”

  “Nowhere,” he said, his expression blank.

  And she could tell that he had just realized that. That he was her ride, and he couldn’t just wander off somewhere.

  “Thank you for showing me your house,” she said.

  Maybe if she backtracked the conversation, if she moved it to a place where they had both been comfortable, to a topic that had been acceptable, he would come back to bed. It would go back to how it had been. But she didn’t really think so. She just wished it could be true. So much. But when he looked at her, there was something blank and terrible in his expression, and she knew that she wasn’t going to be able to win this. Not by going backward.

  But then, that was the story of her life. Going backward didn’t work. She had to go forward. Even here.

  Of course, she hadn’t been doing that, not totally, not with her family. She had gone back. Back to old patterns.

  Not into addiction and drugs, but into being assured of her victimhood and of the fact that no one could understand her. While not being forthright about the fact that she wanted to be understood. About how she needed to be understood. About how she needed them to simply love her as she was or walk away. Everything just moved forward. And she had to find a way to move forward with it.

  “Jacob,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I love you.”

  She did. She loved him in ways she didn’t think she could have ever loved another human being.

  Because he made her feel...precious. She hadn’t had to ask him to give that to her.

  He had listened and understood. He had defended her at every turn. The only person who had—even when he was angry—been on her team from the beginning. Without being asked.

  She had talked so much about valuing herself, about never taking less, not anymore.

  And he had showed her, in a thousand different ways, that he did.

  Right now, she realized she needed to value herself enough to ask for this. To ask for love.

  Because otherwise it would always be a series of moments where she
wondered. Wondered if what they had could last, and she didn’t want to wonder. She wanted to know.

  “I don’t know what love has to do with anything,” he said.

  “It has to do with everything,” she said.

  “Since when? You were perfectly happy to marry me without any talk of feelings, and now suddenly you’re talking about love?”

  “Are you going to tell me that you don’t feel anything? After that?” She gestured to the bed as if he might be confused about what she meant. “I mean, the connection that we have... There’s no way that is just physical. We’ve both had sex with other people. We know that this is more than that.”

  “It’s very good sex,” he agreed.

  He agreed easily, casually, and there was something unspeakably painful about that.

  Because she was dredging up feelings from deep inside her heart, and he seemed to be letting it all glance off like blows against heavy, thick armor.

  “I want this to be more than just convenient,” she said. “That’s the point. I just... I love you. I love you, and I have come into a deeper and deeper understanding of that recently. I want... I want more. I want everything. I was willing to take convenience, because I thought it was all I could have. Because I’ve never... I’ve never been able to trust in anyone’s feelings for me. And I can’t sign on for that with you. I don’t want to. I want all of it. Everything. The whole deal. Love and vows and promises. Because we can have that. I know we can. I can have it. You can. We don’t deserve to be defined by mistakes or pain. We deserve better. We can have better. We just have to ask for it.”

  “No,” he said, his voice flat. “I don’t... That’s not what I want.”

  “You don’t want everything?”

  “No. Some people can’t have everything, Vanessa. They can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because some people are broken,” he said.

  “Am I?” she asked, her voice getting immeasurably small. “Am I broken? Is that why I can’t have everything?”

  “It’s me,” he ground out. “I can’t have everything.”

  “Well, if you can’t, then neither can I.” His face was blank as she said that because he still didn’t understand. That if he hobbled himself he did the same to her.

  “We can have... We can have good things. We can have a life. It doesn’t need to be...this. It doesn’t need to be dramatic and over-the-top. It doesn’t need to be anything more than a logical decision, because let me tell you, every decision I’ve ever made that didn’t lead with my head ended badly.”

  “That’s not... That’s not even reasonable,” she said. “Life is full of decisions. You can’t walk it back and rethink every one of them. Your brain edits the details out. You think of defining things, traumatic things, and I’m sorry that you’ve been through them, but you can’t allow them to be your entire life.”

  “Yes, I can.”

  “Should I? Should I let my—my assault and my miscarriage and my drug use be all that I am?” She shook her head. “I don’t want that. I want to be loved. I want to be more than Vanessa Logan, druggie and disappointment. I want to be Vanessa Dalton, Jacob Dalton’s wife. I want to be a mother. I want to be loved. And most important, I want to be me, and you made me feel like I could be all those things at once, and before, I never thought that was possible.”

  “I already explained to you the way things were going to be with me. I can’t stop you from...feeling how you feel. But it will fade. After years of living with me, if you want something I can’t give, then you’re not going to be happy.”

  “Don’t tell me how I’m going to be happy,” she said.

  But inside she knew that he was right. That if she took a fraction she would be selling them both short. Because they could do better. They could. They could do so much better than this half life. Where they pretended at marriage and danced around feelings. Where they loved a child between them but wouldn’t allow themselves to love each other.

  If she accepted it, she would be selling them both short. She would be agreeing with him that he was broken. That they were broken and that they couldn’t or shouldn’t be whole. Everyone had left him alone up here. His family, in spite of how much they loved him. Everyone had accepted—to a degree—the level of brokenness that he chose to show the world.

  Like a boy painting fuck this all over a canvas, that was how Jacob went through life. And he didn’t let anyone close, and he didn’t let anyone see deeper. But he had given her an insight into what he was, into who he was. And if she did the same thing everyone else did, if she left him alone on the mountaintop, if she didn’t demand that he come down, if she didn’t demand that he meet her there, then she was not really loving him.

  She would be a crutch. She would be a hindrance to them both. Devaluing herself yet again, and what she deserved. Afraid to demand love because she had always been afraid to demand that.

  And letting him stay closed off.

  Letting him stay the way he’d been. That boy who’d seen something so devastating he couldn’t speak of it.

  She didn’t want to allow him to stay locked inside himself, because they could have better. They could, and they should. And if he wouldn’t demand it for them, then she would have to.

  She felt like she was standing on the edge of an abyss, because her only experience with this had been failure.

  Any other time she had ever thought to test the limits of love, she had found the edge of it. But she believed that she and Jacob had the potential for love that stretched endlessly, that went on forever. That could cover an entire life. A life of happiness, sadness, mistakes and triumphs.

  But it would have to be tested now. It would have to be demanded now. Otherwise they were doomed.

  Because love—commitment—was a choice. And this was the crossroads. Either they took it or they didn’t, but it had to be decided.

  “I love you,” she said again. “And I want you to love me. I think you can. Jacob, I think you do. I have lived in places for years at a time and never grown an attachment to someone the way I have to you. It’s not time that we need, it’s something else. We needed something that was in each other, and I think we found it. I am so damn glad that we did. I think we’ve been dancing around something real and deep since we saw each other again for the first time. I think we covered it up with fighting and sex. Because there was something on the other side of it, and we can step into it, but we have to be brave. We have to think we’re worth it. We can’t believe we’re broken. I refuse to believe it,” she said. “Because if I’m broken forever, then there was never a point in trying to put myself back together.”

  “You’re not broken,” he said, his voice rough. “You’re not broken, and you deserve better than someone who is. I wanted to make it work. I wanted to make this something, because I like my life to be easy. And God knows that being married to you would’ve been easier than trying to sort out a separate life. You deserve better than that. You deserve better than someone looking for easy.”

  “Is that what you think of yourself? Still? You think that you’re easy? That you don’t take chances on life? That you don’t put yourself out there to save people, to protect them? Because you have a whole history of that. You were there for me when no one else was.”

  “It was my job,” he said flatly. “You were one of any number of women who I helped, one of any number of people. It wasn’t special. And it wasn’t personal. And it is not any evidence that I am a damn hero.”

  The words lanced her heart like an arrow. “Don’t say that. Please. I needed you and you were there, and it mattered. And you’ve been there for me—”

  “I was there for you and I got paid, and I was there for you when you were naked. It’s not anything. It’s not anything that anyone else wouldn’t do. I’m not your hero. I can’t save anyone. I never have. Not when it counted. Not off the clock. Don’t make me into something that I’m not. Make yourself and what you can be, go right ahead and do
that, but don’t confuse all the strength you have inside yourself with something you’re going to find in me. This is what I am,” he said, gesturing around the room. “I am Hank Dalton’s son through and through. I’ve never done a thing but let people down when it counted. I chose my own pleasure over responsibility, my own comfort over anything else. No matter which road I take, it seems to be the path I end up on. Thoughtless, careless. Down to having sex with you without a condom. No, I’m not a hero.”

  “For somebody so married to that narrative, you’ve sure taken a lot of work where you could be one.”

  “Because I tried,” he said. “I tried to be someone who could save another person. If you get paid to do it, you figure that you get put into those situations and you can, and then... When there’s a call on the radio, and it’s all coming down, I guess I can be. But in my life? I’ve never once managed. I don’t feel it. I don’t feel anything.”

  “I don’t believe that either. Look at you. Look at the way you are with those boys, the way that you have helped your brothers with this ranch. The way you’ve been there for me. You do feel things. You feel everything.”

  And she could see all at once the terror in his eyes, and she knew that she was right. She knew that he felt things. That he felt them deep and heavy, and that the mere idea of it scared him to death. “I can be your husband,” he said. “I can protect you, support you, sleep with you. But I can’t do...everything else. And if that’s what you need to be happy—”

  “Yes,” she said, her voice almost failing her. “It’s what I need. It’s what I need. Why should I be the only person who doesn’t...doesn’t get to be loved? You get to be loved. I love you. Your brothers love you. Your parents love you. Even Ellie loves you while you sit around mired in guilt that isn’t yours.”

  He flinched at that, and she wondered if she’d finally made it through the armor.