by Maisey Yates
He braced himself. Braced himself to hear how much she wished he were the one that had died.
“How dare you?”
And here it was.
“I never claimed to be a nice guy, Clara. I just said I was doing the best I could to honor your brother’s wishes.”
“You...you get in my face, you do your very best to prove to me that I, in fact, don’t have a damn clue what I want. I don’t know what attraction is. That I don’t know what it is to want somebody, and then you walk away from me? More than that, you drop a bombshell on me, and then walk away. And I don’t even care if that’s a tasteless analogy, all things considered.”
He shook his head, incredulous, and then he regretted shaking his head. “That’s what you’re angry at me about? The fact that I walked away from you? You should be thanking me for that, Clara.”
“Oh, should I? Thanks, Alex. It’s super helpful when you let me know exactly how I should be feeling. Otherwise, how would I ever figure it out on my own?”
“Get as indignant as you want, but you’re right, I am the person that demonstrated to you that you don’t actually know what you want. You sure as hell don’t want Asher, and we both know that.”
He knew, he knew right down to his soul, that the moment he’d said those words he had consigned himself to getting his head torn off. He could see it in the evil gleam in her blue eyes, and when she walked right into the house, brushing past him, not waiting for an invitation, he could have sworn he smelled fire and brimstone.
“Okay. Let’s talk. Let’s talk about what we want. You want me, Alex. Me. I might be a virgin, and I might have just gotten my first kiss last night, but I know that. So tell me, from up there on your high horse, how does the view look?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You know,” she insisted. “You have so much to say about what I want, who I want and what real attraction is, and yet, you’re hell-bent on denying ours even though you seem to want me to acknowledge it. That’s bull, Alex. What’s the point of it? To be right? To hurt me?”
“No,” he said, the word coming out a bit more emphatically than he intended. It reverberated in his head, sent a shock of pain through his teeth and down his jaw. “No,” he said again, this time a little more gently. “I walked away from you because I don’t want to hurt you. And I sure as hell needed you to know the whole truth about Jason before I let you touch me.”
“Okay. I guess I can appreciate that. Now I know.” She looked up, her blue eyes suddenly going glassy. “What did you think I would say?”
So many things. He had expected her to come in here with recriminations on her lips, had expected her to demand he find the nearest graveyard and start digging a hole for himself while she found a demon to negotiate with.
“I don’t know. But you needed to know,” he lied.
“I don’t think that’s true. I think you figured the truth would do all of this for you. That you wouldn’t have to stand in front of me and tell me you don’t want me because I would tell you to go to hell.”
It was so close to what he had actually been thinking that he wondered for a moment if she could read his mind. Then, he figured he probably just wasn’t all that complex.
“Because you should tell me to go to hell,” he said, the words strained. “Why haven’t you?”
“Look around you. Oh, maybe not here. But go to the Campbell ranch and look around you, Alex. And you ask yourself who isn’t there. Who’s with me? Nobody. Not a damn person that I love. And you came into my life...and I have you. Jason gave you to me. You’ve been helping. You have. I don’t wish you dead. And the worst thing about realizing that is that the moment I let myself think the words, I started to panic. Because I was afraid that wanting you here would be the same as signing your death certificate. Everyone I care about is dead. Caring about you sucks. But when you told me that, I realized that I did. I don’t hate you. Don’t ask me to.”
He stood, frozen to the spot, and he wanted more than anything to cross the space between them and pull her into his arms. To offer her comfort if nothing else. To feel her soft cheek, to trace the line of her lips with the edge of his thumb. To offer her reassurance. To offer her a connection.
But he didn’t. He couldn’t. No matter what she said now, it didn’t make any of this right.
“It would be better, you know,” he said, his voice sounding like a stranger’s. “It would be better if you wanted coffee boy.”
“Well, no duh.”
He laughed. “Nice to know you agree with me on that point.”
“I do. I wanted to want him more than I have ever wanted anything before. Okay, that’s a lie. I think I wanted an American Girl doll when I was six about as badly as I wanted to force myself to want to date Asher. To want him. But the thing is, I don’t.” She blinked rapidly, and he could tell that she was trying to hold back tears. “I’ve been trying to escape for the past six months. And he was about as...off the ranch as I could have gotten. But the fact of the matter is, I don’t want off the ranch. And that’s hard. It’s hard to want a life that hurts. Everything in that house has some dark memory attached to it. But I can’t leave it either. I love it. Entertaining the idea of being with Asher let me have a fantasy of a different kind of life. But unsurprisingly, much like coffee, I don’t actually want it.”
Even in his hangover-fogged brain, he suddenly made a connection between what Finn had said last night, and this moment. Clara was so much more than Jason’s younger sister. She was more than a twenty-one-year-old virgin. She was more than any of those basic, reductive things he was trying to make her into so he could throw up walls and excuses and convince himself he was being an honorable man.
Clara was strong. She was brave. She wasn’t innocent, that was for damn sure. She had lived through the kind of loss, the kind of pain that would make even the most hardened soldier curl up on the ground and cry like a child. She had gotten back up. She was standing. Standing right in front of him, challenging him, her blue eyes flashing with determination.
He had been selling her short. He hadn’t really seen her. But he did now. Of course, he didn’t know what the hell he was supposed to do with the revelation, but he saw her clearly now. For all the good it did him. For all the good it did them.
“Then what do you want?”
She let out a long, slow breath. “You. I want you.”
* * *
CLARA FELT LIKE she had just run a marathon. Her lungs were burning, her heart threatening to pound its way straight through her chest. This was one of the hardest, scariest things she had ever done. Well, okay, it didn’t exactly compare to attending the funerals of her family members. That was scarier. That hideous, final ceremony that stripped the last shreds of denial away.
But this... Coming all the way here to Alex’s house—the house he shared with his brothers—standing in front of him and telling him that she wanted him...that was pretty damn scary too.
And he said nothing. He just stared at her with those unreadable green eyes, his expression hard as granite. He looked at her as though she hadn’t just cut her chest open and let her pride fall out onto the floor in front of him, all vulnerable and just there for him to look at, poke at, judge. The move was his, and he wasn’t making it.
At least if he said something insulting, something horrible, she could fight him. And fighting would feel better than this. Than standing here in this kind of hollow silence that seemed to echo in all of the tender places inside of her.
“You should go, Clara,” he said finally, his voice rough.
That bit of roughness, the lack of smile—those were the only two indicators that this affected him at all.
Otherwise, he was like a mountain. Big, hard. Everything she wasn’t. Right now she felt like a small, vulnerable creature desperately in search o
f armor. A burrow. Something to hide in, something to protect herself with. And she found herself without either.
“And if I don’t want to go?”
Her pride was dead already. She might as well dance on its grave. A seductive little striptease to make sure she stayed buried.
“Then I will pick you up and carry you out of this house and put you in your truck myself,” he said, his voice hard.
“Why? Because having me here tests you too much?” It took bravery to say that. More than she thought she possessed. She was surprised at herself. If nothing else came out of this, there was that.
“You don’t want to find out.”
Her phone buzzed, the timer she had set for herself going off. Dammit. “I have to go to work. I’m not obeying you.” She took a step away from him, her voice trembling, her limbs trembling, her everything trembling. “We’ll talk later.”
“Not about this,” he said. “I’ll keep coming to your ranch, Clara, and I’ll keep helping you with all of the things that I promised.”
“You mean you’ll keep coming to your ranch,” Clara said. “Your ranch, that you own. It isn’t mine. Not anymore.”
“It will be. It doesn’t matter what the legality—”
“It sure as hell does matter,” she said, forgetting work. Forgetting everything but the anger pouring through her. “It matters. It’s your ranch. You have everything. I don’t have anything. I don’t have any power in this. You have it all. And you don’t even deserve it. You’re a coward, Alex,” she spat. “A coward who’s hiding behind his dead best friend.”
That comment was apparently a bridge too far. Because then Clara found herself being hauled off her feet, up against Alex’s hard, uncompromising body. She half expected to find herself being carried out of the house, as promised. But that didn’t happen.
Instead, he lowered his head, his eyes hard. “Hiding? You’re accusing me of hiding?”
“If the denial fits,” she said, digging in.
“Who exactly has been hiding, little girl? Because I’m not the one who was desperately trying to date somebody I didn’t actually want to touch me. I’m not the one who spent months not paying her bills.”
She struggled against him, her heart pounding, anger warring with enraging, growing arousal that she definitely shouldn’t be feeling. “You’re the one who spent months avoiding me,” she said. “Months of waiting to do what Jason asked you to do. Then you kissed me. And then you ran away to your big brother’s house. Why? You thought this was a fort that girls couldn’t get into? You thought this would keep me away? I’m not afraid of you, Alex. I’m not afraid of your touch, I’m not afraid of your rejection. If you think I’m that fragile then you don’t actually know me.”
He reached out, caught her chin, held her face steady. “And if you think nothing about me should scare you, then you don’t know me very well,” he said, his voice like gravel.
He did scare her. But not in the way he meant. He challenged her. Challenged everything she thought she knew about herself and what she wanted.
The truth of the matter was that she wanted him. And she was prepared to beg. Was prepared to make it impossible for him to say no, even if she didn’t exactly know what that might entail.
She didn’t need to know exactly. Not in practice. She was a woman. She was. Despite having spent a good portion of her life ignoring that fact. Denying that fact. Because throwing up a wall between herself and her desires seemed safe. And then she had attached them to a pretty safe target, all things considered.
But the moment Alex’s lips had crashed down on hers last night, she had lost the ability to deny it. Had lost the desire to.
She was a woman. And all she needed to do was follow her instincts.
She dropped her hand between them, pressing her palm against the front of his jeans. She ran her palm along the seam of his zipper, feeling his hard length pulsing beneath her touch. He wanted her. There was no denying it. A man couldn’t fake this, and as innocent as she was, she knew that.
He swore, crude and blunt. His voice like broken glass. His surrender more satisfying than she could have ever imagined.
He closed his eyes, his head falling back, and she couldn’t stop herself from staring. At the strong column of his throat, the way his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed. Looking for strength, she imagined. The strength to turn her away.
She had never felt anything like this before. Had never seen anything like it. A man at the end of his control. A man like him. A strong man. And suddenly she realized why that kind of too-much masculinity that Alex possessed was so appealing. It was because he was physically stronger than her. No question. He was a soldier, he was a man.
And right now, he was in the palm of her hand, and he was struggling against her.
The power she possessed as a woman was...it was intoxicating. So much greater than she had imagined.
“Clara,” he ground out.
She stretched up on her toes, brushed her lips against that spot on his throat that had caught her attention only a moment before. She could feel his pulse throbbing beneath her mouth, and before she could fully process what she was doing she darted her tongue out and licked him. From his Adam’s apple up to his chin, moving from smooth skin into morning stubble. His taste, that masculine texture, made it feel like an arrow had pierced her down low, between the legs, sending a pulse of aching desire through her body.
Yesterday, when she had gone on her date, she’d been a girl. Her understanding of the desire between men and women had been basic at best.
She knew the mechanics. But that wasn’t the same as truly understanding.
One kiss from Alex, and she felt like a woman. Sure, she was still a virgin, but she got it now. She really did.
Alex swept her up into his arms, holding her against him, and then he strode out of the entryway, carrying her up the stairs. Her heart slammed against her breastbone, and she began to question all of the conclusions she’d come to in the past few minutes.
That she understood. That she was ready.
His chest was bare, and being pressed up against all that skin made her feel... Well, it made her feel achy and needy, and it was just enough to overcome her anxiety.
Alex carried her down the hall, kicked open a door, one that clearly led to his bedroom, then kicked it shut behind them.
He crossed the room, setting her down at the center of a large bed, bringing himself down to hover over her, his lean hips settling between her thighs, his mouth coming down to settle over hers.
She brought her hand up to his cheek, scraping her fingertips along his beard, enjoying the feel of him, enjoying the contrast. Then she let her hand drift down to his bare chest, touched him the way she had when he’d kissed her last night.
This was different, though. It was different because there was intention coupled with the intensity. Because they were behind a closed door. Because they were in a bed.
Because she was on fire and there wasn’t any rain to cool it.
His hand slid up beneath her shirt, his skin rough against hers. She loved that. Loved the contrast. Was quickly becoming addicted to it. It was like some kind of magic she hadn’t known existed before this.
Strange. Because one of the first things you learned as a kid was the difference between boys and girls. But this was so much more.
It was hard and soft. Round and curved, blunt and angular. He was a mountain. And she was like the coastal mist that rolled in off the sea. Able to shift, to curve around his uncompromising lines, to overtake him utterly and completely as she did.
What she was learning now was the strength in the giving. In allowing herself to mold to him, and the effect that it had on his body.
She moved her hands down his back, gloried in the feeling of the musculature beneat
h her fingertips. Then she drew them back up, over his shoulders and down his chest, his abs, down to the waistband of his jeans. She stopped there. It had been one thing to grab hold of him downstairs when she had been trying to prove something. When she had been issuing a dare. It was all a little more intimidating now.
The bed, again. Making things feel more real. Making things feel more intense.
But then he cupped her breasts, still covered by the fabric of her bra, and she forgot everything. Forgot that she was afraid. Forgot that she was nervous at all.
Her nipples were sensitive, almost painfully so, and when he slid his thumbs over the tightened buds, she gasped, the bra padding not enough to keep her from feeling it all the way through.
He reached around behind her, unclasping the bra and grabbing it, along with a handful of her shirt, and dragging them up over her head. Then she was shirtless too. Her skin got hot, a slow flush that spread from her face on down.
She was...well, she was embarrassed. But not so much about being naked in front of him. It was about the fact that she didn’t know how to be confident like that. Didn’t know how to be sexual. And she wished that she did. She was just lying there. That was the embarrassing thing. That she had this gorgeous man on the bed with her, looming over her, and she had no freaking idea what to do with him.
Thankfully, he was not similarly affected.
Alex growled, bracketing her face in his hands, claiming her lips for an intense kiss. Then he wrenched his mouth away from hers, kissing her neck, her collarbone, making his way down to the curve of her breasts, down farther to her nipple. He drew one into his mouth and sucked it in deep.
Clara felt like a firecracker had been lit in her stomach, the heat, the crackles of tension creating a small explosion inside her.
She flexed her feet, tightening her leg muscles, trying to do something to counterbalance the tension that was drawing tight and low. That was creating little ripples at her core.
“Alex,” she panted. “Alex.”
