by Maisey Yates
She gritted her teeth, because she didn’t want to admit any of that to herself. She didn’t want to acknowledge the fact that her feelings for Tanner went somewhere far beyond simple fantasy and lust, like she had told him last night when she had said she wanted his body for Christmas.
“I think that freedom looks different for everyone,” she said. “I think that for me it looks a lot like riding horses around the fields on the ranch.”
She didn’t say anything about Tanner. She didn’t want to think about Tanner, not right now.
All those thoughts she just had made her feel fragile and small, and very concerned.
“You know you don’t have to have the kind of life that I like to have,” her mom said softly. “But I just want to make sure that you don’t miss out on having a life.”
“I know,” she said. “And I appreciate that.”
She retrieved her marshmallow and went back to the fire pit, feeling melancholy. But everyone around her was smiling and talking, the girls dancing around excitedly, and Lily getting her first taste of s’mores and waving her chubby hands happily.
This was her family. This was her life. And she could understand why her mother—who had always been somewhat feral—would have found freedom in a little bit of distance. In a bit of time spent finding out who she was apart from anyone else. Because she had been linked to Chloe’s birth father—the one Chloe had never known, since he’d been off being an asshole, with not a care for the child he’d had—and then she had spent all her time and energy worrying about Chloe.
After that she had gotten married. And then some of the burdens had been shared, but there had been another person to consider yet again.
Chloe, for her part, had spent her life void of those kinds of responsibilities. And it had given her a lot of time to think about who she was and what she loved.
She loved to ride. She loved her horses.
She loved the ranch.
And very unfortunately she loved Tanner. She wasn’t quite sure what she was supposed to do about that. She put her skewer out and touched it to the flame, lifting her marshmallow up when it began to smoke.
“You’re going to light it on fire.”
She looked over just as Tanner took a seat next to her.
She wanted to snap at him for violating their unspoken agreement. The one that clearly stated they were not supposed to be anywhere near each other, nor were they supposed to be speaking to each other.
But nobody was paying attention to them, her mother having moved on to talk to Savannah and watch Lily delight in the sticky marshmallow, chocolate and graham cracker concoction.
“Thank you,” she said. “I will submit that to the marshmallow roasting review board and let you know if we decide to alter the technique.”
“That’s a lot of bureaucracy for a marshmallow.”
“We live in a civilized society, Tanner, and bureaucracy, while inconvenient, definitely ensures that proper protocols are followed.”
“Well, we wouldn’t want improper marshmallow protocol.”
“Indeed. I myself am highly concerned with propriety.”
“That is true,” he said.
She moved the marshmallow down toward an ember, daring him to comment again.
“Today went well,” he said.
“Why are you over here?”
“Because it’s where I would be no matter what.”
Those words settled funny in her chest. Would he be over here talking to her no matter what had happened last night? And what would it have meant then, versus what it meant now? Did it mean the same thing?
Them being together had only further exposed feelings for him she already had. He had always been attracted to her, but did he have any other feelings?
What did he feel for her? Because it was obvious that she wasn’t a sister to him. Last night had made that abundantly clear. But he had never said exactly what he did see in her. What he did feel.
“I’ve admired you since the moment I met you,” she said, turning the marshmallow slowly. “You were so tall and strong and serious. I wanted to capture that sense of solidness that you had and hold it close. Make it mine. I had spent my whole life feeling like everything could spin out of control at any moment. One missed payment and my mom and I would be out on the streets, or we wouldn’t have heat or water or food. Everything had felt precarious, and then I met you, and you were like this mountain. A rock. You taught me how to ride, and you taught me by extension what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I don’t think I can possibly overstate the influence you’ve had on me, Tanner. I never saw you as a brother, not really. But you started out as an idol, and then you became something else. I have a lot of twisted, tangled-up feelings where you’re concerned. But one thing that I’m really not sure of... Especially after last night... What am I to you? You said I was more than pretty, but what does that mean?”
“I’m not sure this is a good discussion for us to have,” he said flatly.
Her marshmallow began to smoke again and she drew it back. Then she stuck it closer to the flame again. “I’m curious,” she insisted. “I want to know. I know it doesn’t change anything, but I just want to know.”
“When I met you, you were a little scrap of a thing. Like a stray cat. You didn’t want to be talked to, you didn’t want attention, and yet it was all you wanted. And the horses were like a breakthrough. I was a pretty insensitive young guy at the time, and even I could tell that the horses did something to you. Change something in you. And there was something about that that made it different for me, too. I took the ranch for granted, I took that life for granted. I only focused on what I felt like I didn’t have. My mother, a father who wasn’t able to let his sons know he was proud of them. He treated us like ranch hands, but suddenly when I saw the ranch through your eyes I could see the value in that. I could understand how a plot of land could be more than rocks and dirt. You gave me a heart for the ranch in a way I didn’t have before. If there is such a thing as a muse for a cowboy I guess you would be it.”
Her throat felt dry, her heart racing erratically in her chest. “Oh,” she said. “Tell me more. About how you wanted me.”
“I wanted you well before I should have. And I wanted nothing to do with it. Because I wanted for everything to stay the same. And for you to say exactly as you were to me. Because that was simple. Because it was right.”
They looked around the campfire. Everyone was making their own conversation and no one was particularly looking at them. Still, Chloe felt like she had been pulled apart and exposed. His words revealing all kinds of hidden things inside of her. Making her ache. Making her long. Because this was about more than lust, and that was a lot more than she had expected. From him. From this.
“And everyone thinks we’re like brother and sister,” she said quietly.
It was so much bigger than that. So much more. They had given each other things, taught each other things that no one else ever could have.
“And that’s for the best,” Tanner said. “Because these kinds of things are important. This vacation. The connections.”
“Yes,” she said, her heart squeezing tight.
She wanted to ask him why they couldn’t just be together. Why they couldn’t make a family. Why it couldn’t be forever. Because the only reason it was a problem was the fear that it would end. But what if it didn’t end. Ever.
But she couldn’t ask that. Because there was no way his answer would be yes. And she was too afraid to take that chance. Oh, she remembered her mother crying after men. Men who didn’t want to have a wife and daughter. Men who had taken all of the good and all of the beauty in her mother’s heart and taken advantage of it. Twisted it. No, she didn’t want that kind of pain. She wouldn’t be able to endure it.
Her marshmallow suddenly burst into flame and she drew it back quickly, bl
owing on it.
“I told you it was going to catch fire,” he said, his tone maddeningly calm.
And suddenly it seemed like the world’s most unfortunate metaphor.
“Yes,” she said solemnly. “You did.”
She left him then, angrily making herself a s’more and taking a position at the opposite end of the fire.
This was going to be her life with Tanner from now on. Wanting, knowing and not having. Because.
Because. Because. Because.
The word repeated itself on a refrain inside of her until the fire died down and everyone slowly trickled back inside. Everyone except for Tanner. Everyone except for her.
“Are you ready for bed?”
“It’s no business of yours,” she said. “Especially since I’m going to bed without you.”
She licked the remainder of the sticky marshmallow off of her fingers and walked defiantly back into the house.
Her heart felt like it was shattering with each beat, but she managed to head straight to her room and not pause. And not beg. And not tell him that she wished things could be different.
The fact of the matter was they couldn’t be. He had said that.
One more time with him would only make things impossible. Would only make it so that she absolutely couldn’t let go.
And she needed to be able to let go.
It was essential.
So she ensconced herself in her bedroom, and got back into her reindeer pajamas, which would now always have sexual significance, and she got beneath the covers, convincing herself that her bed wasn’t cold, and that she wasn’t lonely.
She was a liar.
But she preferred a lie, to crying herself to sleep.
CHAPTER SEVEN
TANNER WAS MISERABLE, and he couldn’t sleep. The cold shower that he took hadn’t helped. He kept replaying the conversation that he’d had with Chloe by the fire over and over again.
He had been an asshole. Lecturing her like he had. Especially on the heels of telling her that she was his muse. His muse, dammit. Who talked like that? He certainly didn’t.
He didn’t entertain thoughts like that. And yet, the moment they had left his mouth, he had known the words were true. She was something so much more to him than a sister ever could be. Something so much more than a simple object of desire.
And yet, she was all of that and more.
He couldn’t reduce the attraction between them by saying it was only sex. Because sex between them had never been a simple, solitary thing.
For some reason, he had taken a chance with her and potentially compromised the foundation of his entire life.
How could you call it only sex when it was not much of a risk? When it rocked you down to your core.
No, there was no only about it.
Something was pounding through his veins, and it was more than just arousal. He couldn’t put a name to it, couldn’t organize his thoughts. If it was desire, then it would fade. Desire always did. Desire was present, but it was more than that. It was so much more.
He wasn’t going to be able to sleep tonight.
Not for wanting her.
And he was the one that had put such a hard limit on their night together.
And he should know, more than her, that it wasn’t essential. He was the one with experience. He wasn’t the one who should be obsessing.
She had been a virgin. Her.
She was the one that should be confusing sex with emotions. If one of them was going to.
But for some reason, something was shifted inside of him, and for the life of him he couldn’t seem to push it back into place.
He let out a long, slow breath, hoping that he could settle the pounding of his heart. That he could somehow cool down, slow down, the way the blood was moving through his veins. He couldn’t seem to. He kept thinking of her. Remembering what it had been like to have handfuls of her hair, her ass, her breasts. To be deep inside of her. Chloe. Finally.
He’d taken that bag of condoms from the inn and packed it in his bag.
Because he was a liar. Because he had been lying to himself from the moment they had left that inn.
He had just thought he might need them later. That it would be a waste of money to leave the box behind. But now it seemed so glaringly obvious that he would never use a box of condoms he had bought for Chloe with any other woman. Never.
Those condoms were for Chloe.
His body felt like it might be for Chloe, from now until forever.
The very idea of touching another woman after he’d been with her felt like a blasphemy in a church. A stain on pure white sheets.
No. He couldn’t do it. He wouldn’t.
But that left him grappling with the implications of that. What it meant to want her. What it would mean to have her.
And before he knew what he was doing he was getting out of bed. He opened the bedroom door and stood in front of hers. For a long time.
The house was quiet, everyone long gone to bed. But he didn’t want to chance someone hearing him knock on her door. He tried the knob, and it didn’t budge. A smile curved his lips.
He sort of hoped that she had locked him out. Not that he was going to let it deter him now. But he liked the fact that she had either tried to lock herself in to keep herself from coming to him, or that part of her had known that he would do this. That he was going to be weak. That he wasn’t going to be able to leave this alone.
That whatever they’d agreed about what happened in a snowed-in lodge staying there, he wasn’t going to be able to honor it. Not now. Not ever.
He licked his lips, adrenaline coursing through him, his stomach tightening, his cock getting hard. He tapped on the door with one knuckle.
He heard nothing. He looked down the hall and knocked slightly louder. Then waited. He thought he heard the rustling of sheets and blankets, but it could also be wishful thinking, for how subtle the sound was. But then he heard the sound of the lock turning. And nothing else. No voice. No open door. He tested the knob, and it gave. By the time he pushed the door open, Chloe was back in bed, the blankets pulled up to her chin. He shut the door behind him quickly, locking it.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“You know,” he said, the box of condoms in his hand a glaringly obvious statement.
“You said one night. You said one night was all it could be.”
“And I meant it, when I said it. At least, I convinced myself that I did.”
“You lied,” she said simply.
“To myself.”
“What if we get caught?”
“I don’t know,” he said, his voice rough. He stripped his shirt off, and made his way to the bed, setting the box of condoms down on the pillow and climbing under the sheets, not touching her yet.
“But I can’t stay away from you either way. And I’d rather deal with the consequences of all of that than I would sleep alone.”
“You were so adamant about the way things could work between us, by the fire earlier. So much instruction. From marshmallows to the attraction between us.”
“Because I’m an asshole. And apparently I only get more sanctimonious when I know that I’m going to fail a test. But you locked the door. So my question is... Were you locking me out or locking yourself in?”
She lifted a shoulder. “Probably both.”
“But you unlocked it,” he pointed out.
“You came,” she said simply.
“I meant what I said by the fire.”
“I’m going to burn my marshmallow?”
“No. That you mean something more to me than anyone else. Something different than a sister. Something not quite like anyone that’s ever been in my life. You changed me.”
“How nice for me,” she said loftily. “To be a m
use set up high on an unreachable shelf.”
“You’re not unreachable now,” he said, putting his hand on her hip and smoothing it up and down over her curves.
His body let out an enthusiastic hallelujah. Because he had been committed, knuckling down and telling himself that he wasn’t going to touch her again, and the fact that he was...an illicit shot of arousal fired through his veins. Yes, this was exactly what he wanted. Exactly what he needed.
They still weren’t home. Surely that had to count for something. Surely that had to count as some kind of specious boundary that they could call okay. “What if I wanted to be unreachable?”
“Do you?”
“No,” she said, her voice muted. “And I judge myself for that.”
He gripped her hips and rolled her over to the top of him, positioning her so that her core was directly over his hardening body. “Good.”
“Tanner,” she breathed, bending down and fusing her lips to his. Her kiss was wild, deep and unrestrained, and completely at odds with the cool, arched tone she had taken with him only moments earlier. She kissed him like her life depended on it. Kissed him like they might both drown if they didn’t get a taste. Kissed him like she was dying. Like he might be able to heal her.
He wanted to. Whatever she needed, he wanted to be. He felt an ache grow, expand in his chest.
As he realized fully what he had admitted to her, what he had admitted to himself. That she was somehow the agent of change in his life. Somehow everything. The root of him finding who he was meant to be. And she had been. But she had to be old enough for that to become this. He had to wait, and now suddenly it was like all the pieces of his life had locked into place. This woman, who had made him the man he was, was finally in his bed. Finally over top of him, arching her body against him, beautiful and wild in his arms.
It was love, he realized, as she pulled her shirt up over her head, exposing her breasts to him.
He had never given any credibility to romantic love. Not really. And yet, suddenly it all made sense. Not only this feeling that he had for her, but the ways in which it had changed his father’s life. No, it hadn’t made him perfect. And Tanner’s relationship with him had never become what he might have hoped. But his stepmother had changed him. And by turn, his father had changed her. Their marriage, their love, had actually changed the lives of all the children involved for the better.
