by Pam Godwin
“You did?” Her voice rises in pitch. “Does he know about Levi Tibbs?”
“He stays abreast of everything.” I draw her eyes back to me. “Half the time, he’s the one keeping us informed.”
“I told him you’re here.” Jarret bumps his shoulder against hers. “He wants to see you, Conor. Very much.”
“Hard to believe that.” She pinches her lip, her expression troubled. “Last time I saw him—”
“His reasons were the same as ours.” I tug her fingers from her mouth and hold onto them. “He was protecting you.”
“And now?” She slips her hand from mine. “Your dad’s out there, wherever, and I’m supposed to blindly trust that I’m safe if I don’t leave the ranch. Except the last time I was here, you chased me away to allegedly keep me safe. It doesn’t make sense, and I need it to make sense.”
I share a look with my brother. “I’ll answer one question tonight.”
“In exchange for…?”
“Let me worry about that.” I tuck her hair behind her ear, clearing my view of her stunning face. “What’s the one thing you want to know more than anything else?”
Her lashes lower. Her brows pull in, and she makes a soft Hmmm sound in her throat.
Then she flicks her eyes to me. “How did you lose your virginity?”
My heart jolts, pounding a roar in my ears. Of all the questions she should be asking—about her safety, the ranch, our dads’ involvement—she asks about me. A personal detail like that wouldn’t concern her unless she’s thinking about us.
She’s thinking about our kiss.
I study her as she studies me. The silent stare off makes my dick swell and my throat go dry. Christ, I want to fuck her, roughly and recklessly, until she screams my name and begs for mercy.
But more than that, I want her to start living.
“It’s…uh, really hot out here.” Jarret hooks a finger under the neck of his shirt and tugs.
“How hot?” Her eyes light with mirth, locked on mine, as she initiates a game the four of us used to play.
Jarret taps his fingers on his leg. “I’m sweatier than a pregnant nun on a Saturday.”
“Sweatier than two mice fucking in a wool sock.” I grin.
“Sweatier than a cowboy writing a love note.” Conor arches a brow.
We continue for a few more rounds, drifting into easy laughter before falling silent.
“It is hot.” I climb to my feet and offer her my hand. “I’ll answer your question inside.” In my bedroom.
She grips my fingers long enough to stand, follows me into the house, and through the sitting room.
“Conor?” Jarret pauses in the main hall between the two wings and waits for her to face him. “It’s really good to have you home.”
She goes still, expressionless. Then her mouth parts. Her fingers touch her throat, and she walks to him.
She reaches him with her arms open, and he scoops her up in a tight hug, his eyes squeezed shut.
When he lowers her feet to the floor, his gaze finds mine over her shoulder. The relief on his face spreads a loosening warmth through my chest.
He needed that…that reassurance from her. It’s not forgiveness exactly, but it’s progress.
“Night.” She steps away from him and strides past me, heading to my bedroom.
I trail behind her, shamelessly staring at her ass in those cotton sleep shorts. Waves of natural red hair hang to her tiny waist. She’s tiny everywhere, from her bare feet and slender legs to the cute biceps of her inked arms. She’s so delicate she looks ethereal, but there’s plenty of muscle on that petite frame. I felt it flexing and bunching this morning when I had her pinned against me.
She enters the bedroom and perches on the foot of the mattress.
“Well?” She glances around the room and squints. “I don’t see any stumps to stand on. What’s the form of payment for tonight’s emotional blackmail?”
Straight to the point and full of piss and vinegar. This should be fun.
I stand in front of her and clasp my hands behind my back. “I’m sleeping in here going forward. With you. That’s the deal.”
“No.” She scans my face, and her head gives a slight shake. “No way.”
“Clothes on. No sex…until you’re ready.”
“Until I’m ready?” She surges from the bed, hands fisted at her sides. “I didn’t return home for buckin’ or bakin’, Jake Holsten. If you’re looking for someone to keep your sheets warm, check the Big Sugar. There’s a table of cheap boots waiting for their seventeen orgasms.”
“Sit down.” The bark in my voice makes her jump. I lower my tone, but it’s no less stern. “Sit. Down.”
She does, glaring and balling her fists on her lap.
I bend over her, with my hands on the mattress, bracketing her hips. “I’m going to sleep in here with you and stay at your side, because that’s what you need and that’s what I want.”
“I need to be alone.” Her gaze lowers to my chest and skitters away.
“You’ve been alone for six years.” I grip her chin and force her to look at me. “No more.”
She yanks free of my grasp, and her eyes dart around the room, looking at everything but me. She wants to flee, but she won’t. She’s too damn tenacious.
“You better not give me a half-ass answer.” She pushes against my chest until I move. Then she tosses me a world of contempt in her eyes. “If you’re sleeping in here, I want to hear every detail about your first time. Who and how and where. No filtering.”
She doesn’t just want to torment herself. She intends to use that information to resent me, hate me, and push me away. Because I’m affecting her, exposing vulnerable parts of her she doesn’t want to acknowledge or examine. Self-preservation demands she put up walls to keep me out.
And I’m prepared to kick them all down.
“She was nineteen.” I sit on the bed beside her. “I was twenty.”
“Twenty?” Her mouth falls open, closes, and opens again. “That can’t be right. I saw you with Sara Gilly, and you… Well, you sure looked like you knew what you were doing. And what about all your pole ponies at the bar? The things those women said…” She rakes a hand through her hair, eyes wide. “You’re telling me you were a twenty-year-old virgin? How is that even possible?”
“If you let me talk, I’ll explain it.”
Her teeth click together, and she narrows her eyes as if to say, Get on with it.
I pull a knee onto the bed between us, turning sideways, so I can monitor her breathing and expressions.
“I lost my virginity at a field party.” I wet my lips. “In a barn. It was dark and godawful loud. The rowdy crowd and music…”
She claps a hand over her mouth, and a sheen of moisture shines in her eyes.
“I stripped her from the waist down and ate her pussy.” Blood rushes to my cock. Christ, I can still taste her shivering desire, her sweet innocence. “Then I fucked her against the wall.”
“No.” She chokes and leaps from the bed. “It wasn’t you.”
“We were surrounded by rutting college kids, blinded by total darkness, and I think the noise permanently damaged my eardrums. But she was all I felt, and I took her hard. Lasted an embarrassingly short couple of seconds. She was so tight and wet, and I was inexperienced and overexcited. To this day, I still regret that she didn’t come.”
“It couldn’t have been you.” Her knees wobble, and she rubs her arms, blinking rapidly. As if out of compulsion, she reaches toward me and touches my hair, the stubble on my face, and my lips. Then she yanks her arm back. “You’re lying. The man I was with had black curls and—”
“I wore a wig under the baseball cap. Waxed my face to remove the stubble.” I hold up my hand. “Fingerless gloves hid the scar. Your scent saturated the leather for months.”
I inhale slowly, reliving the memory. I slept with those gloves long after her smell wore off.
“They’re in the nightstand
.” I gesture behind me.
Her chest hitches, and her feet move, circling the bed. She yanks open the drawer and strokes a hand over the contents.
“They’re just gloves.” Her gaze snaps to mine. “He didn’t taste like you.”
“I bummed a cigarette at the party to mask my breath.”
She backs away from the bed, vigorously shaking her head. “I would’ve known it was you.” Turning, she paces through the room. “How could I have not known? God, you must think I’m the biggest idiot.”
“You’re the smartest, sexiest—”
“Stop!” She presses her fingers against her temples and closes her eyes. “You stood in the doorway of that barn. You stood there, staring at me like you knew.” Her lashes lift, her features cast in teary accusation. “You knew why I was there.”
“Yeah.” My fists clench and unclench. “I hate that you pursued other men, that you were lonely enough to fill that void with a stranger. But I put you in that position. That’s on me.” A swallow sticks in my throat. “I wore that fucking disguise and followed you there every Saturday night to keep you safe from drunk assholes and other threats you weren’t aware of. I followed you knowing I couldn’t interfere in your plans, knowing I would have to stand by while you were with another man.”
“But you did interfere.”
“I saw an opportunity that night. You rejected every guy who made a pass at you, yet you had this look in your eyes, like you weren’t leaving until you got what you came for.” I hold her gaze. “I gave you what you needed.”
A scowl darkens her face. “How very noble of you.”
“Don’t misunderstand me. It was one-hundred-percent selfish. I wanted you so deeply and intensely I couldn’t and wouldn’t fuck another woman. My virginity belonged to you and no one else.”
Her arms draw close to her body, and she stares at the floor, her voice flat. “So you unloaded the burden of your virginity and walked away.”
“It was the only piece of myself I had left to give. You deserved so much more.” Bitter regret curls my stomach. “One of the hardest things I’ve ever done was let you walk out of that barn without me.”
She lifts her head, eyes streaked with pain. “You were still in the barn? I thought…” Her chin trembles. “I looked everywhere for you outside, because I wanted…” She rubs her face. “I don’t know what I wanted. It was the first time I gave myself to someone, and I was feeling raw and off-balance.”
I was her first.
Relief hits me so hard I have to clamp my jaw closed to contain it. I watched her closely for years, but I couldn’t monitor who slipped in and out of her dorm room at night.
“I guess, I just…” She wipes her palms on her shorts. “I needed it to mean something. I didn’t want to be forgettable.”
“You couldn’t be forgettable if you tried.”
I tried. I fucked every trollop in town and I couldn’t forget her. I fought and killed until the ravine bled red, and I couldn’t forget her.
Conor Cassidy is utterly and completely unforgettable.
I rise from the bed and step into her space. “I didn’t leave you that night. I stayed with you while you walked to your bike. I followed you to the tattoo shop then back to your dorm room. I sat in the parking lot outside your window until the sun came up.”
“Why?” Her voice cracks. “Why didn’t you tell me it was you?”
“It would have led to a conversation we couldn’t have. I was in the middle of a shitstorm with our families and the ranch. I didn’t know who I could trust or how it tied to you. What I did know was there were half a dozen men waiting to kill you if you returned to Sandbank.” I ghost a finger along her hairline, lightly stroking the soft auburn strands.” “I couldn’t give you a reason to come home. I couldn’t be that reason.”
She pulls away. “Tell me about the shitstorm with our families.”
“I will. I need you to trust me.”
“That’s a tall order from a chronic liar.” She crosses her arms over her chest, putting a barrier between us. “While you were letting me go in the name of protection, how many women have you been with?”
Three year’s worth.
“A lot.”
She winces and turns away, but I don’t miss the stricken look on her face or the way her shoulders hug her ears. Anything I say at this point will sound cliché and counterfeit, but I can’t leave this unsettled.
“I’ve done things, Conor. Unforgivable things.” Coercion. Assault. Murder. “Had I let myself hope for a future with you, I would’ve done more things. Greedy, jealous things. Like sabotage your chances with Miles York.”
Watching her relationship with him sprout and bloom changed me on a molecular level. I became an unrecognizable thing. Sullen, hostile, and viciously angry. I fucked women like I hated them. I did hate them, simply because they weren’t Conor. When those encounters didn’t sate me, I picked fights. I killed people. Bad people. The self-destructive pattern lasted three years.
One more murder, and I’ll be finished with it for good.
“I suppose I should thank you.” She shifts back to me and straightens her spine. “Despite how things ended with Miles, I’m grateful you let me move on. Of course, you put an investigator on him and continued to stalk me like a mental patient, but that’s beside the point.” She rests her hands on her hips and stares at her feet. “And I can’t be mad at you for not living like a monk. We’re not together. You’re a free man. Where you put your dick is your business.”
I press my lips together, chomping at the bit to tell her all the reasons why she’s wrong.
“I’m going to bed.” She climbs onto the far side of the mattress.
“We’re not finished.”
She tucks herself under the quilt and faces the edge with her back to me.
That’s it? No crying or raging or pounding her little fists on my chest? She needs to do all those things, not bottle it up.
Fuck, I don’t know what to do. I can’t force her emotions.
Tossing my hat on the dresser, I drag a hand through my hair and approach the opposite side of the bed. She doesn’t move a muscle.
Boots, belt, jeans, shirt—it all needs to come off. To spare her from more discomfort, I turn off the lamp and strip in the dark.
After the conversation we just had, I probably shouldn’t crawl into bed with her wearing only my briefs, even though my cock thinks it’s a fantastic idea. Just thinking about sleeping beside her makes me hard. We’ve never done this. Our relationship was always restricted by rules. Rules that were enforced by two fathers who lived in the same house.
So much has changed since then.
“I’m just going to talk. You don’t have to say anything.” I slide under the covers, keeping a couple of feet between us, and lie on my back. “I cleaned up the shitstorm and made it safer for you to be here than anywhere else. That means I’m not just letting myself hope for a future with you. I’m pursuing it with single-minded focus. And I will do things, jealous things, to sabotage your chances with any other man.”
The curves of her silhouette don’t twitch.
Impatience urges me to close the distance, but I can’t crowd her back without setting her off. Everything inside me tenses to demand, take, control, and overrun.
She doesn’t need any of that right now.
I know she’s thinking about our conversation, and she knows I’m right here, at her side, when she’s ready. So I force myself to stay put, relax into the mattress, and embrace the silence.
Minutes pass. I watch the clock count through them, unable to sleep.
Forty minutes into my misery, her breathing changes, grows fitful, and her shoulders start to shake.
I lift on an elbow and reach for her, but she’s already turning, rising on hands and knees. Her hair tangles around her face as she scrambles toward me, huffing and wheezing.
No, she’s sobbing.
“Conor.” My pulse races, and my throat seals s
hut as I pull her against my chest. “I’m here. Right here.”
She climbs up my body, circles her arms around my shoulders, and buries her face in my neck. The tears come instantly and brutally, drenching us. Saving us.
Her legs fall around mine, and her fingers bite my skin. I settle her against me, one hand stroking her hair and the other rubbing her back, as I absorb her breathless sobs.
There are no words. None are needed. She cries and trembles, using my presence to let go and lean, while she mourns the heart I broke.
I hold her soft strength tightly against me and mourn with her.
I hold her with every breath in my body.
I hold her through the sadness.
As much as I cried last night, I don’t need a mirror to know my eyes are red and puffy. I blink them open and stare down at the hard surface of my pillow. Since I’ve only ever slept beside one man, it takes me a moment to process the view.
Miles looked nothing like the body sprawled out beneath me.
Ridges and grooves ripple along a tanned torso that narrows into trim hips. Sadly, the tangle of sheets hides everything below Jake’s waist, but good lord, he’s built. Every brick and crevice is made for a long, strenuous day on the range, yet he’s still in bed, with an arm hooked around me, in a room saturated with sunshine.
I kept him up late last night, and now I’m keeping him from work.
With my cheek on his shoulder and my thighs clamped around his leg, I snuggle closer to his side, reluctant to give him up.
“How do you feel?” His deep, sleepy voice whispers across my skin like a caress.
“Terrible.” Sandpaper scratches my eyes, and a throb ricochets in my skull. The rest of me, however, tells a different story. “And good.”
“Explain that.”
“Don’t you need to work?”
“Nah.”
I shift against the hard warmth of his body, and he groans. His hand lowers to the region of his groin, adjusting. I start to pull my leg from the V of his, but he stops me with a grip on my thigh.
“Don’t worry about my morning problem.” He returns his arm around me. “Explain what you’re feeling.”
