by Maisey Yates
“I just wish...” She trailed off, looking out at the lake.
He bent down slowly, searching for the smoothest, flattest stone he could find. Then he curled his fingers around it, testing the edges for imperfections. “What do you wish?”
“I wish I could be certain I made the right choice. Or at least, accept the choice I made.”
He pulled his arm back, then let the rock fly, watched it skip three times over the surface of the lake. “Okay,” he said, “that’s wish one. And now you get two more.”
She looked at him, her face crumpling slightly, tears sliding down her cheek. She wiped them away, took a deep breath that sounded halfway between a gasp and a sob. “I wish... I don’t wish that he would forgive me. I wish he would never think of me at all. That there was never anything for him to forgive. That his life is so full, so full of wonderful people that love him, that he can hardly spare a thought for the teenage girl who gave birth without her family there. Without his father there.” She stopped talking for a moment, another tear chasing the first. Her shoulders shook, her whole body shuddering.
He wanted to move closer to her, wanted to wrap his arms around her, but he had a feeling if he did, she would shatter completely. She seemed so fragile right now. Like she was made from spun glass. But she was also strong.
The wind whipped up over the water again, invisible, but changing everything around them. That was Lane, he realized. Soft, sweet. But with the power to move mountains inside of him.
No, she wasn’t breakable. No matter how she might seem now. She had been carrying this impossible weight for more than ten years. And for all that time, it had raged inside of her.
Now she was caught up in the last gasp of the storm.
He wanted her to lay every single one of her burdens down here at this lakeshore. Wanted her to give them all to him. Because he could carry them. He wanted to. He had never wanted to be that for somebody, had never wanted to know someone like this. But with her... He wanted everything she had to give.
“I wish that I could be one person,” she said, looking over at him. “I wish that I didn’t have so many pieces of myself, all kept hidden, kept separate. I wish I wasn’t hiding here. I wish I was living.”
Then he did close the distance between them, wrapping his arm around her waist and pulling her to him. “You’re not hiding with me,” he said, taking hold of her chin, brushing his thumb over her lower lip. “You don’t have to hide anything from me.”
It was a desperate kind of offer more than a generous one. He needed it. Needed her stripped bare in every way. He wanted to possess her, to own her. To know her. He didn’t know what the hell made that desire so intense, what the hell made it so necessary; he only knew that it was.
He had been fine with the idea that maybe they would sleep together until it burned out, but he knew full well that wasn’t good enough anymore.
He wanted more than that. He wanted all of her. Possibly forever, because he was never going to be able to accept her being with another man. He would have to kill that man, and he didn’t particularly like the idea of spending the rest of his life in prison.
He wanted her in his bed. Maybe even in his house, which he knew was going to take some convincing on her end. But that was what he wanted. In this moment, he wanted it more than his next breath. He didn’t know where that fit with his vision for his life, what he’d always thought about himself. He didn’t know if it could ever work. He only knew he wanted it. Right now, he couldn’t imagine the end of this.
If he could just stay in this moment.
She looked scared, terrified, actually, all the color drained from her cheeks, tears glistening on the ends of her dark lashes. “I don’t know how. I only know how to hide.”
“I know where we can start.” He moved his hands down to the hem of her shirt, pulling her top up over her head, leaving her standing there in the sunshine in her bra and a brief pair of shorts. Then he reached behind her and unclipped her bra, exposing her breasts.
“Leave it to a guy,” she said, laughing shakily, “to decide my emotional healing requires showing my boobs.”
“No,” he said, reaching out, sliding his thumb over her nipples slowly until she shivered beneath his touch, “it’s going to take a lot more than that.”
He wasn’t going to let her joke her way around this, wasn’t going to let her ramble about French fries or pumice stones or mice named Robert.
“It isn’t that I don’t want things,” she said, her voice a whisper now. She pressed her breasts against his chest, rested her palms on his shoulders. “I want what everybody wants, I guess. I’m just afraid I shouldn’t have it.”
He gripped the back of her neck, then slid his hand up to her hair, pressing her face against the curve of his neck. “Stop punishing yourself, honey,” he said, his voice almost unrecognizable even to his own ears. “You don’t deserve it.”
“But what if I...”
“Let me tell you something,” he said, the words torn from him. “I know what it’s like to watch your mother walk away because she can’t cope.” He gritted his teeth. The reasons his mother had walked away were entirely different from Lane’s. It was him. It was always him. But he didn’t need to have that discussion with Lane. He was already fucked-up. And saying that, knowing her, she would try to reassure him. Would rush to tell him it wasn’t true, no matter what he’d witnessed in his life.
But he would be damned if he ever threw any of his shit down on her. “That hurts. When you’re left behind and there’s no one there to take care of you. That’s not what you did. And maybe you could have raised him, Lane. Maybe. But that’s not the life you chose. It doesn’t make you bad. You did the very best you could with the situation you were in at the time. You were alone. You were afraid. You hadn’t lived life. Of course you feel now like maybe you could have taken care of him. You’re almost thirty years old, you own a business, you own a house. The life you have now, the woman you are now, has nothing to do with the girl you were then. That girl, she could only do what she did. Don’t be mad at her.”
A sob shook her frame, and she let it all release. Started to cry right into his shirt, leaving her misery all over him. And he just held her right through it. Not because it was what a friend should do. But because it was what he had to do for Lane. What he had always wanted to be for her. It was clear to him in that moment. Why friendship had never been enough. Because he never wanted only part of her. And part of herself was all she ever gave to her friends. He wanted all of her. All of this.
He made quick work of the rest of her clothes, and then took care of his own. Then, he picked her up, holding her against his bare chest as he walked down into the water. He held her tightly as he went deeper. “Ready?”
She nodded, and he submerged them both up to their shoulders, paddling out farther from shore. She wrapped her legs around him, tangling their bodies together.
She shivered slightly, but didn’t ask him to take them back out to land. She lifted her hand up out of the water, touched his face, droplets trailing down his skin. He didn’t know why he was doing this. Or maybe, just maybe he did. Maybe he was trying to wash it all away.
He wasn’t into all the symbolism stuff. Didn’t really buy into trust exercises and all of that. But something had to be done for her. He had to do something for her. He was all out of words, all he had was touch, all he had was this. This demonstration. Skipping rocks, making wishes and hoping it all came clean in the lake.
Slowly, the sadness in her eyes faded and was replaced with something else. Heat, desire, longing. Everything that he felt down deep. Every slick slide of their bodies ramped it up further. Then she pressed her hand between them, curling her fingers around his cock, squeezing him tight before moving her hand up and down, the lack of friction beneath the surface of the water making it a smooth ride.
“
That’s right,” he said, his gaze never leaving hers, “show me everything. Give me everything.”
“It felt weird the first time,” she said, her voice hushed, but amplified out here in the water, “to be with you. Because you were my friend, and the two things felt like they didn’t fit. But it’s not weird now. Nothing is funny.”
She looked deadly serious. He didn’t know if he’d ever seen Lane be so serious for such an extended amount of time. Didn’t know if he’d ever seen her exist in a moment quite like this one without trying to make it lighter, make it easier.
He kissed her then, with everything he had in him. Everything he could bear to show her. All that pent-up longing from the past ten years. Every ounce of need he’d carried around for her and done his very best not to show.
And when she kissed him back, there was no reservation. There was nothing but pure need, pure desire. It was as if the floodgates inside her had been opened, and she was suddenly able to pour it all out onto him. He had never been kissed like this. With a desperation that bordered on insanity. But he was more than able to give the same right back. He held on to her tightly, did his best to keep his legs moving, so they didn’t sink beneath the surface of the water.
She shifted and slid against him, his cock making contact with that soft cleft at the apex of her thighs, brushing just hard enough against her to make her gasp. To make her roll her hips against him and beg for more with each needy breath on her lips, each soft moan deep in her throat.
He paddled them back over to the dock, lifted her up out of the water, depositing her carefully on the sun-warmed surface. And then he hauled himself up after her. It reminded him of that last day they’d come down here. When she had looked at him and he could feel, for the first time, her eyes roaming over him with no small measure of interest, no small measure of heat.
He had wanted to do this then. But he hadn’t. He’d pushed it down deep, just like he always did.
But that wasn’t what he did now. There was no room for that here, no room for restraint at all. Their clothes were on the shore, and her pain was sunk down to the bottom of the lake. There was nothing between them now. Nothing at all.
Lowering her down onto her back, he brushed her damp hair off her face. Her nipples were tight from the cold, and from arousal, water sliding down her pale skin, pooling at the center of her stomach.
He put his hand on her thigh, moved it down behind her knee, spread her thighs apart. He had made her keep the lights on that first time they were together, so he’d seen her naked. But this was different. Seeing her like this outdoors, with the sun shining down on them. Nothing to hide. Nothing at all.
His hand between her thighs, he sucked in a sharp breath as he watched himself pleasure her, watched as he rubbed his thumb over the sensitized bundle of nerves there. She gasped, rocked her hips upward, silently begging for more. So he obliged. He groaned as he slipped two fingers into her wetness, feeling just how much she wanted him, just how much she wanted this.
He just stroked her for a while, watching her face as her desire built. As the color mounted in her cheeks, as her internal muscles began to pulse with her need. And then, it broke over her, broke around him, her release undeniable against his hand.
He withdrew his fingers, drawing them slowly into his mouth, wringing every ounce of evidence of her release out for himself, because it was all his, after all.
Need was roaring through him like a storm, but he realized he didn’t have a condom.
“I don’t have any protection,” he said.
“It’s okay,” she said, her voice shaking. “I’m on the pill. And I... I trust you. I never do this. But I want to. I want to with you.”
He shuddered, the full impact of that statement, of that trust, of this moment, rocking through him.
Then he moved his hands to her breasts, resting his palms there for a moment before sliding them down to her narrow waist, then down farther to her hips. He squeezed her tight, pulled her forward, pressed the head of his cock against the slick entrance to her body. He tested her slowly, flexing his hips, teasing them both with a little taste of what they wanted.
Then he slid into her, slowly, gritting his teeth to keep himself from going off as her sweet, tight heat closed around him.
He forced himself to keep his eyes open, forced himself to watch her face. To take in every aspect of the moment. The way she looked, the scent of her skin—water, woman and something that was sweet, unique to Lane—and the way she sounded as he pushed himself in all the way to the hilt. The way she felt all around him, like he was made especially to be here, inside of her.
He didn’t want to miss anything. Because if he knew one thing for certain it was that if there was a perfect moment to be had in his life, it was going to happen when he was inside of Lane Jensen.
Her fingertips fluttered to his shoulders, tracing lines down the front of his chest, over his muscles, down to his stomach. Then she put both hands on his ass, urged him forward, whispered commands in his ear. And he couldn’t deny them.
He gave himself over to this. To her. Lost himself in the steady rhythm he established. In her softness, in her heat. Her breath on his neck, her fingernails digging into his skin.
He wanted to hold off. Wanted to make it last. Wanted to make sure that she got to come again before he did. But that was a level of control he didn’t have with her. There was no finesse here. There was nothing but need.
Maybe someday he would be able to impress her with his staying power, but this wasn’t about that. Wasn’t about impressing anyone—least of all himself. All he could do was ride that hot tide of release as it swept through him. He couldn’t control it, couldn’t delay it. Couldn’t do anything but surrender to it. To her.
As he lost himself completely, he was dimly aware of her shuddering around him, his name an unsteady whisper on her lips.
And he knew that, as satisfying as his release had been, as beautiful as she looked naked, as amazing as he felt in the wake of all that pleasure, the one thing he would always remember forever was his name on Lane Jensen’s lips like he was an answer to her every prayer.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
LANE COLLECTED ALL of her lists and headed out the door of the Mercantile, making her way down the street to Rebecca’s knickknack shop.
The sun was setting into the ocean, somewhere beyond the silhouette of the brick buildings on Main Street. There was a breeze filtering through and the American flag that stood tall and proud at the end of the block was currently being lowered by one of the members of the local Lions Club who volunteered for various jobs around town.
She hurried quickly down the cracked sidewalks, pausing to make sure there were no cars coming before she crossed one of the side streets and made her way into The Trading Post.
Rebecca and Alison were already there.
“Where’s Cassie?”
“She couldn’t make it,” Alison said. “One of her kids has an ear infection.” She grimaced. “Children seem slightly overrated to me.”
Rebecca smiled. “I don’t know. I might like a couple.”
Lane’s stomach clenched, but the reaction felt somehow different than it usually was. She kept thinking of what Finn had said to her down by the lake. About how she was different now than she had been.
She’d been thinking about it basically nonstop for two days.
He was right. She had been a different person then. And, had she kept her son, she would be a different person now. There was no way to play that scenario out, not with any accuracy. She couldn’t take the life she had now as evidence that everything would have been fine if she’d made another choice. And mostly, she just had to accept it. Accept that she couldn’t know.
She breathed in deeply, feeling a little bit lighter as she let the breath out slowly.
“Wha
t about you?” Alison asked. “Are you ticking biologically?”
The thing about being pregnant at sixteen was that it took care of that biological clock nonsense. She had done it once. There was no mystery left in it. But for the first time in a long time she hungered not for the experience of pregnancy—that had been a lonely, horrible time in her life and no amount of understanding that if she did it again it would be different could change that association—but for the possibility of something new.
Of course, when she thought of that, she thought of Finn.
Her heart squeezed. And she did her very best not to imagine what it might be like to have his baby.
Wow, she was a head case. A few good orgasms and lakeside therapy and she was starting to forget what they had agreed on.
“Not specifically,” she said.
“As in, not right at this moment?” Rebecca asked.
“Pretty much.” Actually, this moment had triggered the first twinge of any kind of longing she could remember that wasn’t related to the child she’d already had.
“Me either,” Alison said. “Though, I have to say that’s mostly related to how very little I want to deal with a baby daddy.”
“Well,” Rebecca said. “That’s the difference. Because I don’t mind the eventual father of my children at all.”
“Okay,” Lane said. “Enough with the baby talk. I’m sort of afraid that by talking too much about them we might invoke one. What if they’re like Beetlejuice?”
“Well, it wouldn’t be me that ended up carrying it,” Alison said. “Unless you start seeing suspicious stars in the east.”
“You’re not a virgin,” Rebecca pointed out.
“I may be a born-again one,” Alison returned.
Rebecca and Alison looked at Lane. She felt her face getting warm. “Like I said. I’m worried they might be catching. And I don’t want to catch one.”
“But it’s possible that you could.”
Lane squinted at Alison. “One never knows. Anyway, moving on. I brought a project.”
