by Nicole Helm
But when she stood, she didn’t head to her tent or even begin to pick up any of the things they’d been using around the fire. She approached him—not in anger, not in frustration, not to put him in his place, but with something like pity in her eyes. Only it wasn’t so bad as pity, it didn’t make him recoil. There was a warmth to it, one he wanted to lean into.
Which meant he had to get the hell away—but she reached out and touched him before he could. Just those long, delicate fingers across the curve of his shoulder. Nothing more than the slightest featherlight touch, as though she was brushing lint off his shirt.
It blasted through him like some kind of fire. Not just the sexual kind. Something bigger and brighter. He wanted to step into that, wrap himself around that. Her. He wanted to . . .
She must’ve been able to read something in his gaze, because she backed away. Good. She should damn well back away from him.
But then she had the nerve to do that Hayley thing. Where retreat was never final. Her steps back were only ever a moment to take stock, or gather strength. Before she blasted him to hell.
Because Hayley very purposefully, very determinedly stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him. It was an attack. It was cruel. It was pain and it was suffering, her arms sliding around his midsection, her body so close he could feel her warmth, could smell the coconut scent of her hair.
It was an irresistible comfort he didn’t know what to do with. Except sink into it. Which was horrifying, but not the kind of horrifying he could begin to resist.
* * *
Hayley was hugging Sam. She couldn’t wrap her mind around the reality of what she was doing. Her arms were around Sam’s gigantic body. All of the heat that must blaze from the very center of his angry being was now seeping into her.
She could feel the tension of each muscle, instead of just see it. She could feel how very strong and hard he was from the sturdy plane of his chest to the sheer broadness of his shoulders that all but dwarfed her.
And he was just standing there, all hard muscle and tension, and she knew she had to stop this. It was only meant to be a little gesture. A squeeze. A physical I’m sorry I’m poking at your gaping wound, but . . .
It felt good here and she didn’t want to let go. Maybe if—
Sam moved, and Hayley tensed. Inexplicably holding him tighter. What is wrong with you? her brain screamed, but the other half of her brain was having none of it.
When his arms lifted and came around her, she couldn’t have let go if her life depended on it. She was frozen, and even though he was now holding her, hugging her, he didn’t even begin to soften.
It was like holding a sun-warmed boulder. Except she was far more interested in what might be under Sam’s layer of clothes than she would be interested in the naked contents of a rock.
Hayley squeezed her eyes shut. The hug had been meant to be an offer of comfort, an apology of sorts, and that’s certainly the way he was taking it. If he knew she was thinking about nakedness he’d probably run in the opposite direction.
When he took a deep, shuddering breath, she could feel it shake through her too, and for the first time, he relaxed. Incrementally.
“Why did you hug me?” he asked, his voice a pained rasp way too close to her ear. She could feel his breath on her temple and another shudder went through her, this one completely her own. Everything about his proximity, feeling things as intimate as his breath on her skin, it turned her insides into a jittering, uncertain mass of nerves.
“I . . . I’m still hugging you,” she said, because she had no clue how to answer the question. The initial reason had been decimated by the strength in his grip and the clear knowledge he needed this.
He pulled away, but his arms remained around her, and though hers no longer touched the center of his back, she kept hers around him too. She swallowed against the urge to smooth her hands up, then down.
Really down.
Sam pushed her back enough he could look down at her, the firelight reflecting in those prismatic blue eyes. It seemed fitting, because in all that pain and confusion, there was a humming air of anger about him.
That was anger, right? Except someone else’s anger usually caused more fear than a restless nervousness that reminded her a whole heck a lot of . . . wanting something she didn’t quite understand.
She wanted . . . Well, she wanted him, and she wanted him to want her, and she wouldn’t have thought that possible a few days ago. Heck, a few minutes ago, but there was something in his expression . . .
She knew how to kiss a guy. She even knew how to engage in a little awkward groping. But nothing about Sam’s look reminded her of what she could only consider child’s play now.
“You should go to your tent, Hayley. You don’t want me to get the wrong idea.”
It took her a minute to unravel that sentence, the glint in his eye, the flat-lipped danger in the expression of his mouth.
Hayley wasn’t completely clueless. There was a certain predatory gleam in a guy’s eyes when he wanted to get in your pants. It had taken seeing a lot of that look on Sean’s face to get it—understand what it was. Eventually, she’d picked up on it, she’d even been interested, but in the end her mother’s numerous dire predictions about where sex led, and an overprotective stepfather and stepbrother, had kept Hayley’s panties securely in place.
But she wasn’t a teenager anymore, or an innocent, fluttery college student. And, well . . . no offense to Sean, he was no Sam Goodall.
So, very much against all the voices in her head warning her off—because what was the past two years of her life if not ignoring those voices—she didn’t drop her gaze. She didn’t pretend she was confused.
“Maybe you getting the wrong idea is exactly what I want.”
She figured those words, which amounted to a challenge, were probably a bad idea. She expected him to completely shut down. To let her go and back away. To be the Sam of the past few weeks who was gone at the hint of any emotion or connection before she even blinked.
Instead, she was still being held by a man she didn’t know how to read. Sure, she recognized the man in front of her as the man who had been teaching her how to hike and guide. The man who grunted more than he spoke actual words. She recognized some pieces of the hard-edged man with the sad past. But tonight, in the flickering light of the campfire, she also saw a world of emotion behind those usually blank eyes.
He wasn’t running away. He wasn’t even letting her go. His grip remained exactly the same. Holding her tight and close.
“It’s okay. It’ll be all right,” she murmured, because he seemed pained, because he seemed confused. Like he was going to walk away, which she wasn’t sure she could stand. She wanted everything to be all right for him.
He looked at her then, bleak and empty. “It’s not okay.”
She blinked, shocked by the raw pain in his voice, except he was still holding her. Surely, that was something. Surely, she was something.
It’s not okay.
She understood, perhaps too deeply, that he wasn’t talking about this moment per se, but about everything that had led him here. Things weren’t okay in his life. Some things never would be—his sister would always be gone.
Her father would always be the man who’d paid her mother to disappear.
There would always be fissures and cracks, and she was so damn afraid of them that she ignored them.
But what if fissures and cracks were all there were? And acceptance was the only way to actually . . . be.
“Kiss me. Please.” Because she wanted him to, even if it wouldn’t be okay. She wanted to know what that not okay felt like.
She expected denial. She kept expecting the words she uttered would be the final thing to break him of this spell. But nothing changed. Except that his eyes, once so firmly linked to hers, dropped to her mouth. As though he was actually going to kiss her.
Hayley tried to hide her sharp intake of breath, but it was nearly impossible. This
handsome, confusing man was looking at her mouth like he was actually going to kiss her.
She wanted that more than was precisely right or fair.
Isn’t it time you go after something you want? Isn’t it time to be the woman you want to be?
It was all supposed to start with Sam. Trying things, standing up for herself. Maybe . . . maybe even this. This last vestige of adolescence. This journey into being an adult and a woman and who she wanted to be. Not who Mom or Mack or James wanted her to be, but the person she’d hidden deep while trying to belong.
So, instead of standing still or fading away, Hayley did what she’d only ever been able to find the courage to do with Sam. She stood taller, even up on her toes. She got her mouth as close to his as she could. The only thing stopping her from kissing him was the fact that she didn’t have the height.
He would have to give an inch—just an inch. She held her breath, wondering if that would ever, ever happen.
She felt his exhale, surprisingly shaky. As though he wasn’t sure what to do, and though she knew Sam had his demons and hang-ups in spades, it surprised her that he might not know exactly what he wanted. It shocked the hell out of her that he might be uncertain or even . . . tempted. By her.
The hands that held her in a tight grip moved. A slight loosening, and just as she was starting to feel the threads of disappointment at his pulling away, those hands didn’t leave her body as she anticipated. Big, rough, sure and steady hands slid up her back. One stayed there at the space between her shoulder blades—a large, sturdy anchor.
The other one slid up her neck. It was somewhat disorienting how easy it would be for Sam’s hand to clamp around her neck and keep her immobile. Right there. Exactly where he wanted her.
Instead, the hand kept moving, up into her hair, cupping her scalp. Those long, blunt fingers getting tangled in all the thick curls.
The move poked holes in all the restless nerves wriggling along her skin. Because she knew what came next. Sean had always made comments about her hair—how thick it was, how different it felt. Constantly pointing out her differences when all she wanted to do was belong. Blend in.
But Sam didn’t speak.
He was standing here, holding her head and her back, and looking at her like he could devour her in one bite.
Yes, Hayley definitely felt a little light-headed. Like her throat had closed and her heart was beating too wildly to be doing its job. Like her skin was so hot and sensitive, even the air was too much to bear.
But if she thought she was warm now, once Sam lowered his mouth just a fraction of a hair from her own, there were no adjectives left to explain the blaze inside of her. She wasn’t sure she could even breathe.
She wanted to beg him to kiss her, but she didn’t have words anymore because he was this close to doing it. This close, and his mouth looked perfect somehow. Exactly like a man’s mouth should look. Full, but strong and determined.
She realized, suddenly and with something of a start, that his mouth was close enough now she could kiss him. Her arms were mobile. She didn’t have to stand here frozen and waiting. She could actually, for once in her life, be the one who did the thing.
So she moved one hand from his back and carefully touched his cheek just where his beard started edging to skin. She cupped his jaw, enjoying the rough scrape of his whiskers, full and thick and the perfect texture.
His eyes flicked from her mouth to her steady gaze. Even though her heart was still beating a mile a minute, even though she was nervous and scared and desperate, she softened at that lost look in his eyes.
She wanted to give him something. She wanted him to have this and know that it was okay. It really was. So she wrapped her hand around his shoulder and then moved to close that distance between them.
But before she could manage it, his mouth was on hers, his arms tightened and brought her closer. Her pulse, its own scattered rhythm everywhere, an uncontrollable heat centering in her gut and spreading out.
His mouth, hard and uncompromising, taking hers, not waiting for any kind of invitation to trace her lips with his tongue, until he was inside.
She felt like she was liquid, and he was holding her up, and the erotic slide of his tongue against hers was like nothing she had ever experienced. She wanted to live here in the heat and the certainty that even though she had no idea where this was going, Sam would hold her up.
Chapter Fourteen
Sam was dying. Something in his soul was ripping apart, because no matter how wrong this was, he wanted to sink into Hayley until nothing else existed. He wanted to forget everything—and God he meant everything.
She tasted as sweet as she always looked, and she was pliant in his arms. As though she trusted him to be the anchor she needed.
It hurt. It ached. Everything in the past had been running and hiding from things that hurt and ached, but Hayley was the first thing in all that time that seemed worth it.
She was light. She was hope. She felt like a salvation he knew he couldn’t have and certainly didn’t deserve, but he kissed her anyway. He kept her head cupped in his hand, angling her mouth just where he needed it to be.
He might have expected her to run in the opposite direction. Though he’d had an inclination she might feel some attraction for him, he hadn’t really allowed himself to dwell on that possibility too much. It would have been dangerous.
Of course, this right here was more than dangerous. It was life altering. Because not only had he not given himself like this to someone in years upon years, but even back in those days when he had kissed and slept with anyone he damn well pleased, it had never felt like his soul was involved. It never felt like light or hope or possibility. It had been sex. It had been for the sole purpose of reaching orgasm. The end.
But Hayley . . .
Her long, lean body was pressed to his and he could feel every curve and supple contraction of muscle. She was like one of those spindly aspens that grew in the mountains. They gave you this impression of being skinny and easy to break, but the last thing she was doing under his mouth, pressed up to his body, was breaking.
Even while he felt as though he was. Breaking apart into all these pieces he wouldn’t know how to put back together. And yet he kept going. Kissing her deeper, tasting every texture of her mouth until it became a part of his own. He kept holding her strong back, something like a river stone beneath his fingers.
He had to stop this. He had to end this moment before it took a turn he couldn’t control or he couldn’t take back. Because as much as his hand itched to lift up the shirt she was wearing and see what all of that skin would look like bared to him in the glowing firelight, it would be wrong.
It would be an unconscionable betrayal to the people who had kept him alive when he least wanted to be. It was that memory and understanding that finally cut through the haze of lust and the bright sweetness Hayley offered.
He tensed in an effort to pull away, but Hayley held on to him. Her arm wrapped tight around his shoulder and neck, the other hand still gently brushing against his bearded jaw. Her mouth this soft, tantalizing heat that would blaze its own trail, a whole new one for his life.
He didn’t want that, and when she moved against him, a fluid arch that rubbed her abdomen against his thick, throbbing erection, the blast of need and heat and power shook him down to his bones, rattling everything he thought he’d been doing during his hermitage years.
Despite the physical desire to find release, Sam’s overactive brain wasn’t about to let that happen.
This time when he pulled back, he did it completely. Cleanly. A break from this woman who had all of the tools to undo everything in his life. Including this job and his friendship with Brandon and Will, and maybe even Lilly.
Everything about Hayley’s relationship with Brandon and Will was complicated enough; adding him into the mix would only be disastrous. As much of an asshole he’d been to Brandon and Will, and even Lilly in the past few months, if not years, he co
uldn’t hurt them like that. He wouldn’t hurt them. That had to be his centering thought. All of his body’s reactions to Hayley had to bend to his will. Because he couldn’t betray the few people in his life who cared about him.
“You don’t have to stop.” She said it breathlessly, her eyes huge and somehow completely gold in the firelight. Her breath came in short puffs, the same way his did, and everything inside of his body begged to reach out and hold her again.
God, he wanted that warmth again, that perfect softness that had felt like . . . like a life he had taken for granted so many years ago. Her in his arms, her mouth under his.
“I do have to stop,” he managed to rasp out. “This can’t happen.” A statement as much to himself as to her.
She frowned, not just frustration but determination in that slim little line between her eyebrows. He had to fight her determination before it had a chance to grow into something he couldn’t fight.
“This can’t happen. That was a line that can’t be crossed again. I don’t know what you were thinking—”
“What I was thinking? What were you thinking?”
He had to brace himself for the impact of his own words. He was going to tell a lie, and he had to make her believe it. Or this would be a circle she kept running in until they both ended up miserable and probably alone.
“I was thinking a woman was kissing me for the first time in a long ass time and I’m not exactly picky after that long.”
She made a sound he couldn’t quite identify. Not a gasp, not a squeak, not even an angry sort of outraged grunt. It was a noise all Hayley’s own.
He couldn’t make out the exact expression on her face because she had backed into the shadows where only licks of fire gave him a glimpse at how her body was held and her mouth was arranged. Closed off, contemplative, all those things that preceded a Hayley attack.
He couldn’t even begin to guess what emotions lived in the depths of her eyes from this distance, and he was glad for it.
But the fact she was hiding in the shadows said a lot. Perhaps everything it needed to.
