by Maisey Yates
“Damn. I should have married her. She sounds like she’s the perfect politician’s wife.”
“Yeah,” he said, “she kind of is. And when you spend a lot of time going to various charity events and other community functions, all throughout the state, she’s valuable to have. When I take over the family ranch, I’m going to need somebody by my side to fulfill the role that my mother has now. She could do that for me. I knew she could.”
“It just sounds...well, it sounds chilly.”
She didn’t like the expression on his face. The one that clearly said she should talk about chilliness. Whatever. He didn’t know her. Not really.
“What about you? Your ex-boyfriend tells me that you didn’t want to get married. That you didn’t think marriage was for you. What kind of a future is that. You’re going to spend it alone?”
“I’m not alone. I have the whole town.” Oh, good Lord. Even she knew that sounded sad.
She sat back down and started to fold her pamphlets again. She did not need to justify herself to Colton. To a man who was willing to get married to somebody he didn’t even love just so he could have a wife.
“That’s not the same, and you know it. You don’t want kids? You don’t want companionship?” Those words made something uncomfortable settle in the pit of her stomach. She didn’t look at him. “Sex?” That time, she did look up at him, but mostly because she couldn’t control the reaction.
“Just because I’m not married doesn’t mean I can’t have sex,” she said, her tone crisp.
She sounded like a pearl-clutching maiden. Not someone who would be jumping on the casual sex bandwagon anytime soon.
“Okay,” he said slowly. “So you’re going to be the mayor of a small town by the sea with a rather conservative constituency and you’re going to remain an unmarried spinster who takes lovers?”
“Copper Ridge is not a Regency romance novel.”
“I didn’t say it was. I’m just saying you knew that you couldn’t get divorced in the middle of an election because of what people would say. What if you were just carrying on sexual liaisons? You think they would be any kinder about that?”
“I think saying I didn’t want to get married four years ago is not the same as never actually wanting to get married. But, unlike you, I would have to be in love. And I really just haven’t met that man.”
“I don’t know what love has to do with anything. My mother is in love with my father. All he does is hurt her.”
“But you see the value of love. I’ve seen you with your sisters. I’ve seen you with your mother. You love them.”
“I do. And they love Gage, who pissed off into the mountains somewhere. We all love him, for all the good it does us. But when the other person doesn’t love you back in the right way it doesn’t mean much of anything. And if I would rather have a transaction where both people are going into it with cool heads and an understanding, I’m not going to apologize for that.”
“Okay, I can’t really blame you for that.” She folded another pamphlet and set it into the finished stack. “But, now you get to revisit your plan. I mean, I have a feeling that Natalie would take you back, when we’re finished.”
“Well, I’m not going to take her back. I thought we had an understanding. I thought she was on the same page I was. Clearly she wasn’t.”
“She said she was with someone. Before the wedding. She said that was why she couldn’t marry you.”
“With someone? What do you mean by that?”
“I mean, she cheated on you.”
His eyebrows shot up. “She cheated on me? That is...well, it’s almost hilarious, considering she was the one who enforced months of celibacy before the wedding.”
“She what?” Lydia was struggling with a few weeks of celibacy around Colton. She could not for the life of her imagine what Natalie had been thinking. She had the man on a string, ready to marry her, she had access to his body whenever she wanted, and she had enforced celibacy?
“Yeah.” He laughed, shaking his head. “I guess I was the one being celibate. Alone.”
“She felt bad about it,” Lydia offered, not sure how she’d landed in the position of being apologetic about Natalie’s crazy behavior.
“Oh, great. She got laid, and she felt sorry for me.”
“I just mean, she thinks that she threw away something real for something that didn’t matter.” The words felt wrong on her tongue. Was it real if they didn’t have passion? Was passion pretend? It felt real when Colton touched her but honestly she wouldn’t know. It lasted as long as his hands, his lips, were on her. But then reality set in and it all faded away. She swallowed hard. “But she did say that the two of you didn’t have very much...passion.”
“I guess we didn’t. But I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”
“No love and no passion.”
“I’m sorry, you’re judging me? Do you have either of those things in your life?”
“I guess not.”
He huffed out a laugh. “You guess not. I’ll take that as a no.”
“Just... You know. Stop it,” she said, frowning. “My life is not open for dissection.”
“If you really think that, you’re the most naive political candidate ever. You’re public property.”
“On the campaign trail. Not in my freaking house.”
“But in your house, my life is up for examination?”
“Well, the issue at hand is your fiancée.”
“Ex.”
“Sure,” she said, folding another pamphlet a little bit angrily.
Colton settled across from her, grabbing another pamphlet off the stack. “Trifold?” he asked.
“Obviously.”
“Let me help with your obvious trifolds.”
She waved a hand and started to work on another piece of glossy paper.
“I get the feeling you’re ungrateful.”
She looked up and met his gaze, an electric shock piercing her body. “Um. No. Ungrateful is not...me. Undead is the only un.”
She was tongue-tied and ridiculous and she just didn’t do either thing. So what on earth was wrong with her?
“Zombies need help, too. And they can say thank you.”
“You’re so fixated on manners,” she said, keeping her focus on the picture of her own face on the pamphlet she was folding. “Well, my manners.”
“Fine. Don’t thank me, rude zombie bride.”
She looked up at him that time, curling her lip. “I am not your zombie bride.”
He shrugged and went back to folding, and she didn’t know what possessed her next. Didn’t know what exactly made her want to poke at him when they could easily sit on the floor and fold pamphlets in peace.
Maybe because they really couldn’t fold pamphlets in peace. Because no matter what she pretended was happening, the fact he was here with her like this wasn’t a stagnant event leading to nothing. It was electric. And she knew exactly where it was headed.
“Natalie said...that she was always a little jealous of me,” Lydia said, watching Colton out of the corner of her eye.
“The only thing Natalie has ever been jealous of is a Pegasus. Because they’re magical and have wings. Also they don’t exist so the jealousy is theoretical.”
Lydia laughed at that, and recognized her chance to turn back. But she didn’t. Maybe a little bit for her pride, but also because she just wanted to keep pushing. For once, she didn’t want to test something gently and retreat the moment it turned intense. For once, she wanted to push through and see what might happen.
What happened to resistance?
Well, nothing had happened yet. So she would just see.
“I mean, thank you for thinking it’s ridiculous that Natalie could be jealous of me.”
/>
“I just don’t think she possesses enough humility to be jealous of anyone,” he said. “It has nothing to do with you.”
“Except this does.” Lydia took a deep breath. “She said she was jealous because she could tell that when we met, you were attracted to me.”
He went still. “Did she say that?”
“Yes.” Lydia looked back down and pressed the paper down, making a deep, straight crease, then going over it again. “That is exactly what she said. That she knew there was...something between us.”
“Irritation?”
“But why?” she asked, her ears ringing, her cheeks burning. “Why do we irritate each other so much? Nothing actually happened.”
He said nothing, but she heard him shift. And suddenly, he was grabbing hold of her chin, tilting her face up so that she was forced to meet his gaze. His blue eyes burned into hers, his thumb sliding across her skin, leaving a trail of sparks behind.
“Because,” he said, his voice rough, low. It was intimate and so enticing she could feel herself leaning toward him, leaning into his touch. “From the first moment I saw you I wanted to kiss you. When you looked at me, I felt like I got slapped.”
“You did?” she asked. She was pretty sure she’d managed to form the words correctly. It was hard to say because her lips were numb so she couldn’t feel them moving, and then on top of that her ears were buzzing and she could barely hear herself speaking.
“Yes.”
“Then why were you mean to me?”
“Nobody likes to get slapped in the face, Lydia.”
The words settled between them, settled in her. He was right. And it was the same reaction she’d had too. Seeing Colton for the first time had felt like an assault, and no one responded positively to an assault.
Especially not people like them.
Yeah, people like them. They weren’t so different, she and Colton West. They both wanted to do the right thing for the people they cared about. They both guarded themselves. They both prized control.
For Lydia that meant carving out her own space in her home, for Colton it meant, well, it seemed to mean building up walls of respectability all around him. The semblance of a life without ever letting anyone too close.
They were the same, and they handled it in different ways.
They didn’t like their territory threatened. They didn’t like to be challenged. And they really, really didn’t like their control being tested.
But was it a loss of control if they decided to lose it?
Her blood was running hotter, faster, and much like when she’d been drunk, she wasn’t entirely sure if she was capable of making a smart decision right now. Apparently Colton was a lot like alcohol.
Maybe it would be different if she could remember the sex. If she could remember then maybe she would have enough shower-fantasies to get her through the hard times. She’d pretty much decided before Colton that sex was nothing more than a bit of nice companionship. It was fine, but she’d never felt the need to be crazy about it.
Now there was a little kernel of what if. Hope restored. Maybe the fuss was about something. Maybe it could be earth-shattering. If she knew, then maybe she wouldn’t feel so needy now.
But she didn’t know. She couldn’t remember. So that made this...well, it was unique.
“Do you think maybe we fight to keep from...this?” she asked.
He chuckled, his breath fanning over her cheek, sending a shiver down her spine. “No, I think we fight because we annoy each other.”
She laughed, helpless, trying to keep from dissolving into giggles there on her living room floor with Colton West holding her chin in his hand. “I suppose that’s a fair enough assessment.”
“You’re uptight,” he said.
“You’re arrogant. High-handed. Is that the same thing? Well, maybe it is.”
“I’m going to kiss you.”
“I’m supposed to be resisting you,” she said, the words almost a plea.
“You are?” he asked, his brows shooting upward.
“Yes.”
“And here I made it a point to stop resisting you.”
“What a surprise. We’re disagreeing again,” she said, another laugh escaping her.
He made her breathless. He made her giggly and weird and she had no idea what on earth to do with it. He made her tremble. He made her want.
“I’ll make a deal with you,” he said, his voice the richest of seductions, dark and warm as it poured through her like a potent drink. “I kiss you, and you can decide where you stand on your resistance.”
She nodded slowly, and he barely waited for her to finish the gesture before he leaned in, closing the distance between them entirely. He had kissed her last night, though it had been for show, but still, it felt as if she had been waiting for this for weeks. Months. Maybe all of her life. She felt like Sleeping Beauty, asleep until Colton’s lips touched hers. And now, parts of her body she had never fully engaged with were starting to wake up. Were starting to ache. Were starting to need.
He slid his tongue along the seam of her lips, gently encouraging her to open for him. She complied, because there was nothing else she could do. His kiss was gentle, soft, so unlike the kiss he’d given her last night in front of everyone, which had been firm, but dry. So unlike the kiss at the woodshed that had been fierce and full of regret and anger. This was a tease. This was him drawing out every bit of her desire that he could. Coaxing it from her slowly, stroke for stroke, with each wild, delicious pass of his tongue.
When he pulled away, it was too soon. Her heart was thundering hard, her whole body shaking. Her stomach seemed hollowed out, and she felt a deep emptiness, something like being ill. A strange thing, because she never would have associated desire with sickness. But that was how she felt. Sick for him. For this.
“This isn’t a good idea,” she said, her voice thick, drugged.
“What’s the worst that could happen? If the two of us make love again, what’s the very worst thing that could happen?”
She closed her eyes, trying to ignore the beating of her heart in her temples. Trying to rise above the heat that was washing through her. Trying to find some sanity.
“The earth could crumble into pieces and fall away,” she said, her eyes still closed.
He leaned in, his lips brushing her ear, his hand cradling her cheek. “Okay, and if the earth crumbles and falls away, we still had sex. And I think that kind of takes the sting out of it, don’t you?”
“Well,” she said. “We would be dead. So, it would be difficult to say.”
“Would we?”
“Us. All of humanity.”
“All of humanity? All because we took our clothes off?”
She nodded, the motion creating friction between her cheek in his palm, sending a delicious shock of sensation through her. She pressed her knees together, trying to minimize the ache at the apex of her thighs. It didn’t work.
“That’s a lot of responsibility,” he said.
She swallowed hard. “Too much. So, we should just stop this. It’s crazy.”
“Or, we do it anyway.” He shifted, moving nearer. And oh, she could smell him. All masculine and clean and perfect. “Because the earth isn’t going to fall away.”
“What if it does?” she asked.
All she had were wild theories that she knew weren’t true to keep herself from leaning in and kissing him again. It was the only thing keeping her clothing firmly in place. Catastrophes. Made-up catastrophes that would result if the two of them ever touched again. But she was finding it hard to remember why she needed that. Finding it difficult to recall why she was resisting in the first place. When they could just have each other. When they could just have this.
“I still don’t remember,” he said,
his voice rough. “I don’t remember what happened that night in Las Vegas. And I want to. Do you know how much that tortures me? To have you walking around in front of me all the time, knowing that I’ve seen you naked, knowing that I know, somewhere inside of myself, what you look like without your clothes on, but not being able to recall the image? Do you know what it’s like to know that I’ve tasted you, that I’ve touched you, that I’ve had my hands all over your beautiful, bare skin, but that there’s just a big blank space in my mind where it should be.” He laughed. “The damn ironic thing is that it’s because of the alcohol that we did it in the first place, and it’s because of the alcohol that I can’t remember.”
She sucked in a deep breath, looking down. Needing a reprieve from his face. It was too much. Too tempting. “But it’s for the best that we don’t remember. Because then we’re not...we’re not tortured.”
“You’re not tortured?” he asked, sounding incredulous. “You don’t feel completely tortured right now?”
“I mean...okay, it’s a little bit of torture.”
“Honey, you might as well have me on the rack.”
“But I...I don’t know myself when I feel this. I don’t know what’s happening to me. I don’t want men that I don’t like. I don’t have casual sex. For me it’s always been part of a relationship. Something to make me feel...companionship. It’s not about...this crazy attraction.”
“So, how’s that worked out for you?”
She looked up at him again, frowning. “I’m single. I mean, apart from being married to you.”
“Sure. Apart from the whole marriage thing,” he said, his tone dry.
“You know what I mean.”
“All things considered, maybe it isn’t working out that well for you. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with trying this.”
She wanted it. She wanted it so badly. But wanting wasn’t having. And she wasn’t that woman. She wasn’t the kind of woman who made a man lose his cool, who made him beg to be with her. And even if she were, she wouldn’t be the kind to say yes.
“One more time,” she said, the words rushed, reckless as she felt inside. Tumbling out of her with all the subtlety of a rock slide.
