A Perfect Dilemma

by Zoe Dawson

  But instead she leaned into me more, pressed all those stacked curves against me. No. It wasn’t what I needed, but River Pearl was oblivious. She felt guilty for hurting me. I didn’t want to know this about her. I didn’t want to know River Pearl Sutton cared. I preferred thinking of her as a smart-mouthed ice queen international model who was all smiles and galvanizing beauty but shallow, empty and barren on the inside. Keeping away was easier when she was a caricature.

  But I already knew she was warm and kind, gentle and caring. Her character had been reaffirmed by Aubree Walker and Verity Fairchild. After meeting and getting to know those beautiful women who were now part of my family, I knew they wouldn’t have tolerated anyone who wasn’t totally, completely genuine.

  And there it was. What I had avoided thinking. I didn’t want to hurt her. There was nowhere for us to go. I couldn’t bear thinking she might suffer the shame and scorn my ma suffered because of my family’s reputation.

  She smelled fantastic. Her skin was so delicate, silken, everything I’d ever dreamed it would be. Now I’d seen the hot pink panties covering her fine ass, I had to wonder what was cupping those amazing breasts. Well, that settled it. I was going to hell and back with my eyes wide open.

  Wide open.

  I’d made the trip many times. I was an Outlaw, and Hell was a walk in the fucking park.

  “Braxton, can you move? Are you all right?”

  I wanted to move, cuddle her into me, even though my groin had been coldcocked. Was I making a pun in the middle of falling apart? I was actually getting aroused and it kinda hurt and felt good at the same time. Like my non-existent relationship with River Pearl. Geezus, I was a freaking masochist.

  The whole situation was making me feel a little wild, a little wildly crazed. I let my eyes drift over the exquisite curve of her cheek, down the side of it, where I craved to mark her, back to her shoulder, then lower, down the sleek, silky length of her upper arm. I let out a breath, and with an act of pure will kept myself from smoothing my hand down her arm, or up her leg underneath that pretty dress to those provocatively colorful panties I wanted to hook my fingers into and simply pull off her. Dammit, my dick protested again, and I groaned at the pain/pleasure all mixed up down there.

  “Uh, yes to the move part,” I said. “No, to the all right question.” If she would get off me, get away from me, I might be able to move, get up, fucking breathe.

  She leaned even closer over me, her voice gently sympathetic, her gaze darkening with concern, her breasts plumping above the scoop top of her cute little dress. Her hair was a tangle around her face, and as she spoke an errant strand slipped free and fell in a silken curve to her chin.

  Something in me turned over, and it was all I could do not to grab the back of her neck, roll over her like a fucking wrecking ball, and take her mouth with mine, slide my fingers into the honey brown silk of her hair and pin her down and bend her into my kiss. I wondered if there was a name for this kind of reaction to a woman. Obsession might cover it. Hard as a rock for her sure did.

  When she looked at me all gray-eyed and tenderhearted, like she wanted to take care of me, make it all better, I wanted nothing more than to give her the chance—every chance. I felt torn apart by the sheer need for her to touch me.

  Telling myself to slow down, way down, put a lid on it, I resisted the pull.

  “Just get the fuck off me!” I growled, low and mean, to stifle the panic clawing at my gut.

  That did it. She stiffened, and I cursed under my breath, which made her move away from me faster. I should have been relieved. But, fuck me, I wasn’t. I only felt angrier and meaner.

  She rose and retreated to the open bathroom door. I watched her. My hand was still cupped around my junk and she focused there. I swore some more and she backed up again. “I was only trying to help,” she snapped.

  “If you want to help, why don’t you get outta here so I can get cleaned up? I’ve got stuff to do, River Pearl. I didn’t know I was going to be on Princess duty all day. Give me a fucking break!” The irritation in my voice was real, but it was about losing it, not about her being on top of me.

  Which I liked a whole helluva lot.

  “I might be considered a princess, but you’re no knight. I got all dirty, wounded in battle, and now I have to find my own ride home. I think you’re a…a…knave which is, in case you don’t know it, is a medieval asshole!” she said, exactly the way I wanted to hear it. All pissy and teed off. I laughed, even through my anger and frustration. Those regal gray eyes were no longer cool, but smoking with a sizzling fire threatening to engulf me.

  If she was mad at me, she’d keep her distance. A flimsy plan, I admit. Keep her spitting mad most of the time with my shitty attitude and my anger. So far, so good. But something had shifted between us in my workout room. For a while she’d ignored my attempts to push her buttons. If she ever guessed I was nothing but bluster and bluff…I didn’t want to think about it. Getting her to back off was my only recourse.

  “You are such a charmer,” sarcasm sharpened her words with a sharp edge only River Pearl could manage.

  She disappeared out the door and I remained motionless for a moment, closed my eyes briefly at the building frustration. With frustration came the anger. My shield.

  A knave? Yeah, my shield was definitely tarnished.

  I let go of my groin, trying to breathe slow and easy. The pain was still there, but dulled. I levered myself up and pushed against the toilet to get myself to my knees. If there was anything consistent in my life, it was I didn’t cut myself any slack about the facts. Now was no different.

  I knew the problem wasn’t that I couldn’t fall for River. The problem was I had decided it was wrong, wrong for me, wrong for her, because, try as I might, I couldn’t see my way around one inviolate fact. Marrying an Outlaw had destroyed my ma, and I wasn’t about to pass the legacy on to the only other woman I’d ever cared about. My brothers didn’t entertain the same philosophy, but I couldn’t fault them for it. They hadn’t been there the day Ma had been cornered in the market with only me along, holding tightly to her hand. I could still remember my fear and impotent anger.

  My groin protested only a little when I finally straightened. I decided getting hit in the dick wasn’t such a bad thing if it helped me realize I was being an idiot. Helluva wake-up call, but it did the trick. I was back in control.

  For now.

  At least for now. I had this Duel thing to get through with her. Then she’d deliver whatever disaster speech she wanted and hightail it back to New York City to her Princess world, and that would be that.

  I didn’t want to examine the hollow feeling twisting my gut.

  Nope, I was a realist. I might not allow my body close to her, but River Pearl had me.

  All I had was my anger and this hard-on.

  That shit was fucking real.

  Chapter Five

  River Pearl

  I walked out of the bathroom, ready to give up on ever having a normal conversation with Brax. Just when I thought we might move into a different way of interacting, I had to go and lose my concentration and stare at him like I’d never seen a half-naked man before.

  After all, less than an hour ago I’d seen him hammering on his punching bag wearing only shorts. But, wow. Brax was quite remarkably beautiful. And he’d saved me from crashing into the doorjamb. But my distraction had cost him a blow to the groin. Being a girl, I probably couldn’t fully understand how painful it was, but from his reaction, it was pretty bad. I felt guilty all over again.

  In his bedroom, my attention was snagged by the artwork on the walls. I was still surprised to see his bed was made and he was so neat. Everything about his house was a surprise. The man had taste.

  All the Outlaws were tidy. Must have been their momma’s influence. I walked over to examine the art on his walls. One was of a colored man who was in the typical boxing stance, his hands up guarding his face. He was sweaty and looked like he was in the
middle of a bout. I loved drawing and painting portraits, and his profile was so strong I felt inspired.

  Joe Louis? He had a fierce, intimidating look on his face. I bared my teeth at him and growled. Then said “ouch” when my nose protested.

  I turned to get out of Brax’s room. If he had his way I’d already be home. But on the way to his bedroom door, I got a clear look into his bathroom. I was transfixed. He was unwrapping one of his hands from the crimson flex tape he’d hadn’t had a chance to remove because he had been too busy chasing down my stupid, bleeding, dirty self.

  My nose still throbbed, but it was forgotten as I watched his muscles contract and release. Although I didn’t think I would ever get tired of looking at Braxton, it wasn’t his physicality that drew me this time. It was his demeanor. His head was bent and the look on his face…pain. There was pain there, but not physical pain. This was something else.

  I hadn’t actually understood until right this minute. I had believed Braxton was emotionally unavailable because he wasn’t in tune with his own feelings and thoughts. That he was somehow barren of them, so it was easy for him not to care.

  But while I stood looking at his unguarded longing and pain, a new thought about the most close-mouthed, contrary, stoic Outlaw of the three occurred to me. Did he feel too much and kept a tight lid on his emotions so they didn’t overwhelm him? Was he afraid to let them loose? Afraid of feeling too much? He had never verbalized it, kept his distance, but I could guess. This probably had something to do with his reputation. It always came back to the Outlaws’ reputation. Had for Booker and for Boone, but, I thought bitterly, they had been able to overcome it. Braxton had been doing this dance with me forever.

  I would never forget the summer the Outlaws had caught me playing hooky with Aubree and Verity. Of course I had been the instigator. Verity had been on board almost from the start, because she was way more than the perfect preacher’s daughter everyone believed her to be. Aubree was the holdout. In high school, she was so wrapped up in her need to be perfect she was terrified of doing something naughty. But two against one wore her down.

  I was feeling restless and talked them into sneaking out to the swamp with me. I had snagged a bottle of really good wine from my dad’s collection. Which he missed and my brothers guessed it was me. They had taken the blame to protect their little Princess of a sister. Shoot. I could spit. I was so sick of the label.

  Anyway, we’d sneaked into the swamp with the triple alibi that each of us was spending the night at one of the others’ house. We’d just been swimming. I had on a bikini which didn’t cover much. That’s when I’d heard it. An air boat. It wasn’t long before the three of them spotted us.

  The Outlaw trips had been sixteen then, pure, adolescent renegades, and in my whole life, no one had ever looked at me as intensely as Brax did that night, me standing there in my itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny bikini. His brothers had only paused, but not Brax, with his lazy, hip-shot stance and heavy-lidded gaze. They’d been frogging, had the filled burlap bags in their hands. His T-shirt had been white, damp, and dirty, his arms tanned and thick with muscle, the veins running prominently in relief down his forearms to the backs of his hands. The bright blue fire of his eyes had caressed me everywhere, stroked my skin, stirring something exciting and reckless in me. It had been the most powerful encounter I’ve ever had with him.

  I had no shame in high school, and I never ever backed down. It was just my nature, and Braxton pushed every one of my buttons, the sassy ones as well as the sexy ones.

  He looked so damned fine in his tight jeans, which had done nothing to hide his reaction to me. I’d noticed his reaction right before he turned to walk away, and if he hadn’t, I might have done something truly crazy that night.

  Not sex, I hadn’t been ready for sex, but the way he looked at me had definitely made me long for a hot, wet kiss. It would have been my first kiss and I wondered what it would feel like with him. His moist mouth, his hot tongue. There had been no doubt I wanted to feel his arms around me, and to look into those impossibly blue eyes and taste him. To slide my fingers up into his silky dark hair, to touch his skin and feel his warmth surround me in a safe way. Maybe to feel, for a moment or two, like something besides a damn Princess.

  Though why I’d thought I could feel safe with a bad boy Outlaw who broke hearts as easily as he breathed was beyond me.

  Now he was physically even stronger, harder, his face still knee-melting, and his hair still too-long and sexily mussed up. He hadn’t looked at me the same way again—until only an hour ago.

  It had been four years since the night in the swamp, but I had gone to bed every night since then with his face in my mind—which was ridiculous, since he’d never, not once, made a move on me.

  He finally looked up.

  We stared at each other like adversaries. He was determined not to give in, and I was determined to make him do just that. It was a battle of wills, and Brax was perhaps the most formidable opponent I’d ever faced. He’d done an admirable job of keeping me at a distance. But Aubree opened my eyes, and I was on to his strategy. He also had revealed it today himself. Before this summer was out, before I went back to New York City, I would have him. I swore it. I would no longer have anything on my list of regrets when I was a sassy old lady. Not a cotton-picking thing.

  I would bring him to his knees and make him beg.

  I lifted my chin and held his gaze. That’s when he transformed, so completely it was as if I hadn’t seen him in pain. He flashed a grin, pure Outlaw, pure Swoon, all mischief and promise, and too damned familiar for comfort.

  I brushed back the strand of my hair that always seemed to escape. His eyes tracked my hand, the smile faded, and he tilted his head so my heart jumped and beat hard against my chest. Damn tease. Without a word, he reached out and banged the door shut. The sound of it reverberated through the house. I heard the shower come on and fought to keep my mind off how he must look under the spray, the water cascading over all his hard-packed muscle.

  I found another bathroom and washed my face, careful around my now slightly swollen nose. It was going to go black and blue. My momma was going to have a cow. I was a whiz with make-up, but my momma would see through it with her stage momma x-ray vision. She was going to hit the roof.

  Sometimes, deep down, I wondered if she would have given me so much attention if I hadn’t been born beautiful. Would she have put so much pressure on me? Did she love me? Really love me? Or did she love what I represented? I couldn’t shake the thought. Throughout my life that one question had haunted me. I sometimes thought it was what made me tough. Sure, I had probably been born with a sassy personality, but being thrust into competition based solely on my looks had to have added stress and confusion since I started so young.

  I bent my head, grasping the sink. I had been ignoring calls from my agent for weeks. I didn’t want to deal with the outside world right now, especially with Aubree going through what she had with Booker and then Verity’s jaw-dropping confession.

  Compared to her past year, mine was a walk in the park.

  But now my best friends were blissfully happy. Man, Verity was a momma and married to Boone. Sweet, sweet Boone. So much in love with her. He’d gone through the wringer and had risked his life to save hers. My regard for him surged.

  Then Booker. There was no contest, what he had done for Aubree. I wondered fleetingly if Brax would ever do such a thing for me. Protect me. I shook my head. I could be way off base. Just because Booker and Boone had such strong character didn’t mean Braxton did. I could be projecting, imagining what I wanted to see.

  He had left a wake of broken hearts throughout Suttontowne and beyond.

  “Sugar?”

  I jerked my head up and turned. He was standing in the doorway. He had pushed his wet hair back off his forehead, but a thick lock of it fell across his temple, giving him that rebel vibe, and the scent of clean male wafted over me along with the scent I was starting to associate with
Brax. A purely sharp, rain-washed scent guaranteed to take over the senses.

  He stepped in, looking concerned. “You okay?”

  I nodded. “I was washing my face. I’m ready to go.”

  He searched my face for a moment, but said nothing. Turning away, he left, and I followed him. He led the way to the garage and to his truck. Once we were in the truck, he started it up and pulled out. Jumping out, he left the engine running while he rolled the cream and brown Harley into the garage and then got back in.

  “That’s a beautiful bike. It looks brand new, but the style seems…old-fashioned.”

  “It’s vintage, 1990. I was in Lafayette on a buying trip and my truck conked out. Battery. Had to get a tow. It was sitting behind the shop, totally rusted out. It was criminal to leave a Harley Fat Boy in the rain that way. I bought it on the spot and loaded it in my truck, spent last winter restoring it with the help of my cousin Creed. He builds his own custom motorcycles when he’s not welding. Put Vance and Hines 2 into 2 Exhaust with Screaming Eagle intake on it and a KU tuner. It’s a sweet ride.”

  “Old houses, old bikes. Are you a Renaissance man, Brax?”

  “Maybe I am. Bet you thought I wouldn’t know what it means.”

  “No, I wouldn’t underestimate you like others in this town do. I don’t give a damn about your reputation. I value a person for their character and integrity. That’s what’s important to me. You may have tried to hide your intelligence in high school to be cool, but you were fourth in our class. Right behind me.”

  He snorted. “Only you would have noticed. No one else gave a shit I was fourth in our class.”

  “You got plenty of A’s on your papers over the four years.”

  “Only to throw it in Booker’s face when I beat him out by a few points.” He smiled and my heart skipped beats. He so rarely smiled. “Big fucking deal. No one cares. I’m an Outlaw. ‘Nuff said.”