by Maisey Yates
“I don’t know what I would’ve done,” she said, the words choked.
“What you always do,” he said, the words strangled. “Survived. Gotten on just fine.”
“You might get on after stuff like that happens,” she whispered. She looked up, from that position on the floor, and it was like a punch to the gut. “But you’re not the same. Not ever.”
“I don’t suppose.”
“And the hole is never filled.”
He swallowed hard. The idea that the loss of him might leave a hole in Rose’s life that could never be filled was one he both liked and disliked in near equal measure.
She kissed him again, close, but not close enough.
“Quit teasing,” he ground out.
“I haven’t kept you waiting long,” she responded.
“You kept me waiting for way too damned long,” he bit out.
Five years’ worth of it.
And then, she kissed him right there. Betraying all that sweet innocence as she did. Every tentative movement of her mouth over his shaft. It took her a while to get her tongue involved, and when she did, he saw stars.
If he was in any kind of pain from the accident, it was gone now. Because his entire world was now focused on her mouth. And when she took him inside, he thought he might go ahead and die. He leaned back against the bathroom wall, hands buried in her hair as she pleasured him. This was one fantasy he’d never let himself have. Because he was a filthy animal, wanting his friend’s sister the way that he did, but he had never let himself fantasize about her doing this.
So having it happen, having that mouth on him...
If he had died when that tractor rolled on him, that would have been a tragedy. If he died now, he could die pretty damned happy.
He could feel his control slipping. And he didn’t want it to be over. He tugged her hair, and she pulled away from him, her eyes looking glassy.
“Not like that,” he said gruffly.
He looked over the counter and saw a condom. God bless her. She had sneaked one out of his room. He grabbed hold of the towel, and let it drop to the floor. For a second, she blushed. And he thought it was the prettiest thing he’d ever seen.
He hauled her against him, and kissed her, then reversed their positions, pressing her body against the wall.
And then it was his turn to get down on his knees. He hooked her legs up over his shoulders, and he pressed his face right there, tasted her exactly where he knew she would want him most. He tasted her until she was shaking. Until she was shouting out his name. Until he thought he was going to explode from needing to be inside of her.
But he had to make sure. He had to make it good for her.
And when he felt her shatter beneath his mouth, that was when he reached for the condom. He sheathed himself, standing and positioning himself between her spread legs before lifting her against him again, pinning her to the wall and thrusting home.
She gasped, and he couldn’t hold back the roar building inside of him. It was frantic after that. Affirming or something. He didn’t know. All he knew was that he was reduced down to this thing between them. To where they joined. To what she made him feel.
To the earth-shattering intensity that existed between them. To the overwhelming reality of what it meant to be inside of her.
And then he kissed her. And there was nothing innocent in that kiss. It was carnal, and it mimicked their lovemaking. Deep and hard and long. Until he felt her break. Until she began to convulse around him, shuddering out her pleasure in a way that echoed through his body.
He could feel it. He could feel it the way he could always feel what she did.
And then, it was too much for him. He followed her over that edge into a shared oblivion that left him feeling rocked. Drained.
Too soon, he felt the ache return to his leg, the pains returning to his body.
He dispensed with the condom, then picked Rose up, in spite of all that pain. He could only credit lingering adrenaline—from his orgasm, not his accident—for his ability to do that. He deposited her in the tub, bringing her down on top of him as he sat in the water.
They didn’t speak. He just held her.
She turned slightly, curling into him, rubbing her cheek against his damp chest.
“I’m okay,” he said finally.
“Obviously,” she said.
“Sorry I scared you.” He pushed some damp hair away from her face.
“Don’t do it again,” she said. “I don’t like having emotions.”
“Yeah. So say we all.”
“I really don’t,” she said grumpily.
“You like me,” he said.
She elbowed him in the stomach. He caught her arm and flipped her over so that she was facing him, her full breasts crushed to his chest, all slick and sexy. He started to get hard again. “That was naughty,” he said.
“It must’ve been,” she said wiggling. “Because you’re getting...”
She blushed again.
“How can you blush about me getting hard when you’re lying naked on top of me?”
“Because I’m not used to your... I’m not used to that.”
“How messed up is it that I think that’s cute?”
“No more messed up than anything else in our lives.”
And that, he thought, was maybe the most salient point to be made about their situation. Who was to say what was right? Or messed up or normal.
“This is a little different than the time that I bandaged up your hand a while after our parents died.”
She said the words so softly, he barely heard them.
“What?” he asked.
“Do you remember that?”
She looked at him with such intensity, such sincerity, and part of him wanted to lie to her. “No.”
He couldn’t lie.
“But I don’t remember very much about those days,” he said. “It’s all kind of a blur.”
“That’s probably why you cut yourself. On the fence. I helped put a Band-Aid on your hand. I asked you when they were coming home.”
His chest tightened. And a memory scratched at the back of his mind. He knew then why he hadn’t remembered. He hadn’t remembered deliberately. It wasn’t something he wanted to recall.
He could see her all the same, even though it was difficult for him to picture the child that Rose had been when the woman loomed so large in his mind.
“What did I tell you?” he asked quietly.
“That dead is forever.”
It was amazing, how easily that old despair could fill his chest. How quickly he could be overtaken by that grief, as if it had all happened yesterday, and not seventeen years ago.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She wrapped her arms around him underneath the water. He tightened his hold on her. She shifted, her cheek moving on his chest, until it came to rest right over his heart.
“Don’t be sorry,” she said softly. “It wasn’t fair. That we had to do that. Go through it. That you had to explain it to me. That I had to understand it. But I’m glad that you were there.”
He put his chin on top of her head and rested it there. “Me, too.”
“I’m glad you are here for this, too,” she said quietly. “For me.”
A weird kind of symmetry to that. That he could be the one to teach her about grief and death and sex also.
They had chosen to deal with the first two things. But at least this was something they’d wanted.
“You’ve always been there for me,” she said softly. “It was really important to me that I was there for you today. I’m sorry that I ran away at first.”
He looked down at her. “You’re always there for me. I couldn’t do half the work I do without you there. You’re like... I don’t know. A really good tractor.”
She burst out laughing, the sound reverberating off the close bathroom walls. “That is the worst.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Well,” she said, her tone sly, “I am on top of you. Also like a tractor.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean?”
“I couldn’t get my work done without you.”
“Well, why am I the tractor? Because I’m the girl? That makes me seem like an implement. Rather than implementer.”
“Fine. You’re the best ranch hand a man could ever ask for.”
“Ranch hand.” Then, something wicked came over her face. “I could give you a hand... If that’s what you really want from me.” She slipped her hand between their bodies and wrapped it around his hardening length. “How’s that? Ranch handy?”
“That’s not what I meant, either,” he groaned. “But I’ll take it.”
“What I should probably do is assist you into bed.”
“Not a half-bad idea. As long as you get into it with me.”
“Admit I’m the rancher. And you’re the ranch hand.”
Well, he was basic, after all. So the only answer to that was for him to put his hand between her legs and stroke her, tease her the way that she was doing him. “What do you think?”
She sighed. “I think we complement each other pretty well.”
His chest burned then, with the desire for something more. Something he couldn’t put a name to. And for the first time in his memory he wanted to give something to someone else.
A gift.
There was so much damn baggage involved in him giving someone a gift.
But Rose...his Rose. She was in his arms all soft and warm and slick and he’d give her the world if he could.
The whole damn world.
He’d gone to a Christmas parade for her.
He’d give her a gift, too. And he knew just the thing.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THINGS CHANGED AFTER THAT. Rose gave up trying to impose limitations on what was happening between them. She also never asked him again what the endgame was.
Because she didn’t want to think about it.
As long as she was living in the moment, she didn’t care.
The two of them worked together like they always had. And then at night, she sneaked off to his cabin.
The more she stared at the stark, determinedly undecorated space of his cabin, the more she was determined to find his mother’s cookie recipe and give it to him as a Christmas gift. But she was also a little afraid that it might upset him. She didn’t want that.
He didn’t do Christmas. He didn’t do gifts. She knew that. But he’d done the Christmas parade with her. And she wanted to believe that maybe for her...maybe with her he’d be willing to make something new.
She wanted to give him something. Something real. Because every so often she would look at him and the full scope of what he meant to her would hit her like a...well, like a tractor falling on top of her. Which, based on the lovely color of his still healing bruises, was quite a lot of impact.
West and Pansy’s wedding was getting close, and it was also the time of year that Colt and Jake came to town to spend Christmas with them.
Rose felt slightly guilty about how distracted she was.
It was tough to care about Christmas, or even her sister’s wedding when she was so consumed by her affair with Logan.
Affair. Was that the right word? She didn’t even know.
“Are you listening?”
Rose looked up from the pot of jam that she’d been stirring and made eye contact with Iris. Sammy and Pansy were staring at her, too.
They had gotten their berries from summer out of the freezer, and were making jam and pie filling. More jam to send off with the boys when they left again, and prepping the pie filling for dinner tonight, and through the next couple of weekends.
They went through so much food when everybody was here. And Rose wasn’t really the best person to assist with the cooking. But she did.
Not because it was women’s work really, or anything like that. She did enough of the ranch work that she didn’t feel like she had to go work in the kitchen, too.
But she loved spending time with her sisters, and Sammy.
Of course, a little bit less during times like this when she felt like she had been caught out at something.
“No,” she admitted. “I wasn’t listening.”
“Are you scheming?” Sammy asked. “Because I thought we put a moratorium on your scheming.”
“I don’t have anything to scheme about.”
For once it was true. She wasn’t as consumed with anybody else’s life because she was so wrapped up in her own. She had been avoiding that. For a very long time. Because it was... Well, caring so much about what was happening in her own life was scary. Potentially painful.
But she was in it. There was nothing to be done. And right now she was... Well, she wasn’t even upset that she was so consumed with her own life. Because her own life was interesting. And sex with Logan was amazing. She was enjoying herself. There was nothing wrong with that, was there?
“Well, as long as you promise not to scheme,” Sammy said.
“The only scheming I’m doing is figuring out how to eat as much of this jam with a spoon as I can without Iris noticing.”
“Don’t do that,” Iris groused. “I’ll have to box your ears.”
“What does that even mean?” Pansy asked.
“You used to threaten to do it to me all the time,” Rose said. “And you don’t know what it means?”
Pansy shrugged. “No. But I figured it sounded frightening and that was what mattered.”
“And you’re the person keeping the streets of Gold Valley safe.” Iris shook her head. “Shocking.”
“I think we’ve already established that I’m vaguely shocking.”
“How are your wedding plans going?”
“Two weeks until the wedding, so they should be pretty well finalized,” Pansy said, looking pleased. “Though after all this I’m starting to think you and Ryder had the right idea.”
“Shotgun wedding?” Sammy asked.
“Pretty much. I wish he had gotten me pregnant. Then we could’ve just done it.”
“Right. But where does a pregnancy fit into your first year as police chief?”
Pansy sighed. “It doesn’t. I figured two years in the new job, and then I can have a baby.”
Rose and Iris exchanged glances. Babies were very far from both of their minds. For a moment, though, Iris’s face softened and Rose wondered.
A baby.
She had never wanted kids.
But as soon as she thought that it felt... Well, she didn’t know. Not strictly true. She had never thought about kids. Maybe that was the truth of it. It instantly set her mind to wondering what kind of father Logan would be.
Her stomach clenched painfully.
No. She did not want to think about that. That was ridiculous. What she’d said to him when she had been setting Pansy and Elliott up was true. She was not thinking about pairing off. Not permanently. Not just yet. Maybe never.
It was just something she had never thought about. And she would have to give it a lot of thought before she even knew if it was something that she might consider.
She hadn’t really imagined Pansy ever getting married and having a baby. She just had never seemed the type. And her soon-to-be husband West didn’t really seem like the type either, if she thought about it.
Her brother, Ryder, didn’t, either. He was the biggest father figure in her life, so it wasn’t that she didn’t think he’d be a great father. She did.
It was just that she didn’t think he would have wanted to be one. Not after spending all that time raising them.<
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And she knew that he had always thought he didn’t.
Until Sammy. Sammy had always seemed like an earth mother type. Definitely a nurturing, maternal person.
Sammy and Pansy were completely different from each other. So were West and Ryder. But they were doing the same things.
The common bond, she was forced to conclude, was falling in love.
It seemed to make you want different things than you did before.
She didn’t know quite what to do with that realization.
Jam making bled right into dinner preparation, and with all hands on deck they went a little bit crazy. Iris made the most beautiful sourdough, and Sammy helped put together a spectacular roast.
Pansy and Rose made themselves responsible for the green salad. And then scooted off to the store to buy beverages. Which was often Rose’s function.
She should have realized it was a mistake, though, to bundle off with her sister. Because the minute they were alone in Pansy’s little car, she turned to her.
“What’s happening with Logan?”
“What makes you think anything is happening with him?”
“The fact that you didn’t just answer my question.”
“Well... Well...”
“Are you sleeping with him?”
“Don’t ask me that!”
“Why not?”
“Because I am,” she grumped, “and I don’t want to tell you about it.”
“Oh... Rose...”
She could tell that her sister was genuinely upset by the information.
“Why do you care?”
“Because I’m afraid you’re going to get hurt. And I’m afraid it’s going to... Did you think about what it might do to us? To our family?”
Anger and guilt twisted at her heart in equal measure.
“You’re not actually worried about me,” Rose said. “You’re just worried that if something goes wrong between Logan and I things will change. You changed things already, Pansy, that’s not fair at all. Why do you get to change things and I don’t?” Irritation was moving through her like a freight train going downhill. Picking up dangerous speed.
