by Nicole Helm
“You okay?” he asked into her ear, holding her. Just . . . holding her.
For a heartbreaking second she wondered if that mattered, if things might be different. They were older and wiser, and he wanted . . .
Well, he wanted was the beginning and end of that. What she wanted would never fully matter, and she couldn’t contort herself to accept that kind of existence. She wouldn’t.
“I’m fine,” she managed, because she would find a way to be. She couldn’t protect her heart from Will, it had always belonged to him, but she could protect herself, period. She would have this, and then she would leave.
No matter how the thought cut her to ribbons. It was the right thing, the strong thing. The only choice.
“We can stop. There’s not really any hurry,” he murmured into her ear, holding her tight and close. Naked and warm.
Which was exactly why they did need to hurry. Her eyes were wide open, and she knew, with a painful certainty that made tears sting, this was it. She would have to leave after this.
But at least she’d have this. Leaving with something other than bitterness and blame. She’d have a memory, a good one, and it’d get her through.
So she pressed her mouth to his, wrapping her arms around his neck, pulling him closer. She reveled in the heat of his hard body, in the length of the erection pressed to her hip. This was hers.
This moment, which didn’t have to be tainted by the past, and didn’t have to be heavy with an impossible future. She would erase it all with this kiss. Everything before. Everything after. She would live in this joining, and pretend for this brief period of time that apart wasn’t all they could ever be.
She threaded her fingers through his hair, pressed her chest to his. She breathed him in, committing to memory the scrape of his teeth against her lip, the way his large hand encompassed her hip. She inhaled the smell of sun and lake and what she assumed was the laundry detergent used on the sheets and pillow.
Like this moment, like his hands on her naked body, the smell was a once-in-a-lifetime thing that wouldn’t be repeated, and it made the moment—all those things she’d never experience again.
She pressed against him and rolled until she was on top of him, straddling his legs, trailing her fingertips down his shoulders, his chest, his abs. He watched with heavy-lidded eyes, his irises somehow a greenish otherworldly gold.
She closed her fingers around the hot, hard length of him, and stroked. He sucked in a breath, but that languid watching never changed. He merely watched her hands.
And then her mouth. He groaned, and she grinned as she took him into her mouth. She wanted everything, and so she would take. The feelings. The taste of him. All of it. Hers.
“Pause,” he growled, pulling her up into a sitting position as he lifted himself into one. He reached around her head and tugged the band out of her hair and started weaving his fingers through the wet, straggly strands.
She tried to bat his hands away, but he only grinned and kept unwinding her braid until it was a damp mess around her shoulders. She scowled down at him.
“Now I look like a drowned rat.”
“No, you look like a drowned fairy.”
She rolled her eyes. “There is nothing remotely fairylike about me.” To prove it, she pushed him back and pinned his hands to the mattress, her wet mass of hair brushing his cheeks.
He flashed a grin, which if she’d been thinking straight instead of about the hard man between her legs, she might have recognized as a warning.
Before she even knew what he was up to, he flipped her underneath him, switching places down to his hands pinning her wrists to the mattress as hers had just done to him.
He looked down at her, eyes blazing, gaze raking over every part of her until her skin began to goose-bump.
“Tonight, I am spending the night with you, and damn I will take my sweet time, but right now, I have got to be inside you.” He reached for the condom he’d put on the dresser, and part of her wanted to protest, stop this.
It was irreversible, and going further meant it would be over, and he couldn’t come over later and spend the night. He couldn’t take his time. It couldn’t . . . happen.
He rolled the condom on himself then looked down at her. Something passed through his expression, maybe even concern, but she didn’t want that. Or rather she did want it, and couldn’t trust it. Not here. Not now.
Not ever.
He gathered her to his chest, encompassing everything, sliding slow and deep. Her name a rough exhale from his mouth. “God, I’ve needed you for so long,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to her jaw, to her mouth.
“Will.” Except there was nothing to say with it. Just his name, as he moved into her, with her. Slow and deliberate, adjusting his hold on her, the way he moved, to make her sigh, then moan. Until she was moving with him, chasing that end she needed, and trying to somehow circumvent the end she didn’t want.
But it was all crashing down on her, the emotions, the way he kissed her, the physical coil of desire binding so tight its only choice was to crash apart.
And that’s exactly what she did. The orgasm was familiar, but all that whirled with it was some new, different world. Not just the wave of physical release, but the need to hold on to Will desperately as he groaned his way to his own satisfaction.
Her chest was too tight, her heart too big and beating too hard. Everything inside her was too much and she wanted to sob against his shoulder.
Which she didn’t do only because he would press. He would wheedle all the emotions out of her until there was nothing left, and no armor to save herself.
She couldn’t let that happen again.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Will knew somewhere in the recesses of his mind he should roll off Tori. Clean himself up, give her some space to breathe, but there was nowhere he’d rather have her than curled up into his chest, sated and pliant, all his.
It had been a long time since he’d indulged in sex. He’d been faithful in his marriage to Courtney if only because his father hadn’t been faithful in his marriage. He’d been celibate afterward if only because the town wasn’t exactly crawling with young, available women.
He’d been on one disastrous date a few months ago where he’d been certain he’d seen Sarge.
“When did you first get to town?” he asked absently, wondering if he’d been as off his rocker has he’d thought at the time.
Tori wiggled underneath him and he finally released her, withdrawing from the comfort of her body. She was flushed and tangled, and no matter that she thought she looked like a drowned rat, he thought he liked her best this way. Mussed and flushed. From him.
Yeah, he liked that a whole hell of a lot.
“Few weeks before the wedding.”
Will rolled off the bed to get rid of the condom. It wasn’t enough time to have gone back to his date with Dr. Frost, so apparently, he really had been losing it a bit.
“Why?”
He shrugged, walking back to the bed, not missing the way her gaze dropped to his dick. He grinned, and when she finally tore her gaze away, she rolled her eyes.
“Oh, so I’m ogling. Don’t let it go to your head.”
“But that’s exactly where it’s gone.” He crawled back into bed, and though he noted the way she shied away from him, he didn’t react to it. Tori was . . . well, she’d hate the comparison but she was a bit like a skittish dog, and she’d been hurt a lot. It would take some time and care to prove he wouldn’t cause her harm.
Something sickening flipped in his stomach, that old certainty he wasn’t the man for a sensitive job, but he pushed it away. The dipshit he’d been seven years ago couldn’t handle this, but the dipshit he was now could, or would.
He wouldn’t hurt people out of his own fear anymore, and he wouldn’t hurt himself. Something had to change, because Brandon had entrusted him to change.
He crossed his arms behind his head, hoping she’d snuggle up to him, wondering wha
t it would take. If only she was as easy to win over as Sarge had been. A piece of hamburger and the dog had loved him for life.
Love.
He still shied away a bit from that. He needed time to sit with it, work out what that meant for him. For her. It would take time and finesse and making sure he didn’t fuck it all up again.
So he changed the subject in his head. “You just let me know when you’re up for another go. I haven’t had sex in a while, so I’m pretty sure I could manage.”
She cocked her head, inching just the tiniest bit closer. She smelled like lake water and fresh air, and it was the perfect scent for his drowned fairy.
“How long is a while?”
He shrugged, not meeting her curious gaze. The more he didn’t look at her, the more she scooted closer and closer, and eventually she even laid her head on his shoulder.
He curled his arm around her, drawing her in, nuzzling against her tangled hair. “Well, as screwed up as the end of my marriage was, I wasn’t going to sleep with someone else.”
Silence followed, and after a few seconds of that heavy, considering silence, Tori tilted her head back so she could look at him. “Because of your father?”
Will shrugged. “Guess so.”
“But that was months ago, wasn’t it? Your divorce.”
“That it was.”
“And you haven’t had sex since . . . her?”
Tori was looking at him with such consideration he couldn’t help but fidget, and he was not a man prone to fidgeting. “What?”
She shook her head lightly, strands of her hair brushing against his arm. He twined his free hand in one of them, curling it around until it was tight.
When he finally met that shrewd blue-green gaze, she spoke.
“That’s noble, I think. Good, anyway.”
“I’m not perfect,” he replied, because he knew it would earn him a scoff. She hardly thought he was perfect.
“No, but you are . . . Well, you’re more like Brandon than I think even you’d like to admit.”
Will didn’t care for that observation. All those moral codes and shit came easy for Brandon. Will had pieced together his moral compass to make sure he wasn’t like his father. It wasn’t some innate goodness in him, he’d just wanted to be something Phillip Evans wasn’t. Decent.
Which is different than Brandon, how?
Not something he wanted to dwell on, all in all, so he turned to her instead. She was still looking at him with that careful, studying gaze that tumbled through him alarmingly close to worry. But there was nothing to worry about.
He wouldn’t fail at this. He’d stick until he convinced her, and then he’d stick some damn more. He tugged the twined piece of hair until her mouth was close enough to his to devour.
The thing that amazed him was not that kissing her was like finding some peaceful, perfect spot in the woods where he could lose himself, his thoughts, his fears, his shitty past; it was that there were so many ways a kiss with Tori could tangle deep inside of him.
Not just attraction. Not some past affinity for each other, something deep in his bones that archaeologists would read civilizations from now. It could be hot, it could be tender, it could be a million things, but it was always Tori, and that was always what mattered.
There was a moment, sweet and pure and damn near perfect, where she sank into it, willingly, enthusiastically, not an iota of that thing hiding beneath the surface of her and her attraction to him.
But it was short-lived, and that thing was back, something he couldn’t read. All he could figure was it was some self-preservation instinct, some hesitancy since he’d hurt her before. Fair, all in all, but he’d prove it wasn’t necessary.
She pushed at his chest. “We, uh, have to get back. Excursions. And stuff.”
“Uh-huh.” He found a spot on her neck that made her squeak and nibbled. “Consider this a precursor for tonight.”
“Will. Really. I can’t . . .”
He pulled away incrementally. Something in her voice reminded him of panic, and he didn’t like that at all. “What’s wrong?”
She withdrew from him, drawing herself into a protective sitting position on the edge of the bed. As far away from him as she could get.
He really, really didn’t like that.
“I have plans with Cora tonight.”
“I can come by after.”
She shook her head, twisting her fingers together. “No. I . . . I don’t want you to come over tonight. I don’t . . .”
He reached for her twined fingers but she scooted away, and it was something in that rejection that had him freezing.
“I just need some processing time,” she said, not meeting his gaze, not doing anything to ease that frozen fear inside him.
“What does that mean?”
She swallowed. Her eyes were suspiciously shiny, very nearly blue. “Please,” she whispered.
It undid him, completely, to see her so vulnerable. So willingly vulnerable. Uttering a word like please that she’d as likely cut her tongue out as use, at least toward him.
“All right. For today.”
She straightened her shoulders and let out a long breath. “Your timetable then, huh?” she asked, lifting her chin, challenging him.
But he wouldn’t fall for it. Not here. Not now. “My timetable would be you underneath me for approximately the next seventy-two hours.”
“You think too highly of yourself,” she replied dryly, but her mouth quirked, amused by him in spite of herself. But that humor died, quickly, and offered a stabbing pain in the center of his chest.
“I hope you know how serious I am about this. About us.” He swallowed at his own bolt of panic. Declaring his intentions, being serious about something, it had never worked out for him.
Except Mile High. You built that.
With Brandon. Always Brandon in the background making it right, smoothing things out, because you are the worthless—
He cut off the line of thought when it started to sound too much like his father’s voice in his head. Luckily, whatever emotion might have shown on his face Tori couldn’t see as she’d wrapped her arms around him, hugging him tight.
He hugged her right back, drew some comfort in her, reminded himself this wouldn’t end the same way. Not this time. He wouldn’t be the one standing in his own way anymore.
She kissed his cheek. “Thank you,” she said so earnestly, so seriously.
The reverent way she’d spoken those two words, as though she hadn’t meant thank you, but as if she’d been trying to say something else, bothered him the entire time they got dressed, the entire way back to Mile High.
And as they parted ways to go on their separate excursions, she’d looked at him with too-soulful eyes.
“See you later,” he offered, trying to figure out the weird post-sex mood she was in.
“Bye, Will,” she replied, a smile never gracing her features.
* * *
Tori had accepted there was going to be a perpetual lump in her throat until this was all taken care of. Unfortunately, she had to face the second hardest part of this whole thing. The first had been saying good-bye to Will, no matter how oblivious he was to it.
But asking Brandon for help, asking him to keep it from Will, well, that was a whole load of crap in itself.
“It has to be done,” she whispered to herself.
She’d hurried through her excursion, desperate to time it so she could get back and talk to Brandon before Will was done with his. She’d been curt with a few question askers, and was probably the new cause of Mile High losing repeat customers.
She pressed a hand to her heart and tried to even her breath and blink back the tears for good, but it was hard to push away all those emotional responses.
She didn’t want to do this. She didn’t want to leave. She wanted Gracely and Will and the future she’d always planned to have.
Life had taught her better, time and time again. Better to do it on her o
wn terms than let something or someone else clobber her again. She had to remember that.
It was incomprehensible how hard that was when she’d built her whole life on it, but she supposed Will had always been her Achilles’ heel. So maybe it made all the sense in the world this was the hardest thing she’d ever done—even harder than leaving home, because as scary as that had been she’d had to do it to survive, to keep herself safe.
Now she was only trying to keep her heart safe, and that seemed such a little thing. Maybe she could . . .
She marched forward into the Mile High offices. The longer she procrastinated, the longer she had time to second-guess herself. Did she really want to be the hurt, weak-willed thing she’d been after Will had crushed her the first time?
Hell, no.
Skeet was at the front desk, and he raised an eyebrow as she stormed by, but Tori otherwise ignored him. She had a mission. She had to rip this Band-Aid off.
She went straight to Brandon’s office, relieved beyond belief that he was sitting there, alone, a phone cradled to his shoulder as he squinted at a computer screen.
He motioned her inside, and she closed the door behind her. He murmured a few things into the speaker, but he was looking at her speculatively. As though he could see through what she thought was a pretty good calm and certain façade.
“Well, e-mail me the numbers then, and we’ll go over it at our next meeting. Yeah. Bye.” Brandon pushed End on his phone and smiled blandly at Tori. “What’s up?”
“I need you to do me a favor.” She swallowed. “A big one.”
“All right.”
“I’m . . .” Why was this so hard? She knew exactly what she had to say, sweaty palms and sick feeling in her stomach be damned. No one else was going to protect her. She had to do it herself. “I need to . . . I was thinking about getting out of Colorado. I’ve been here . . . so long.”
His eyebrows puzzled together. “I don’t follow.”
“Would you know of anywhere, kind of like this, out of Colorado, that might be hiring, that you could put in a good word for me?” She was messing it all up, and sounding like an idiot in the process. “The point is, I have to leave.”
