by Alison Kent
That got his goat. “When’s the last time you made a visit to see Hoyt, huh? Where is he these days?”
“I didn’t know Ned had mentioned my father. Or,” she added, lifting a brow, “that you’d come here to compare our paternal dysfunctions.”
“I came here to see you.”
“Then don’t dig for what I might know or might’ve heard.”
That made him want to pin her down until she cracked and told him. Until he stopped and realized what he was thinking.
What the holy hell was wrong with him?
He shook his head. “Sorry. No digging. I swear.”
“And no asking about my father.”
“If you say so.”
“But”—she gestured with the spoon—“I get to ask about yours.”
“How is that any kind of fair?”
“You’re what? Thirty-four? And you’re still looking for life to be fair?”
He bit down, ground his jaw, said nothing.
She arched a brow. “Why you haven’t gone to see him?”
Two could play at this game. “Why are you using your father’s old booth from the Buck Off Bar as a kitchen table?”
She slammed the half-eaten carton of yogurt on the table and flounced by. “I’m going to bed.”
“Is that an invitation?” He should go, hit the road. He didn’t need this shit in his life.
And then he changed his mind as she said from halfway down the hall, “Think about the last time you saw me and see if you can figure that out for yourself.”
TWENTY-TWO
JUST INSIDE HER bedroom door, Arwen closed her eyes and shuddered. Her body ached for her to call back that, yes, he was invited to join her. Her body, however, wasn’t in charge. Her body didn’t understand that she’d spent the last three days pissed off and worried and hurting and angry because he hadn’t been in touch.
And that was just stupid because now that he was in touch, she was blowing him off. She wanted to blame her reaction on being tired, but knew it was more about the tangle of emotions wrapped around her like a web of silk, strong and seductive and dangerous. Dax’s web. Dax’s silk.
She was the fly to his spider and no matter how relentlessly she struggled to escape his trap, she didn’t have strong enough wings.
At the side of her bed, she dropped her robe and stood naked, anticipating. She could hear his boots on the floor as he left the kitchen and entered the hallway. She counted—one, two, three, four, five—until his steps stopped, and she knew he was at the door to her room. She breathed deeply, turned, waited.
He came in, holding her gaze as he unsnapped his one cuff then the other before moving to his throat and tugging at the snaps down the front of his shirt. He popped them slowly. One at a time. Each sound causing her to jump, to tremble.
With his shirt hanging open, he took another step, then balanced from foot to foot as he tugged off his boots. His next step brought him almost close enough to touch. But she didn’t. She stayed as she was, her nipples tight, her pussy wet, and watched him free his belt from its buckle then work on his fly.
He took his time. The first brass button. The second. The third. Inch by inch, his briefs came into view. His briefs and the heavy load they held to his belly. His erection was thick, straining against the fabric, the head of his cock a bulbous tease. And then he was done, his clothes open, his body ready, yet still he didn’t move.
She couldn’t stand it, seeing him there, the skin of his torso shadowed, his legs covered, his cock so close, so big where it filled the open vee of his fly. She wanted him. Desperately. But she kept her arms at her sides, kept her hands loose. She didn’t reach for him. She didn’t twist her fingers together to keep the nerves eating at her skin from burrowing deeper.
This was sex. Nothing else. Yet the look in his eyes told the truth of the tale. He’d come here looking for something he needed. Something he couldn’t find anywhere else, get from anyone else, and that responsibility weighed on her too heavily.
She was supposed to be working him out of her system. She was supposed to be putting every bit of her past behind her. Dax was making it impossible for her to do either. He was in her house, and in her head, and she feared he was in her heart.
Not just knocking at it, or playing with it, but worming his way to a spot she wouldn’t be able to reach to remove him. Because she knew it would happen.
They would finish whatever this was between them and he would leave Crow Hill, and after he was gone she would not—would not—keep any part of him alive the way she had the first time.
He came closer, one step, then another, stopping in front of her, close enough to touch but doing so only with his eyes. They held hers as he shrugged out of his shirt, and she breathed deeply, scenting him, the hint of sun and heat that stayed with him.
The skin of his hands, his wrists, that of his face and neck was baked to a darker bronze than that covering the rest of his torso. A cowboy’s tan. A working man’s tan. His pectoral muscles and his shoulders and his neck telling the story of the manual labor he required of his upper body.
She couldn’t help herself, and she reached out, sliding her fingertips along his collarbone, the skin beneath resilient and firm. He kept his hands at his hips, but pulled in a sharp breath, and her stomach clenched in response. This thing between them…
“Hurry,” she whispered. It was all she could say, her chest rising and falling as she watched him shed his jeans and his briefs.
Then he was naked in front of her, his forehead against hers, his toes on hers, his hands holding hers at her sides, his cock between them insistent. They stood together, breathed together, let the room disappear as together they became one.
She closed her eyes and felt the sting of tears, but left them to well behind her lids. Wiping them away would mean taking her hands from Dax’s and she couldn’t bring herself to do that.
He lifted his chin, brushed his lips along her hairline, whispered, “Do you know how beautiful you are?”
A shiver ran like a river down her spine, pooled at the base, spread lower and worked its way between her legs to ready her. “You’re the one who’s beautiful. Your mouth. Your hands. The way you touch me. The way you look at me.”
“Just not the way I look, eh?” he asked with a laugh.
She opened her eyes, lifted her hands, and threaded her fingers into his hair, holding him. “I didn’t know what to expect. When I heard you were back. I’d pictured you all this time as I knew you in high school. Cocky and brash and always with the sort of grin that turned girls to puddles at your feet. But now…”
“I hear I look really good in jeans.”
“In them, but even more so out of them.”
“Guess it’s a good thing you’re the only one who gets to see me this way. All those puddles might start a flood—hey, that might be the solution to our drought. I strut around naked, and the water flows.”
She shook her head, her lips drawn into a grin she couldn’t help. “And here I was trying to be serious.”
“Life’s too hard to take seriously.”
A dozen responses rose but she squashed them all.
“On the other hand,” he said, grinding his hips and rubbing his hard cock against her.
She stepped away, gripped both of his biceps and shoved him onto the bed. He bounced once, braced himself on his elbows and arched one brow, looking from his cock standing at attention to her then back again and again until all she could do was laugh and climb on top.
“Much better,” he said, his hands on her thighs. “I thought I was going to have to take care of this on my own.”
She thought of his hands stroking his cock. “Do it.”
“What?” He frowned, then his expression took on that look she loved, big bad wolf and black sheep all rolled up in one, and when she lifted his hands from her thighs, and moved them to the plane of his belly above his jutting cock, he didn’t argue.
Instead, he said, “I’m sor
ry. About the other day. About the way I treated you.”
Not this. Not now. “You made me come.”
“You know what I mean. I was thoughtless and selfish and my head was all fucked up. I took it out on you. I was an ass.”
She didn’t want to talk about the other day. She didn’t want him to be human and kind. She didn’t want to need him for anything but this. “Make me come now.”
She raised up onto her knees, lifted one thigh to accommodate his reach, and found the head of his cock with her pussy, sliding down until he filled her, leaning forward, her hands on his shoulders, until she couldn’t move.
All she could do was feel, holding him, squeezing him, riding him. Hurting herself because she couldn’t imagine ever giving him up.
He held her hips, met her downward motion with upward thrusts, lifting the both of them from the mattress again and again. His strokes soothed and startled and she cried out as the pressure built. He scraped her clit, the hard base of his cock, the plump head when he withdrew, the cushion of hair darker than the rest on his body when she ground against him.
After the truck and the pasture, she needed this. To be on top. To be in charge. Getting what she wanted. Getting off the way she wanted. Using Dax the way he’d used her. Except this wasn’t the same. She wasn’t fucking him to forget an external blow.
He was the source of her upheaval, and she wasn’t punishing him but herself, pulling his web tighter, binding them with each stroke when what she wanted was for them both to get off then go their separate ways.
Didn’t she? Didn’t she?
She slowed to allow the awareness of his body in hers to heighten, to feel, to really feel, to let go. She paused, moved again, overwhelmed with the emotion sweeping her away, and when she stopped and shook her head, he brought her down and held her close, rolling them over and covering her, protecting her, burying his face in the crook of her neck and rocking her.
He was gentle, taking his time, tuned into every move she made. Her vulnerability frightened her. She was his and she was open and each stroke of his cock drew a gasp or a moan because she needed this, needed him, and that need confused and confounded.
And so she gave up, became nothing but her body, rising with him as desire pulled her toward the brink. His legs bracketed her legs, and his hips cradled her hips, and they were wet together and hot together and it was all too much. She cried out, shuddered, collapsed as the storm swept through her. The same spinning wind took him higher, and he strained as he reared up and spilled his seed.
They lay quietly for a while after that, Dax on his side, spooned around her, their feet braided together, his penis soft against her back, then he finally spoke. “About the booth in your kitchen.”
First Faith. Now Dax. The booth was her business, but at least this subject put her back on solid ground. “Yes?”
“It’s okay that you’ve kept that piece of your past.”
“Thanks for your permission.”
“Shit, Arwen.” He rolled away, flung his arm over his eyes. “Do you have to twist everything I say? Or turn it into a big joke to make me look stupid?”
Did she do that? Were her defenses so ingrained she didn’t stop to consider what he was saying and why, but reacted instead? “I don’t mean to do that. It’s just…”
“It’s just what?” he asked, and when she remained silent, he shifted toward her, braced on an elbow, his head in his hand, his free arm along his side and his hand at his hip instead of on her.
She wanted his hand on her. “I’m not trying to make you look stupid. It’s just…” What was she supposed to say? She didn’t know what to say.
“I get it. It’s how you deal. A defense mechanism. You don’t want to talk, you snipe or you shut down or you change the subject. I don’t want to talk…”
“You leave.”
“I guess I do,” he admitted, and then moved his hand to her stomach, above her pussy, below her breasts, as if sex was the last thing on his mind. “Or at least I take myself out of the way.”
“Like you did when you got out of my truck the other day?”
He nodded, began to rub circles on her skin with one fingertip. “I don’t even remember getting back to the house. It was close to dark. Casper and Boone were waiting on the back porch.”
“They were worried.”
He snorted. “Yeah, that they were going to have to pick up my third of the workload.”
“I hardly think that’s what was going through their minds.”
“Oh, who the hell knows what they were thinking? That I was insane, most likely.”
“At least a little bit crazy.”
“Or a whole lot of crazy.” He dropped back against his pillow then, tucked his crossed arms beneath his head. “I just couldn’t deal. Not with the news coming out of nowhere like that. If he’d been sick, I’m pretty sure Darcy would’ve mentioned it.”
“Unless he didn’t tell her.”
“Which wouldn’t surprise me. She’s like an afterthought to him. Always has been.”
“And yet she’s the one at the hospital standing vigil.”
He took his time, finally responded with, “I’m going to have to go see him, aren’t I?”
“I think you knew that a couple of days ago.”
“It’s just… I say he means nothing to me, but know that’s not true. It’s what he means that I’m having trouble with.”
“He’s your father. He’ll always mean something.”
“What does Hoyt mean to you?”
She pictured her father the last time she’d seen him. He hadn’t even acknowledged her presence. In his condition, sober by then but still mourning the loss of her mother, that was hardly surprising. What was surprising was how much it had hurt. She’d cared for him for so long. She’d done her best to be there, and it had meant nothing to him.
“I don’t know. I want to think he did all he knew how to do. He kept me with him. I was never shunted off to a foster home, though I know some people thought that was where I belonged.”
“My mother.”
“Yeah, I never got that.”
“She couldn’t control what was going on at home. She needed something to dig into.”
“Someone else’s life.”
He nodded. “It’s how she survived her own. The one I’m pretty sure she would’ve done anything to get out of as long as no one had to know.”
“She didn’t love your father?”
“She put up with him and all his screwing around. That’s all I know.”
“That says a lot more about her than it does him.”
“What? That she wasn’t putting out and he had to go elsewhere?”
“No, jackass. That she could overlook infidelity to keep her family together.”
“Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong. It wasn’t about keeping her family together. She put up with him so no one would know the truth.”
TWENTY-THREE
THE DAY’S SWEAT running in a river down his spine, Dax stared into the refrigerator in the ranch house kitchen, hoping dinner would jump out at him and he wouldn’t have to cook. Since the day of their father’s heart attack, Darcy’d been AWOL, leaving him, Boone, and Casper to feed themselves.
They were perfectly capable, but they weren’t Darcy, or Tess, with her tables full of meat and potatoes and pie for dessert. Or Arwen, with her aluminum pans of beans and barbecue and cobbler. His stomach rumbled, but the fridge wasn’t giving up anything but five pounds of hamburger wrapped in white butcher paper, and it was too late to see what the back porch freezer held.
A quick check of the pantry yielded spaghetti and jarred sauce. Even he could manage a pot of pasta. Not that a rib eye didn’t sound a whole lot better, but the Dalton Gang wasn’t living on a rib-eye budget. And he was beginning to think that was going to be the lay of the land until Faith let up on the purse strings.
Not that he’d ordered supper from a country club menu while cowboying in Montana, bu
t hell. There was something wrong when a cowman couldn’t enjoy the fruit of his own damn labors once in awhile. And he didn’t mean enjoying it all ground up, a pound mixed with noodles and sauce and spread between three grown men.
No, he wanted meat, a big juicy marbled steak from a gorgeous grass-fed bovine, meaning he’d have to go elsewhere since gorgeous didn’t describe the beef cattle calling the Dalton Ranch home. At least not this year, this season; maybe next, if he was still around.
He slammed a cast-iron skillet on the stove top, tore open the hamburger and eyed it for a few before digging in his hand and halving it. Two and a half pounds. Fuck the budget. He wrapped up the rest, returned it to the fridge, lit the burner beneath the skillet, and went looking for a pot for boiling water.
He was bent in half with his head in the cabinet when the screen door squeaked open and bounced shut in its frame behind him. “Hey, don’t we have a big pot here somewhere? For the spaghetti?”
“Top shelf. Back on the right,” Darcy replied.
Dax raised up, banged his head on the edge of the counter. “Shit, Darcy. Give a warning next time. I thought you were one of the boys.”
She held out her arms, looked back at him without smiling. “Nope. It’s just me. Your sister. The only one of our father’s children who seems to care if he lives or dies.”
Rubbing the back of his head, he looked at her for a long moment, then filled the pot with water and set it to boil before using a fork to break up the meat. “You been there all this time? At the hospital?”
When she didn’t answer, he glanced back. She was standing in the same place, wearing the same blank expression, her arms now crossed defensively over her chest. Her eyes were tired, the circles beneath like dark horseshoes against skin that was more ghostly than pale and free of makeup.
But he’d asked her once. He wasn’t going to ask again. It was obvious she’d come here with something on her mind. And as much as he probably didn’t want to hear it, he’d give her the floor for as long as it took her to unload. Her ball. Her court. He was only here for the show.
