by Alison Kent
“Hmm?”
“Is this about Lucinda taking that beating? Because as bad as it was, it was a long time ago. Last I knew, she’d recovered and moved on. Les, I don’t give a shit about. And I imagine Penny’s okay, too.”
She lifted her head. “And you? Are you okay?”
Her concern was for him? “About what happened that night? Yeah. Why?”
“It didn’t stick with you?”
“Well, sure. Stuff like that does. But I don’t think about it much. Once in a while, maybe,” he said, his hands sliding down her back. “Like when I drive past their old house, or see a tow truck. It’ll come back then.”
She dropped her gaze to his shirt front. “I don’t know if I could be that strong.”
“It’s not about being strong. It’s more knowing nothing about that night can be changed. It’s accepting that and letting it settle and putting it away. Doesn’t do a bit of good to dwell on what’s done with. A man could go crazy, doing that,” he said, pushing down thoughts of what might be going on in her mind. “And I try not to borrow more crazy than I have to.”
But she surprised him with a tender smile, saying, “Listen to you, going all cowboy-philosopher.”
“I’m not that deep,” he said, watching something in her eyes flare to life. Her fingertips weren’t cold anymore where she’d tucked them inside his shirt collar. Her body wasn’t shaking beneath his hands. She was thinking about how things were between them in bed. He knew it.
He was thinking about those things, too, but it still wasn’t time. “Are you going to be okay? With my baggage?”
She threaded the fingers of one hand into his hair. “I’ll just add it to the weight of my own.”
“Yours heavy?”
“It’s . . . not light,” she said, screwing up her nose in a grimace.
“I’ve been wondering ever since Faith told me . . .” Calf nuts on a cracker. “Shit.”
Her hands slipped from his neck to her sides and she took a step back, pushing a fall of hair from her face as she lifted her chin. “Faith told you what?”
“Something happened. Those were her words. Nothing more,” he said, gripping the back of the closest of her kitchen chairs and leaning against it. “No details about what it was. Just . . . something happened.”
She took a few seconds to let that sink in, then circled the table and asked, “Why were you and your sister talking about my past?”
“I asked her why you came here. She said if I wanted to know, I needed to ask you.” He remembered more, bowed his head and told her. “She said you’d been hurt enough. And that I’d better not hurt you because you were her friend.”
More seconds ticked by, a slow sort of death knell. “And when did you and your sister have this conversation?”
“Sunday. At my folks. We were washing dishes after supper—”
“You were washing dishes?”
Her question had him looking up again, and frowning. “Faith was washing. I was drying. What?” he asked when she started shaking her head, adding another, “What?” when she gave a disbelieving sort of snort.
She moved one hand to mirror his on the back of a chair. “You cleaned up the other morning after breakfast.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“You’re kidding, right? This is more of your trying to impress me with your assets?”
It wasn’t either of those things, and he wasn’t sure why she thought it was. “You cooked. I cleaned. That’s the way my momma taught me it worked.”
This time, the smile that came to her mouth seemed almost ready to stay. “I really need to get to know your momma.”
Now he was curious. “How can you have lived here for four years, been friends with Faith, gone to school with Faith, and not know my momma?”
“I met her and your dad at their anniversary party, but only briefly. I . . . don’t get out much. Except for work. And lunch each week with the girls. And even that took a lot of persuasion by Faith.”
“How come?”
She shrugged, then pulled down all kinds of shutters over the teasing of moments before. “Like Faith said. Something happened. I came here to forget about it. Or at least to get over it. That meant sticking close to home where I knew I’d be safe.” She took a deep breath, blew it out. “And . . . I didn’t mean to say that.”
He was glad she had, because now everything was making sense, his putting her in the path of Les Upton, her needing that first time to hold him down with scarves. “When Faith said you’d been hurt, I didn’t know she meant physically.” Which is why Everly had gone ice-cold when he’d told her about Les beating Lucinda.
Again, she brushed back her hair. “I’d rather not talk about this.”
He got that, he supposed. He didn’t exactly like talking about his past. And he hadn’t talked about all of it. Just enough for her to realize he was pretty much an open book. He didn’t see much of a need not to be. And he’d respect her wishes.
But down the road, he’d want to know. And if this thing between them got real, he’d expect her to tell him. Just like he’d expect her to want to hear all of his truths—the good and the bad. Hard to build a lifetime of trust without a solid foundation. Until then, well, he had promised her lunch.
“What’ve you got in your fridge?” he asked as he turned to open the door.
“So you cook as well as clean?”
“I’m not Clay. Or Arwen’s Myna Goss. But I do okay.” And anyone could manage grilled cheese.
She pulled out a chair and sat, letting him rummage. “I guess living alone on the ranch means you’ve had to learn.”
“I learned a long time ago,” he said, finding bread in the box on her countertop. “But living alone on the ranch means if I want supper, I have to cook it. If I happen to be in town when I get hungry, and happen to have the cash, I’ll stop off at Arwen’s, or the Blackbird Diner.”
“Or treat a friend to a wonderful steak dinner at the Rainsong Cafe?”
Was that what they were? Friends? “That, too. Though less often. I don’t get to Fever Tree much.”
“Well, if we ever get there again together, I will be paying for dinner. That was way too pricey a meal for a struggling rancher to cover.”
“If I wasn’t able to cover it, I wouldn’t have agreed to go,” he said, pulling out Jarlsberg, Cheddar, Gouda, and Parmesan. He left the goat, the blue, and the Brie. “You like a little cheese to go with your wine?”
“I do,” she said with a laugh. “I have bread, cheese, and fruit for dinner at least a couple times a week. I’d say I’m low maintenance when it comes to food—”
“Except you didn’t get all of these at Nathan’s, so your maintenance meant a trip out of town. For cheese,” he added, giving her a look over his shoulder.
“I went out of town for more than cheese,” she said with a laugh, “But yes. I picked up my favorites, along with a case of wine, when I was in Austin last week.”
“You go back often?”
“Only when I’m in the mood for new shoes.”
He wasn’t sure if she was teasing. Rather than ask, he went looking for a cheese grater. “I’ve seen your closet, you know.”
“You’ve seen the closet in my bedroom.”
“You got scarves in the other ones, too?” he asked, still not looking at her, his heart beating a little harder, his pulse racing a little faster.
She took longer than he’d thought she would to respond. “Did the scarves bother you?”
“Did they keep me from enjoying being with you? No.”
“But?”
He found a bread knife and a cutting board, started slicing her loaf of French. “I wondered that morning why you tying me up wasn’t part of the fun. Why you needed me bound before you even touched me.”
“I told you—”
“I know what you told me. That you were guaranteeing your own good time. But now that I know about you being hurt, it’s got me wondering . . .” He didn’t need t
o finish the sentence. He didn’t want to finish the sentence. She’d made it clear the subject of whatever had happened to her was off-limits. But she’d also made it clear that whatever had happened had her feeling less than safe.
Had tying him up been some sort of bulletproof vest?
“That’s not exactly true,” she finally said, her voice behind him tiny and soft.
“Which part?” he asked, as he turned on the fire beneath the skillet he’d found, because it wasn’t like he hadn’t felt the knots against his skin for hours after.
“I did touch you. Before you were bound.”
They’d danced. She’d helped him into the backseat of her car. She’d most likely had to help him out and into her house. So, yeah. She’d touched him . . . And that’s when it hit him like a horse’s hoof to the gut that she wasn’t talking about any of those situations.
He finished slicing through the bread, crumbs scattering on the cutting board, and laid down the knife. Then he turned to look at her, leaning back against the counter. “You took off my clothes.”
She nodded. “You don’t remember any of it, do you?”
He could lie, but doing so would serve no purpose beyond masking his chagrin that he’d gotten falling-down drunk on his sister’s dime. “Not a goddamn thing.”
“I thought I was going to have to leave you in the car,” she said, her gaze cast down, her finger following patterns in the table’s wooden top. “You were snoring before I ever pulled into the driveway.”
“The saloon’s like six, seven blocks from here.”
“You were snoring before we ever got out of the parking lot.”
“Dadgum. That was some good beer Arwen was slinging.” But that wasn’t the part of that night he was interested in revisiting. “Did you wake me up, or just roll me out of the car and through the house?”
“I don’t know if you actually woke up, but you did walk in pretty much under your own steam.”
He crossed his arms over his chest, crossed his feet at the ankles. “And then you took off my clothes.”
Her throat worked when she swallowed, when she returned her gaze to the pattern in the table’s pine. “I didn’t want you leaving bits and pieces of your ranch all over my house. I got you to take off your boots in the laundry room. Then decided it was as good a place as any to leave the rest of your things.”
He’d found his keys and his wallet on her kitchen table when he’d gone in for breakfast the next morning. And his clothes, all of his clothes, had been freshly washed and dried, and waiting on the chair like she’d said. “The rest of my things. Including my drawers.”
“You’d had them on all day. I thought while I was washing . . .” That was all she said, but she shrugged, leaving him to think how personal a thing it was to have a woman dealing with a man’s day-old drawers.
“You put me to bed naked.”
“I did.”
“And that’s when you touched me.”
“It was.”
“So, tell me about this touching,” he said, his balls tightening, his cock thickening. “What type of liberties did you take?”
A smile pulled at the corners of her mouth. “Not as many as I did later. But enough.”
“You touched my manly business.”
Her gaze came up then, and a tiny desperate laugh escaped her mouth. “You’re beautiful.”
“Me? Or—”
“All of you.”
“So . . .”
“It was just before you turned over onto your stomach. You’d fallen onto the bed. One leg on, one leg off, your arms spread wide. And your . . . penis . . . It was . . . loose, like your . . . balls. All of it relaxed and just laying there. I ran my fingertip around the ridge of the head. That was all. But since I didn’t have your permission, I apologize for invading your privacy.”
“You molested me.”
“Yes. I did,” she said, frowning, as if she hadn’t thought about it that way before. “I shouldn’t have, but we’d been so close while dancing, and I didn’t think you’d mind.”
He didn’t. He just wished he’d been awake for it all. “So when you offered me dessert after breakfast, you knew exactly what you’d be getting.”
“I knew what I’d be getting when you took off your clothes in the laundry room. And I had a pretty good idea on the dance floor. But, yes. You made me . . . hungry.”
“Hungry. Huh.” He rubbed at the back of his neck. “I’m guessing you don’t mean in the grilled cheese sandwich sort of way.”
“Not really,” she said, her voice breaking, the rasp of desire strumming his nerves. “And anyway, if you wanted to wait . . . they’re a lot better when they’re hot.” She nodded toward the skillet that was smoking. “Grilled cheese sandwiches.”
He reached over, turned off the fire, scooted it off the grate, then went for her where she still sat at the table, grabbing her hand, pulling her down the hallway to the bedroom where they’d been headed all along.
She took care of her clothes while he got out of his. He liked undressing her, liked a lot having her undress him, but some things just wouldn’t wait, and this was one of them. He needed her, and now. Her feeling the same way put a powerful spin on the urge that was sucking him in like a twister.
They were naked in seconds, his boots giving him the most trouble and putting him behind. That gave her a couple of moments to watch, and her watching had his dick swelling as he shucked out of his shorts, crawling with her onto the bed where he swore he was sheathed and inside of her before they were all the way there.
And then he was on top of her, slamming into her, his fists on the mattresses above her shoulders, his elbows locked as he pounded. His eyes were closed, and he knew she was with him, but he was all about his cock and nothing else mattered as his mind held tight to the picture of her touching him while he slept.
He grunted, he groaned, he shoved into her, bouncing the both of them so hard Everly finally cried out, “Boone!” and brought him back. He slowed then, stopped, opened his eyes and looked down to see hers wide with fear.
She wasn’t aroused. She wasn’t having a good time, and could he blame her? He was rutting on her like some kind of goddamn pig. Calf nuts on a motherfucking cracker.
What in the hell was wrong with him? “Sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
She brought up her hand and pressed her fingers to his lips, and he lowered his body and brought his forehead flush to hers, resting there, calming there, waiting there until she told him it was okay to move, to speak. To apologize for being a pig.
Her heart beat like horse hooves pounding the prairie from her chest to his, rattling him to the core. He’d done this to her, scared the shit outta her, wanted her so badly he hadn’t stopped to think about what he was doing. He hadn’t stopped to think about anything. All he’d done was take her.
Once his heart was no longer galloping, and he could feel that her pulse had slowed, too, he lifted his head, brushed back her hair, and looked into her eyes, his searching, desperate, hoping to see that he hadn’t hurt her. More than anything, he couldn’t stand the idea that he might’ve hurt her.
“Are you okay?” he finally asked, his voice a whisper.
“Yes, I’m fine. I just wanted to make sure you didn’t forget about me.”
That wasn’t what he’d heard when she’d cried out his name. “I’m not about to forget about you. Ever. But that’s not what’s going on here.”
“Boone—”
“Everly,” he said before she could try and convince the both of them he’d been imagining her fear, rolling over and pulling her on top of him. “I’m sorry. You started talking about touching me and I pretty much lost my mind. It won’t happen again. Trust me.”
“I do trust you,” she said, and this time she was the one brushing his hair from his face. “I do.”
“But you were afraid I was going to hurt you. I did hurt you—”
“You didn’t—”
“But I sc
ared you. I could tell by the sound of your voice. And by the look in your eyes. You can’t trust me if I scare you.”
She stared down at him, pressing her lips together before taking a deep breath and saying, “Do we need to talk about this now? When you’re . . . filling me up so beautifully? Couldn’t we finish this first?”
His cock wanted to do just that. Or it did until the rest of him got in on the act, realizing how precarious her hold on her emotions really was. “Why don’t we finish this another time? I don’t want—”
“Shh,” she said, covering his whole mouth with the cup of her hand. “I do want. Yes, we’ll talk, but this first. I don’t want to leave you like this.”
Uh-uh. He wasn’t going to have her doing this because of any discomfort he might be in. He shook his head on the pillow, dislodged her hand. “I can take care of myself. As you well know.”
“I do know,” she said, leaning down to brush her lips over his. “I can take care of myself, too. But it’s a lot more fun when you do it.”
They were talking about sex, getting each other off and nothing more, even though minutes ago the near violence of his lechery had reached the emotions she’d been trying to kept out of their bed. If that was all she wanted from him, his cock, a good fucking, he could give her exactly that—and remind himself there was nothing else between them at the same time.
Except he wasn’t that guy. And that wasn’t at all what he wanted, though until just this moment he hadn’t realized that sex with this woman would end up not being enough. Oh, he’d take it. And he’d have fun. But he needed her to know he wasn’t here just for her pussy. As much as he’d come back to Crow Hill for the ranch, he’d come to settle down. It was time. He was ready.
And as he moved again to cover her, he thought maybe it was time for her, too. For some reason that thought had him growing even harder, determined to give her more pleasure than she’d ever had. He rocked against her slowly, pulled out slowly, took his time pushing back in, repeated the process until she squirmed beneath him, pressing him to hurry, begging him to make her come.
Coming was the easy part. They both knew that. What he wanted now was to give her something more, something bigger. Something she would remember when she thought about him later. Something she could look back on if it turned out they weren’t looking for the same thing.
