by Sosie Frost
Had his eyes brightened…or did the lightning transform his sunny green into a stormy tempest?
His gaze matched my own. My mood had soured the instant the air-conditioning failed, and the heat smothered my words.
“Civilized people use the door,” I said.
His expression twisted. Irritated. “You weren’t answering anyway.”
“Civilized people would consider that a message.”
“I’m not very civilized.”
“No. You’re a Payne.”
He grumbled with the thunder. “Thought that’s why you liked me.”
“I liked you despite being a Payne.”
“And I thought you were better than the other Barlows.”
“Maybe they’re just smarter than me.”
“You weren’t going to tell me?” he asked.
“Did you think you were owed an explanation?”
Quint stepped closer. I regretted the sheet. Even the barest hint of the cotton tightened like a straitjacket across my chest.
“I thought we were friends.” He bit the word. Harsh. Unfamiliar. “Figured you’d respect me enough to tell me face-to-face.”
And we both knew how irresponsible we’d be that close together.
“It’s not about disrespect, Quint. It’s about everything that happened.”
“So, I’m not worth more than a text to you?” He held up his phone. “What the hell does this mean?”
I never anticipated having this fight in the middle of the night. I’d hoped we’d never have it at all.
For once in his life of whirlwind debauchery, promiscuity, and recklessness, Quint demanded a real conversation. Just my luck. This was a man who’d never exchanged phone numbers with a woman, and yet he dared to argue with me about my trip?
Why couldn’t he let me go?
Why didn’t he treat me like every other girl?
It should’ve thrilled me. It meant we might have had something more. A chance for a moment in time greater than anything we could’ve imagined alone.
But now?
It only made this so much harder.
Why did he have to be here tonight?
What was I to do with that flutter of excitement as he stepped deeper into my room, into the darkness…
Close enough that he might have taken me again in his arms.
“What do you mean you’re leaving?” Quint asked.
The hem of my shirt was far too short and my underwear entirely too exposed to speak with anyone, let alone this man. I tugged the shirt lower, stretching the material to cover the pink blush of my panties. Not that it mattered. He’d already explored every secret beneath that cotton. Had tasted it. Touched it. Probably memorized it.
That embarrassment made it even more ridiculous that he dared to fight with me.
He’d destroy both of our lives because neither of us were strong enough to leave the other.
“I bought my plane ticket,” I said. “I’m leaving Thursday night.”
“Just like that?”
I arched an eyebrow. “One of the few days I could redeem points.”
He snorted. “And you thought that was only worth a text?”
He was worth so much more, but he came at a price I was unwilling to pay.
I dodged the question. “The airlines decide what days to reserve for their points—”
“Fuck me, Lady. Since when am I the one who’s gotta tell you to get serious?”
Did he want a real answer? “If I get any more serious, I might never leave. So, yeah. I texted.”
“Glad to know you cared enough to pick up your damned phone.”
“The last time we met, neither of us where very interested in talking.” And I’d had one hell of a time explaining away the hay embedded in my hair when I got home. “What happened in the barn complicated everything. You know that.”
I couldn’t see him in the dark, but I knew he stared straight through me.
“I told you it was a mistake,” he said. “You said you understood.”
Sure. I understood as much as my broken heart would allow. “I’m not a girl who makes the same mistake twice, Quint. That’s why I’m leaving. I thought you’d be glad to be rid of me.”
He swore. “Christ. I don’t fucking get you, Lady.”
We had nothing left to figure out except the uncomfortable secrets that were safer unsaid.
“What’s left to talk about?” I said. “I’m getting on the plane. Going to Paris. And I plan to have a marvelous time.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Absolutely. I’ll have more fun than I’ve ever found in Butterpond.”
“Better mistakes?”
“I learned my lesson.” I shrugged. “Next time I find myself in the dark, it won’t be a mistake.”
“What about our plans?”
That was worth a laugh, but I wasn’t feeling particularly cheerful. “Even you must realize that we don’t work very well together.”
Or that we got along entirely too well.
“You really believe that?” he asked.
“We’re very different people. Oil and water. Payne and Barlow. We have nothing in common.”
“Bullshit.”
“Everything we want contradicts the other. Our futures. Our plans. Our needs.”
“Not true.” He stepped forward, but, like a dance, I kept my distance, and with it, my sanity. “Look at what we’ve done so far. The knitting club is back together. We got a sweater on an alpaca.”
And while that was a verifiable miracle in Butterpond, it couldn’t matter less in the real world—where alpacas had fur, hearts could be broken, and even the best intentions counted for nothing when hatred burned as hot as our desires.
“We gave a pachyderm a makeover,” I said. “That’s not a good enough reason for me to stay.”
The lightning flashed. I’d never known this man to stand still. No playful beat in his step, no casual shrug of his shoulders or quirk in his eyebrow. His disapproval ached through me, but we’d both made choices we regretted. Now was the time to correct those mistakes.
And maybe I’d gone about it all wrong, but I’d rather hurt a little and be done with him forever than suffer a broken heart for the rest of my life.
“You’re running,” he said.
“As far as I can get.”
“Are you afraid?”
No use in lying. He felt it too.
“I’m terrified,” I said.
His voice finally softened. “Then don’t go.”
Like it was that easy. “Why? What’s keeping me here? I’ve got nothing in Butterpond.”
He wove a hand through his hair. The rain had soaked him head to toe, but I was the one shivering.
“You expect too much from me,” he said.
I hardly recognized the pain in my voice. “I haven’t asked anything of you. I’m doing this for myself. Because I have to do it.”
“And so you’re running half the world away for no good reason.”
“I have a good reason,” I said. “Grandma.”
“She’s kicking you out?”
I sighed. “No. She’s the one really stuck here.”
I pushed him aside and fumbled in the darkness for my travel journal. My flashlight app did a poor job at showing all the work I’d put into the yet-unwritten pages. I’d filled the journal with headers, plastic tabs, highlighters, and special pocket folders, all waiting for my entries and photographs. I’d made the book several months ago, but I hadn’t the courage to put the departure date on the cover.
Until now.
“This is as much her trip as it is mine.” I opened the book and retrieved an old, brittle paper, scrawled with Grandma’s delicately precise handwriting. “She wrote this on the back of a Bible, while sitting at my grandfather’s bedside in the hospital. They thought he would get better—that they could go on a second honeymoon in Europe, but…”
“He died?”
“Before any of my brothers o
r sisters were even born. And, at the time, she felt it was improper for a woman to travel alone, so Grandma never went. But she always told me about the places she’d wanted to see. The Eiffel Tower. The canals in Venice. Buckingham Palace. Green fields in Ireland.”
“Can’t imagine the Widow Barlow wanting anything besides a ban on skateboards and a repair to the pothole on Main Street,” Quint said.
“We Barlows keep our families close,” I said. “We tend to our own gardens, and that’s just what I plan to do for her. Maybe she refuses to leave Butterpond, but that’s no reason I can’t go for her.”
Quint dared to laugh. “So, all this time…this grand adventure of yours was Grandma’s idea?”
“I had my reasons.”
“Enlighten me.”
Like hell. He might have had that privilege before, but he’d lost the right to search my soul the moment he’d refused my heart.
“I’m leaving, regardless of what you think,” I said. “And I’m going to enjoy myself every minute I’m outside of Butterpond.”
“Who the hell are you trying to convince?” He snorted. “You or Grandma?”
“It’s my dream too, Quint.”
“And what happens once you wake up in Paris?”
“Anything and everything.”
“Yeah, right.”
His disbelief irritated me. I ignored the low line of my shirt’s hem and crossed my arms. “Something wrong with that?”
“You don’t even know what you’re looking for.”
That was rich, coming from him. “I know exactly why I’m going and who I’ll find.”
“Now it’s a who?”
“Absolutely. I’m going to land myself a nice guy.”
He laughed. “Nice, huh? Nicer than me?”
“Yes.”
“Better than me?”
Good thing it was dark. He couldn’t see me roll my eyes. “Believe it or not, there are plenty of men out there who are better than you.”
“Might have to look hard. I’m one-of-a-kind.”
“Then I’ll get myself two men,” I said. “And I’ll smoosh them together, and maybe they can both give me everything I can’t find here.”
Quint drew closer, but this time I wasn’t running. “You’re so full of shit you wouldn’t know where to stuff both those men.”
“Why stop at two?” I asked. “Maybe I’ll find a whole slew of men.”
“Yeah.” He spat the words. “Just sex it up. Why not?”
“Exactly. I’ll just test them all out. See what I’ve been missing. Maybe I’ll make a couple mistakes, but at least I’ll have some fun. Isn’t that what’s most important?”
“Why don’t you tell me?” he asked. “Since you seem to know what’s best for everyone.”
With pleasure.
“There’s nothing that you could give me right now that I couldn’t find somewhere else,” I said.
I didn’t really believe that. Neither did he.
And the thought of me experimenting nearly destroyed us both.
“You think you know what you want.” Quint appraised me in the darkness. “But you haven’t got a clue.”
“I know I want something real.” It wasn’t anything close to what I meant, but I refused to tempt the truth with him so near and my body practically bare. “I want a man who wants me. Someone who doesn’t mind having a nice girl. Someone who would share everything with me—not just their bed, but their heart and soul, their dreams, their future.”
Quint laughed. “Yeah, tell a man that, and he’ll say anything he can for the chance to take advantage of you.”
His mind worked in shameful, terrible ways.
“Then I’ll find the one man who won’t,” I said.
“And what happens when you latch onto him?”
“Don’t get naïve now, Quint.”
His voice hardened. “You’d sleep with him?”
“Absolutely.”
“That’s not what you really want.”
“What woman wouldn’t want to be taken by a man who cared about her?” I asked. “Who wanted her? Dreamt about her? Tortured himself by refusing her? Who’d destroy everything for the chance to create something wonderful with her?”
“And you think you’ll find that son of a bitch in Europe?”
“Should I be looking closer to home?”
Lightning cascaded over the sky, rendering us still for a heartbeat.
We stared at each other. Aching. Angry.
Then the darkness swept over us once more, and we surrendered to the safety and silence of the shadows.
Quint rushed forward. He captured my lips with a frustrated curse. His sigh mirrored my own, so eager to submit to every dark and twisted fantasy that had threatened to consume us since our first, brief touch.
But I pushed him away. Clutched my hands into his soaking shirt and tasted the summer rain still dripping from his skin.
“You’re such an idiot…” I pounded my hands against him. “You don’t know what you do to me.”
“And you’re fucking naïve.” Quint caressed my cheek before tangling his hand in my hair. He forced my head back, but the darkness obscured everything except the harsh silhouette of his jaw, the proud angle of his nose, and the furrowed, frustrated strength of his brow. “How the hell am I supposed to resist you?”
“Maybe you can’t.”
“Better hope I’m stronger than that.”
“What happens if you give in?”
“You really want me to fuck you like that? To drop your ass on that bed, bury myself inside you, and rut you like a fucking animal?” His words burned, streaking heat and promise over every inch of my exposed skin.
“You don’t frighten me, Quint Payne.”
“Well, you scare the shit out of me, Lady Barlow…” His grip tightened. “I don’t know who I am around you except a goddamned slave to your smile. I don’t know what I want beyond dropping to my knees and earning your sweet fucking whimpers. And I know there’s no fucking way I can leave your bed without ensuring that I’m the man who shows you everything dangerous, dirty, and deviant that you can do in the dark.”
I shattered as he crushed me against his body. His lips fell over mine—voracious, possessive, and triumphant. His tongue seized every confession I’d left unsaid, and his crazed, consuming kisses stole any breath which might have whispered those feelings aloud.
This would be a mistake. A perfectly terrible mistake.
I ripped at his shirt, twisting the drenched cotton over his body. He had no patience for my pleas. He batted me away only long enough to nearly rend the shirt from his flesh. Chilled by the storm. Burning with desire. Flushed so hot I expected the last raindrops to sizzle from his pecs.
I’d never wanted him so much.
And I’d never hated him so much.
I’d been so close. So eager to rid him from my life and regain a sense of sanity and control over my raging heart and relentless emotions.
My thoughts weren’t my own. My desires a wanton fantasy that had no place within the real, rational world. But in his arms, Quint reduced me to pure pleasure. His feral, animalistic demands awakened a need in me that only he could soothe.
The stifling summer air might have suffocated me had Quint’s demands not stolen my breath first. His kiss bound me to him, and his scent rendered me helpless against his monstrous urges. My head filled with earth and sweat, sun and trees, rust and leather. He dizzied me. Confused me. My desires became a mess of emotions and sensation, bewilderment and instinct. Maybe I didn’t understand, but Quint knew.
And he’d show me everything.
The darkness might’ve concealed our secrets had the storm not flashed, invading my bedroom with a burst of heat and truth. He hadn’t closed the window. Gusts of wind and pouring rain swirled between us. The damp spray chilled me, but my every shiver already belonged to Quint.
I pushed him away.
He did the same.
And we panted, brea
thless and confused, choking on every undelivered promise.
“Tell me what you want.” Quint’s voice rasped with frustration. I felt him. Couldn’t see him through shadow, but his very presence turned hard. Tormented by his urges. Tempered by his crumbling resilience. “Tell me what you want me to do, Lady. Because I don’t know what’s right anymore. I don’t know what I want. I don’t know how to give you what you deserve.”
The heat clawed at my throat and ripped at my last shred of sanity. “I don’t know either.”
“Use your instincts.”
“I don’t have any.”
“Bullshit.” He swore. “What’s in your heart?”
Him.
“Nothing that’s ever seemed right,” I whispered. “But I don’t think it has ever been wrong.”
“You know what I’d do to you,” he said. “But I don’t feel good taking it.”
“Then that limits my options.”
“Tell me what you want, and I’ll do it.”
“Like it’s that easy.”
“It shouldn’t be hard.”
I nearly giggled. “I’d hoped it would be.”
Quint tugged me close once more, resting the tips of my fingers against his jeans. Despite how the rain had soaked the denim, that pulsing bulge behind his zipper nearly seared my hand.
A thrill dazzled me. There, just beyond my touch, was everything I’d chased and feared, avoided and enticed. That hardness represented every pleasure I’d ever imagined and every mistake a girl could make by falling in love, breaking her own heart, and then crashing head-over-heels once more for the same incompatible, yet incomparable man.
His motions should have scandalized me. The prim and proper Lady Barlow would have been humiliated by the raw, illicit desire which had hardened the most animalistic part of him. But my blood churned. I seized ragged breath after ragged breath and imagined that monstrous part of him surging through the most tender part of me.
My resolve didn’t shake—it shattered. Obliterated as I lost myself in his touch, his kiss, and the terrible truth.
I wanted to give him everything that wasn’t his to take.
His panted breath mirrored my own. He stood before me—shirtless, sweating, and chilled. Misted by rain and splattered with mud. How far had he raced tonight? He’d braved the storm and clawed a path through the swampy, flooded woods. And when I hadn’t answered his call, he nearly shattered my window. Forced it open. Invaded my bedroom during the sanctity of night.
