by Maisey Yates
And it always had been for her. She’d found a sense of home here. Part of that was because at first she’d had Knox, since she and Will hadn’t been on speaking terms. But even after Knox had left...
The town was special to her. Even if she was a latecomer.
She had seen Jesse at events before. Even without being a member of the Texas Cattleman’s Club, it was impossible to move in the moneyed circles in Royal and not have some clue about who the people were in your age bracket.
She also saw the woman who’d had the child at Will’s funeral. And she wondered if that was Will’s baby. Wondered if she knew the truth about anyone.
Because the fact remained that if Will was the one responsible for all that heartbreak she’d been standing in the middle of at the funeral, as much as she might like him, he had a lot to answer for. A lot to atone for, now that he was back.
Suddenly, Jesse’s gaze landed on that woman, and his eyes sizzled with heat.
Selena felt like she had to look away, like she was witnessing an intimate moment.
When she looked back, whatever connection she thought she’d spotted seemed to be gone. And the woman hadn’t seemed to notice at all.
She looked around again, trying to get a visual on Knox, and saw that he was gone. Then she saw a figure standing just outside the lights on the lawn, holding a bottle of beer. She knew that was him. She knew him by silhouette. That wasn’t problematic at all.
She ditched the moonshine in the jar and reached for a bottle of her own beer, walking gingerly across the grass in her heels, making her way to where he was standing.
“Hi,” she said.
He didn’t jump. Didn’t turn. As if he had already sensed her. That thought made the back of her neck prickle. Was he as aware of her as she was of him?
“Hi,” he returned, lifting his bottle of beer to his lips. He took a long, slow pull. And she was grateful for the shroud of darkness. Because had it not been so dark, she would’ve watched the way his lips curved around the bottle, would have watched the way his Adam’s apple moved as he swallowed the liquid.
And her whole body would have burned up. A lot like it was doing now, just imagining such things.
“I talked to Will,” she said.
“Did you?” he asked, the words laden with a bite.
“I think we made amends, for what that’s worth. It was something that needed to happen. There’s a lot of stuff in my past, and I’m all bound up in it. No matter how successful I get, no matter how far I move forward, it’s just there.”
He lifted a shoulder. “I can relate to that.”
Except she knew he was talking about something a lot more grave, and she felt instantly guilty.
“Why aren’t you at the party? Don’t you want to talk to Will?”
“I decided I wasn’t really in a party mood once everything got going.”
“All right.” She wrapped her arms around herself to keep from wrapping her arms around him. “Do you want to leave?”
“That’s fine. If you’re having fun.”
“I’m not sure I would call laying a ghost to rest fun. Just potentially necessary.”
“Right.”
Then she did reach out and touch him. Her fingertips brushed his shoulder, and she felt the contact down to her stomach, making it clench tight. “Knox.”
His name was a whisper, a plea. But she didn’t know what for. For normalcy? For an explosion?
His muscles tensed beneath her touch, and she felt like her stomach had been scooped out. Felt like she had been left hollow and wanting, aching for something that only he could give her.
She remembered what it felt like when his mouth pressed against hers. Finally, after all that time. She had kissed other men. Half-hearted attempts at finding a way she could be attracted to somebody who wasn’t her best friend. It had never worked. It had never excited her.
This kiss haunted her dreams. It haunted her now.
She wanted to kiss him. She wanted to give him comfort. In any way she could. And they were out here in the darkness on the edge of this party. Where Will Sanders had come back from the dead and everything was just freaking crazy.
So she decided to be crazy, too. She slid her hand upward to his neck, curving her fingers around his nape. And then she brought herself around to the front of him, placing her palm on his chest, directly over his heart, where it was raging hard and fast.
“Selena,” he said, a word of warning. A warning she wasn’t going to heed.
She stretched up on her tiptoes—because she was still too short to just kiss him, even in these heels—and a rush of pleasure flooded her, a rush of relief, the moment their mouths met.
She was lost in it. In the torrent of desire that overtook her completely as his scent, his flavor, flooded her senses.
It was everything. It was everything she remembered and more. Kissing him was like nothing else. It was like every fantasy colliding into one brilliant blinding firework.
Oh, how she wanted him. How she wanted this. She wrapped her arms around his neck, still clutching the bottle of beer tightly, and then he dropped his bottle, grabbing hold of her hips with both hands and tugging her heat against his muscular body. She could feel his arousal pressing against her stomach, and she wanted...she wanted to ride it.
She wanted to ride him.
“Please,” she whispered.
She didn’t know what she was begging for, only that if she didn’t get it she would die.
He moved one hand down to her side, then down her lower hip around to the back of her knee. Then he lifted her leg and drew it up over his hip, opening her to that blunt masculine part of him.
She gasped and tilted her hips forward, groaning when a shot of pleasure worked its way through her body. She tilted forward, riding the wave of pleasure. Allowing herself to get caught up in this. In the rapturous glory of his mouth on hers, of his hard, incredible masculinity.
She would let him take her here, she realized. Let him strip her naked on the edges of this party and lay her down in the damp grass. Sweep her panties to the side and thrust inside of her, even though she’d never let another man do it before. She wasn’t afraid. Not even remotely.
This was Knox McCoy and she trusted him with all that she was. Trusted him with her body.
I don’t trust him. There’s so much I haven’t told him.
But if she told him everything, then he wouldn’t look at her the same. What if he saw the same abused girl she always saw when she looked in the mirror, rather than the confident businesswoman she had become?
She couldn’t stand for that to happen. She truly couldn’t.
So maybe if there was this first. Maybe they could both find something in it. Something they needed.
He drew away from her, suddenly, sharply, his chest heaving with effort. She wished she could see his face. Wished she could read his expression. Then he slowly released his hold on her thigh, and she slid an inch or so down his body. Not the most elegant dismount, that was for sure. She was grateful for the darkness, because he couldn’t see the fierce blush in her cheeks, couldn’t get an accurate read on the full horror moving through her at the moment.
“I’m not sorry,” she said, pulling her dress back into place.
“Did I ask you to be?” he bit out, his words hard.
“No,” she said, “but you stopped.”
“I stopped because I was close to fucking you right here at a party. Is that what you want?”
“I...” She was dizzy. She couldn’t believe she was standing here listening to her friend say those words, directed at her. “That’s a complicated question, Knox.”
“No.” He shook his head. “It’s really not. Either you want to get fucked on the ground at a party by your best friend or you don’t.”
She looked away, feelin
g self-conscious even though she knew he couldn’t see her expression. “Maybe not...on the ground...at a party.”
“Selena,” he said, gripping her chin, leaning forward and gazing at her with his dark, blazing eyes. “I can’t give you anything. I can’t give you anything other than sex.”
“I didn’t ask you for anything,” she said, her voice small.
“We’re friends. And that means I care about you. But I’m never, ever getting married again.”
“It’s kind of a long leap from fucking in the grass to a marriage proposal, don’t you think, Knox?” she asked, self-protection making her snarky, because she needed something to put distance between them.
“I just meant this doesn’t end anywhere but sex, baby. And I need our friendship. I haven’t had a lot of bright spots in my life lately, and I hate to lose the one I have.”
“But you want me,” she said, not feeling at all awkward about laying that out there. Because he did. And she knew it.
“That doesn’t mean having.”
And then he just walked away. Walked away like they were in the middle of having a conversation. Like her heart wasn’t still pounding so hard it was likely to go straight through her chest. Like she wasn’t wet and aching for satisfaction that he had denied her, yet again.
And that was when she made a decision. She was going to have Knox McCoy. Because there was no going back now. They wanted each other. And she had been holding on to all those feelings for him for so long that she knew a couple of things for certain. They weren’t going away, and no man could take his place as it was.
She had known a lot of girls in college who had thought they needed to get certain guys out of their systems, which had always seemed to her a fancy way to excuse having sex when you wanted it, even though you knew it was a really bad idea and the guy was never going to call. It had always ended in sadness, as far as she had seen.
But Knox had been in her system for so long, and there was no other way he was getting out of it. She knew that. This wasn’t a guy she had met in class a few weeks ago, a guy she had exchanged numbers with at a party.
She had known Knox for the better part of her adult life and she wasn’t just going to wake up one morning and not want him.
So maybe this was the way forward.
She pulled her phone out, still not ready to go back to the party, to go back into the lights where people might see her emotional state. Where they might be able to read what had just happened. And she texted Scarlett.
So, about that glamping.
Seven
Knox had stuck it out at the party just to be a stubborn cuss. By the time he and Selena got back in the car and started to drive to the ranch, he expected her to unleash hell on him.
Instead, she didn’t. Instead, she was silent the entire way, and he didn’t like that. He didn’t like it at all. He’d enough of hard, sad silences. He preferred to be screamed at, frankly. But Selena didn’t seem to be in the mood to give him what he wanted.
And he said nothing.
Then when they pulled in the driveway and finally got out, heading into the house, she spoke. “We’re going glamping tomorrow,” she said, her expression neutral, but vaguely mischievous.
“What?”
“Scarlett suggested it. We’re going on a trail ride. And we are staying overnight in a luxury tent.”
“I was going to head back to Jackson Hole,” he said, lying, because he had no plans to do that at all. And for the first time, he questioned why.
He didn’t like that all these interactions with Selena forced him to do things like ponder his motivations.
“I don’t care. Change your ticket. You’re rich as God, Knox. It’s not like it’s a problem.”
“No,” he said slowly.
“You’re coming glamping with me, because you’re still not okay, I’m clearly not okay, and we need to do something to get back on track. We are not leaving our friendship here. You are not going off to Wyoming for however the hell long and not seeing me. Because it’s going to turn into not seeing me for months, for years, as we avoid all the weirdness that has sprung up between us.”
Oh, he was personally all right with avoiding the weirdness. But obviously, she wasn’t.
“Okay,” he found himself agreeing, and he couldn’t quite fathom why.
“It’ll be fun,” she said, grinning at him, all teeth. And it made him damn suspicious.
“I’m not overly familiar with fun,” he said, purposefully making his tone grave.
“Well,” she said, “this will be.”
He had his doubts, but he also knew Selena Jacobs on a mission was not a creature to be trifled with. And not one easily derailed.
So they would go on a trail ride. They would go camping.
Once upon a time he’d liked to ride, he’d liked to camp. Why the hell not?
Maybe she was right. Maybe it would remind him of some of the things he used to like.
Although, privately, he feared that it would go much the same way as the party had gone. That all it would do was reinforce the fact that he couldn’t enjoy things the way he used to. That he had nothing left to look forward to in his life.
Because he couldn’t think of a single dream he hadn’t achieved. Then two of them he lost. And one of them just didn’t mean a thing without the others.
And he had no idea where the hell you went from there.
Camping, it seemed.
He shook his head and followed Selena into the house.
* * *
By the time they were saddled up and ready to ride, Selena was starting to have some doubts. But not enough to turn back.
They were given a map and detailed instructions on how the trail ride would work, and then she and Knox were sent off into the Texas wilderness together. Alone, except for each other.
And the condoms Selena had stuck in her bag.
Because this was a seduction mission more than it was anything else, and she was completely ready to go there.
Well, except for the nerves. And the doubts. There were those. But that was all virgin stuff.
Oh, and the fact that she was going to see her best friend’s penis.
The thought made her simultaneously want to giggle and squeeze her thighs together to quell the ache there.
Her cheeks heated as she realized the rhythm of the horse’s gait did a little something for it. Her face flamed, her whole body getting warm.
Knox McCoy had turned her into a sex-crazed pervert. And they hadn’t even had sex yet.
He might not want to have sex with me.
Yes, that was the risk. She might get Knox alone in a tent, around a romantic campfire, and she might strip herself completely naked and get denied. It was possible. It was not a possibility she was hoping for. But it might happen. The idea did not thrill her.
But there was no great achievement without great risk. And anyway, if there was one thing she had kind of learned from this whole experience with Will’s death-that-was-not-actually-a-death, it was that time was finite.
She had stood at Will’s funeral and had regretted leaving things bad between them. She didn’t want to regret Knox.
Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew that if this ruined her friendship with Knox she was going to regret that. She was going to regret it a whole hell of a lot. But at least she wouldn’t wonder. Right now, it seemed worth the risk.
Maybe on the other side it wouldn’t. But she wasn’t on the other side yet.
She squared her shoulders and they continued to ride down the trail.
It was beautiful. The land was sparse, filled with scrub brush and twisty, gnarled trees that were green in defiance to their surroundings. She had been told that the trail would wind toward some water, and that it would get shadier and greener there, which was why it was good
to do this leg early in the morning, before the sun rose high in the sky and the heat and humidity started to get oppressive.
But the view around her wasn’t her primary reason for being here, anyway. It was him. It was Knox.
“So,” she said, “it’s nice out.”
“Yeah,” he responded, taciturn like he had been last night.
It was funny, how she had gone from the one being all angry about the kiss to him being all angry. What a delight.
She hoped that banging him was slightly more delightful.
The thought made her nerves twitch.
“So, how many hours is it to camp?” he asked.
“About six,” she said.
“That seems a little bit crazy,” he responded.
“I know,” she said, and then she frowned. Because she hadn’t really considered that. The fact that she was going to launch a full-out seduction after having been on the back of a horse all day. Honestly, there was a sweat situation that might be problematic. Not that she minded if he was sweaty. She was all okay with that. It was pheromones or something. She had always liked the way Knox smelled when he’d been sweating. After he had gone for a run in college and he would come back to hang at her dorm for a while, steal some food off her and her roommate. He had walked by her, and her stomach would go into a free fall.
It was so funny, how she had buried that reaction down deep, and how it was all coming up now. Bringing itself into the light, really.
She had been in full denial of her feelings for him for so long. While she had definitely known they were there, she didn’t focus on them. But now she was admitting everything to herself. That she was a sucker for the way he smelled. That his voice skimmed over her skin like a touch. That in so many ways she had been waiting for him. Waiting for this. And that excuses about how busy she was, how important the company was, were not really the reasons why she didn’t date.
It was because no man was Knox, and never would be.
As she made idle chatter for the rest of the ride, she fought against cloying terror. She was headed toward what was her undeniable destiny and almost certain heartbreak.
But she’d come too far to turn back now. She simply couldn’t.
