The Hero of Hope Springs

by Maisey Yates

  He couldn’t care about Sammy any more than he did. And this was... It was new. But he wasn’t going to go ahead and throw that on her now.

  She wanted to play it by ear; that was fine.

  She wanted to pretend like it could be casual; that was fine, too. As long as in the end she understood that he wasn’t a man who could be casual when it came to her.

  He took his place at the table beside Sammy and everyone acted casual like they hadn’t been watching the interplay between the two of them. He got a strange enjoyment out of the fact that they were all clearly slightly more embarrassed that they’d been watching him and Sammy than he and Sammy were by being watched.

  He didn’t know why the hell they should care what anyone thought.

  That was one thing about living life the way that he had. He had no illusions that his world would ever look like anyone else’s.

  He had given everything up at eighteen to take care of his siblings. There was no keeping up with the Joneses. He couldn’t see their yard over his overgrown hedge and dilapidated fence anyway.

  There was no worrying about having a life that looked like any kind of particular thing. Because there wasn’t a blueprint for what they were.

  And maybe that was the lesson with Sammy and him. There was no blueprint. So he didn’t need to worry so much about where the boundaries fell. They just needed to see. Just needed to follow what felt right. And all right, so going with the flow wasn’t usually his thing. Usually, he was more about trying to find a set of rules so he could make sense of the situation that he was in. But maybe it was time to take a little bit of sunshine and carry it with him. Do a little bit of what Sammy would do.

  Hell, it was probably the only way to really be with Sammy.

  He had to grit his teeth through the rest of the evening, and when it was all over, though Sammy had ridden over to the bar with Iris, she made a show of leaving with him.

  There was something about it that made him want to beat his chest like a gorilla. He didn’t know what this thing was doing to him. Unless sex with Sammy had caused some kind of strange testosterone surge in his body. Which seemed possible. The minutes ticked by in the car, as did the silence. And he suddenly was overcome by the fact that he was going to go home and bury himself inside Sammy.

  Sammy Marshall.

  His deepest, most forbidden fantasy.

  And yeah, he’d had her once. Yeah, he’d tasted her, but it didn’t mean anything in terms of it being old or over now. No. He wanted her. He wanted her so badly he couldn’t see straight. And he wasn’t going to wait. Not anymore.

  He couldn’t wait.

  He pulled the truck off the main highway, up a gravel drive that led into the mountains.

  The kind of thing he’d gotten up to in high school, but never, ever since.

  He didn’t do things like this. He wasn’t spontaneous. He wasn’t crazy.

  He was the kind of guy you could depend on. The one who would always help you move. The one who would make a plan then stick to it. See that everything went well. According to that plan. He wasn’t the kind of guy who did spontaneous sex.

  Hell, for him, hookups had become pretty thin on the ground because he just couldn’t be bothered half the damn time.

  But he couldn’t wait for Sammy. He had to have her. He had to have her now.

  “What are you doing?” Sammy asked.

  “I have to have you,” he said. “Right now.”

  He pulled the truck off to the side, into a slight outcropping of trees. It was still there. He remembered it being there.

  “What is this?”

  “You know exactly what it is.”

  “Oh, this is where you got into trouble in high school.”

  “Damn straight. I’m about to get in some trouble with you.”

  “Ryder...”

  “Don’t,” he said. He unbuckled his seat belt, scooted away from the driver’s seat, then hauled her up onto his lap. She was straddling him, her blond hair covering both of them like a curtain. “Don’t make a joke out of this. Don’t make light of it.”

  He pressed his thumb against her lips. “I can’t wait,” he ground out. “I have to be inside you. I waited for you for seventeen years, and once wasn’t enough. It’s never going to be enough.”

  She blinked, surprise and something else glistening in her eyes. “Ryder...”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know this isn’t you. I know you do things a little bit different. But I can only be me. And I’m... This is why I let you leave. Because I’m not cool. I don’t have any chill when it comes to us. When it comes to this.”

  “I’m glad,” she whispered. “I’ve never... No man has ever looked at me the way that you do.”

  “Because no man has ever felt for you what I do,” he said, the words a vow of certainty. “I know it.”

  “How?” she whispered.

  “It’s impossible. Nobody could ever feel this.” He wrapped his hand around her wrist, pressed her palm against his chest. Let her feel the way that his heart was raging, utterly and completely out of control. “Nobody,” he said.

  “Ryder...”

  “Kiss me,” he said.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  SAMMY WASN’T BIG on obeying commands, and he knew it, but she did obey this one.

  Those lips made contact with his, feather-soft at first, until he angled his head, and she seemed to sink right into him. He could feel the heat between her thighs blazing against his arousal, could feel the desperate need as she slid her tongue against his. He could feel it in the little whimpers that she made, the way that she arched her body against his.

  And he was wild. Wild in a way he could never remember being, because nothing had ever been this. Nothing had ever been her.

  Sammy.

  He stripped her top up over her head, pushed her skirt up so that her thighs were exposed.

  She didn’t have a bra on.

  It drove him absolutely crazy when she did that. And he had spent years pretending not to notice.

  “Do you know what a damned achievement it was to be around you when you were like this?” He pressed his thumbs against her nipples and slid them over the tightened buds. “And not spend the whole time staring at you. For years, Sammy. For years I wanted nothing more than to touch you here. Like this. To taste you.” He pressed his palm against the center of her back, brought her body closer to him and sucked one nipple deep into his mouth, proving his point. She gasped, wiggled restlessly.

  She was panting, tugging at his shirt, trying to get it up over his head, but she couldn’t because he was latched onto her.

  “Wait,” he said, sliding his thumb over her wet nipple. “I’m not done.”

  “Please,” she said. “I have to see you. I have to touch you.”

  “You weren’t the one dying to do this for years.”

  “Because I didn’t know,” she said, helplessness in her voice. “I didn’t know.”

  He leaned back in the seat, and she pushed his shirt up, tugging it over his head. Her breath hissed through her teeth as she moved her palms over his body.

  “You’re so sexy,” she said. “And it was killing me tonight. Talking to you and knowing that. That guy who was trying to pick me up was like an indistinct blur. I couldn’t even really see him. I just kept thinking about you.”

  That level of intensity coming from Sammy was something else. And he hadn’t thought that his arousal could get turned up another notch. He didn’t think it was possible. But that did it. Oh hell, that did it.

  He pushed one hand between her thighs and shoved her panties to one side, stroking her while she continued to explore his body with her fingertips. She whimpered, moving her hips back and forth in time with his strokes. Then with fumbling fingers she undid his belt, his jeans, and he lifted his hips so tha
t she could pull them down partway, expose him. Delicate fingers wrapped around his length, and she squeezed him.

  Even in the dim moonlight, he watched her face. Made sure to look down where her hand met his aching flesh. Because it was Sammy touching him like that. Sammy with her hand on his body this way. He was ready to shift, ready to plunge inside her body when he remembered. He cursed, then struggled for his wallet, which Sammy took out of his fingers. She went pawing through it, digging until she produced a condom. She tore it open.

  She made a slightly regretful expression as she rolled it onto his body. “I need you inside me,” she said. “And this is the right way to do it. But I have to say... I liked having you with nothing between us.”

  “I just need to have you,” he said, but her words burned through his blood. Because there wasn’t a hell of a lot that was sexier than a woman saying she wanted you with no barrier.

  Well. Sammy wanting him at all was damn sexy. Barrier or no.

  Sammy.

  Her name was like a banner stretched across the whole of his mind as he positioned himself at the entrance to her body and flexed his hips as she sank down onto him.

  Her fingertips digging into his skin as he filled her.

  “Ryder,” she whispered, his name on her lips as the tight, wet heat of her surrounded him, the most erotic and heady experience he’d ever had in his life.

  Yeah, this was why he’d let her run away. Because he couldn’t breathe through this, much less think. Because she was too beautiful for him to see past. Because the scent of her, the feel of her, filled his senses entirely, and he didn’t know what that meant for him. What it meant for them. Because he wanted her. And he was having her, and still wanted her, so he had no idea what that meant for his sanity. For the whole rest of his life.

  But it didn’t matter. Not right now. Because all of his doubts, all of his concerns, were washed away by sunshine. By her. Her heat and warmth and everything else. Lighting him up from the inside out. That was a truth that was with them, whether it was seventeen years ago or today. When things were dark, there was Sammy. When he thought he would never smile again, there was Sammy. Beautiful, constant. The one thing in the world that made sense, even when she didn’t.

  There was nothing outside this truck. There was nothing outside the space they’d made with just the two of them. And there was no space between them. Not at all. He held her as she rode him, as she arched her back and let her head fall back, ecstasy rolling over her like a wave. A wave that he could feel. As if it were his own. Her pleasure was the most erotic thing he’d ever experienced.

  His own didn’t matter, not half as much.

  She reached her peak, panting and shuddering out his name, and then he reached between her thighs and stroked her until she reached the peak again, until she went over.

  And again.

  Until she was begging him to stop. Until he couldn’t keep it going anymore. Because he had been pushed to his breaking point.

  He lost himself. Thrusting up into her and never once losing sight of the fact that it was Sammy. His Sammy. That this was different. But it was more.

  He held on to her shoulders and slammed into her one last time, his pleasure a roar in his blood, in his chest, his head.

  He could hear it reverberating in the cab of the truck, and he knew that it was outside him, too. That he had lost himself completely in a way that he hadn’t ever before.

  She collapsed against his chest like a wilted flower. He pushed her hair back from her face and kissed her cheek.

  “You killed me,” she murmured, her breath hot on his chest.

  “I hope not,” he said. “Because I’m not done with you yet.”

  He found her top and put it back on her, and then put the rest of her to rights before taking a moment to step out of the truck and engage in condom disposal. Then he got back inside and turned the engine on.

  “Let’s go home.”

  And he meant his home. His bed.

  If she was bothered by that, she didn’t protest.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE NEXT MORNING Sammy woke up with her body tangled all around Ryder’s. He was so beautiful. And the way he made her feel...

  Last night had been...intense.

  Intense on a level she hadn’t known she was capable of feeling.

  She extricated herself from his hold and hunted around the room. It was late. Much later than he normally got up. And later than she typically got up for their bacon day. She didn’t want to wake him. Instead, she stood there, staring at him. The gray light was filtering beneath the crack in the curtain, casting his face in a glow. He looked so much more relaxed. Usually, even in sleep his face held tension.

  But of course, now she knew that all those years he had been holding himself back. Because he wanted her.

  And last night he’d had her. To his heart’s content. And hers.

  It had been incredible, and so had he. So had she, for that matter.

  She had never, ever, had a guy lose it with her like that, and she had loved it. She would have said that she wouldn’t have. She would have said that things like that—desperation and roadside sex—were for other people. People who were more into it from a physical, sweaty standpoint, rather than the spiritual connection she had always claimed.

  But it turned out that pleasure and sweat did not preclude spiritual connections. Because she felt transformed. Turned inside out.

  She tried to breathe around the heavy pressure in her chest and found that she couldn’t. She also couldn’t find some of her clothes.

  They were somewhere. She knew that. She had dressed before coming into the house, and then he had proceeded to strip her as soon as they’d gotten behind the door of his bedroom, after which he had done things to her body that she would have said she wouldn’t have any interest in.

  But he made her insane. He made her beg for what she had thought she might actively ask a man to not do.

  His tongue was wicked. And it was wonderful.

  And she had known him all this time and hadn’t realized he was capable of such things.

  She had called him steady. She had called him boring. She hadn’t had any idea he knew places to touch inside a woman that could give her the kind of orgasm that made her scream.

  She curled her toes inside her sandals and proceeded to hunt around the room. Giving up, she went over to his dresser and grabbed a T-shirt and a pair of sweats out of there. They were way too big. She had to cinch the sweatpants up ferociously to make them stay up. But it was fine.

  Then she tramped downstairs, barefoot, and started to hunt around for their breakfast. He would follow soon enough, and she would take the moment to engage in a little bit of self-examination.

  Or maybe, just think about what had happened the night before.

  Maybe this was part of the key.

  This exploration with him.

  Because yeah, she was a control freak, and she had a feeling that it was that control freak part of her nature that had made it impossible for her to orgasm with a man until this moment. Only with Ryder had she been able to let go of that control. And only because she knew him so well. And he knew her.

  He knew how to get her there. How to put her mind at ease. Didn’t they say that a woman’s most important sexual organ was her mind?

  Of course, it felt like somewhere a whole lot lower. Felt like every inch of her skin.

  Every inch of her.

  He did things to her...

  She began to look in the fridge for eggs and bacon and found them, then found some leftover French bread, which she sliced up to make toast.

  The eggs this morning, she decided, would be over medium and on top of the toast. Maybe she would even make sandwiches. That might be nice. She wanted to watch him eat.

  Wanted to watch his mouth close around
a sandwich.

  She was going crazy.

  Really, the man was her friend. She should have a little bit of...something. Self-control. She didn’t have any. She had nothing but a kind of intense, satisfied hum that, all things considered, she might take in lieu of self-respect.

  She hummed to herself as she cooked, and then she heard footsteps behind her. She turned and saw Ryder standing in the kitchen doorway. He was wearing nothing but a pair of jeans, slung low on his lean hips. His hair was disheveled, his whiskers looking deliciously feral and scratchy.

  She liked Ryder feral, she realized. Perhaps because she had spent most of her life as a somewhat feral creature and had felt like she had been the odd one in their midst. But uncovering those pieces of him, that bit of uncivilized that was apparently a lot closer to the surface than he pretended, was...exhilarating. Somehow, that change in him was liberating for her, and she couldn’t quite put her finger on why.

  On why it made her feel a whole lot more like she fit. In this house. In her own skin. Against his skin.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  “And a very good morning to you,” she responded.

  She turned back to the pan and flipped perfect eggs onto the toast that was already laid out on the plate.

  And then one big strong arm wrapped around her and pulled her against his hard body. She shivered, and he angled so that he could kiss her neck.

  “Good morning,” he said again.

  His voice rumbled in his chest, the feeling so intimate between them.

  Everything inside her fluttered. Between her legs, and her stomach. Her heart. All of it.

  She had never fluttered in her life. She had just assumed that she was the kind of person who didn’t. She had thought that maybe her father had broken something fundamental inside her with his fists. The ability to be excited about people. About the possibility that could exist between her and someone else.

  That was the problem. Fundamentally, romance had never really excited her that much because she felt like she had seen too much of the negative outcome. The potential for disaster.