Edge of Desire

by Rhyannon Byrd

  Good girls married the men they had sex with.

  Good girls didn’t walk out on their husbands.

  Good girls put up with whatever was forced down their throats.

  And in the end, good girls paid for being such pathetic wastes of space.

  She almost wished she could just forgive Riley for the pain he’d caused her all those years ago, shovel it off her chest, and for once in her life act on pure, gut instinct. Just open the door, sink her bare feet into the cool, damp blades of grass as she stepped out into the silvery moonlight, and go to him.

  And when she reached him, she’d place her hands on that hard, wide chest, lift up onto her toes, and cover the grim, beautiful shape of his mouth with hers. And maybe, just maybe, he’d have the power to breathe some life back into her.

  “Hope?”

  Gasping, she jumped about a foot when Millie called her name as she came through the doorway that connected their house to the industrial-size kitchen they shared with the café.

  “Christ,” she wheezed, pressing one hand to the center of her chest as she stared over her shoulder. “You scared the hell out of me.”

  “Sorry,” Millie said, the gleam in her eyes warning that she was up to something. “I was just thinking that you should run up to the cabin and see if there’s anything those boys might need.”

  “Stop,” she murmured, turning back toward the window to press her forehead against the cool glass. It surprised her that the heat in her skin didn’t leave condensation on the icy panes.

  “Stop what?” her aunt asked with just the right amount of calculated innocence.

  “I know what you’re doing, Mil,” she said with a shaky sigh.

  “Oh? And what’s that?”

  God bless Millie, she thought. After things had gone south with her ex, it had been the recently divorced Millie who had stepped in and saved her. Who had somehow put the broken, jagged pieces of her back together and kept her from just slipping away. “Nothing is going to happen between Riley and me, so you might as well get those crazy thoughts out of your head.”

  “Well, if that’s the kind of attitude you’re going to have, then of course nothing is ever going to happen. Happiness isn’t something that comes easily in this world, Hope. You, of all people, should know that. If you want it, you have to be willing to work for it, to take risks.”

  “Some risks are just too much. I still have too much toxic damage from how things ended before. There isn’t enough left to risk a second time around.”

  “There’s always enough,” Millie insisted. “You’re just being stubborn.”

  Looking back over her shoulder, she struggled to keep her tone even as she said, “He isn’t here to stay, Millie. He lives in Colorado and I live here. So what are you suggesting? That I try to have some kind of hot, sordid affair with him before he walks out of my life again?”

  Millie’s gray eyes gleamed with a womanly knowledge. “When that boy walks out your door, you’re going to regret it one way or another. Might as well get what good you can out of it while he’s here.”

  “He isn’t a boy, Mil.”

  The older woman waggled her brows. “Noticed that, did you?”

  She pressed her forehead to the cool glass again, her sigh leaving a fogged patch. “Of course I noticed. My eyesight works just fine.”

  “And?” Millie pressed her, making Hope want to groan.

  “He’s gorgeous, I’ll give you that. But I have too much self-respect to make a fool of myself over him for a second time in my life. Like I said before, I’m still stinging from the first time.”

  Millie gave a ladylike snort. “Nonsense. You’re letting your experience with Neal color your attitude toward men. And you’ve been doing it for too long now.”

  “You know what I think?” Before her aunt could answer, she straightened her spine and forged ahead, saying, “I think you should stop lecturing me, and start taking your own advice.”

  Eyeing Millie’s reflection in the window, she watched as a frown tipped the corner of her aunt’s mouth. “What does that mean?”

  “You still haven’t jumped Hal’s bones, and I know you want to.” Hal Erickson was a retired widower who lived in town and worked part-time as a local carpenter and handyman. He and Millie had become friends the year before, when he’d done some beautiful work remodeling the kitchen for them. And while Hope knew there was a mutual attraction between them, Millie had led Hal to believe that she was only looking for a platonic relationship.

  “Hope!” Millie gasped, sounding flustered. Ha. As if the idea hadn’t occurred to her aunt. She wasn’t buying it for a second.

  “Well, it’s true. You’ve been stringing that poor guy along for months now.”

  “I’ve been doing no such thing,” Millie argued, crossing her arms over her chest. “He’s only interested in being friends.”

  This time, it was Hope who snorted. “Yeah, and I only torture myself with diets because I’m addicted to the mouthwatering taste of lettuce. Go on, Millie. Feed me another one.”

  “You’re awfully feisty tonight,” her aunt murmured, while Hope eyed her own reflection in the window. The familiar image should have provided a measure of stability to the frenzied, chaotic swarm of emotions twisting through her, but instead it felt as if a layer of protection had been peeled away, like an X-ray, everything she tried so hard to conceal suddenly exposed…revealed. All her embarrassing emotions laid out on display for everyone to see. “I like it,” Millie went on to say. “You’ve been too closed down for too long. It’s good to hear you get some spark back in your voice. I’ve been worried about you.”

  Hope knew her aunt was right, just as she knew how much the woman cared about her. “I’m sorry for worrying you,” she offered, the words halting…subdued. “But I’m fine. Really. I’ve just been tired.”

  Millie finally took mercy on her and said good-night, heading up the staircase that hugged the far wall. Hope moved through the warm, inviting room with its off-white walls and comfortable, coffee-colored leather sofa and love seat, checking the locks on the windows, same as she did every night. It was a ritual, as if each sturdy, protective bolt could somehow shelter her from the darkness and the quiet hours of solitude, when she felt too vulnerable. When she didn’t have work to occupy her time. That was when her barriers were at their thinnest, allowing in thoughts and memories that were best left forgotten.

  When she reached the bay window again, she stopped. Staring through the glass, Hope realized the flicker of the cigarette was even closer now, as if drawn nearer to the house by the sheer force of her longing. Without giving herself time to think about it, she suddenly threw open the back door and headed out into the night, down the cold wooden porch steps, until her feet were buried in the damp blades of grass. The sharp chill made her gasp, but she refused to turn back. She couldn’t. Once she’d started moving, there was too much adrenaline to do anything but see it through.

  Though his face was still in shadow, she could feel the power of Riley’s stare, the touch of that hot, darkly sensual gaze making her shiver more than the damp chill of the air. And then the clouds moved, revealing the ethereal glow of the moon, and her breath locked in her chest as the details of his face were illuminated by the hazy, lavender beams of light. It was so hard to believe that she was staring at Riley Buchanan—at the boy who’d given her her first broken heart. Not that she’d ever had much heart left to offer another man, once Riley was done with it, which Neal had blamed for their problems. But then her ex had enjoyed laying the blame for his failures on anyone’s shoulders but his own. Hope had often questioned how she’d ever let herself get involved with a man like Neal Capshaw. But then, he’d played her perfectly during their whirlwind courtship, and she’d let herself be fooled by his act, too naive to know better.

  In a way, she knew that much of Neal’s appeal had been the fact that he was the polar opposite of Riley. Fair to Riley’s dark looks. Social to Riley’s quiet intensity. An
d determined to keep Hope at his side, like something he owned, when Riley had just tossed her aside like yesterday’s garbage.

  God, she could still remember how badly it had hurt when Riley had broken up with her. She’d had a crush on him forever, worshipping him from afar, and then, at the beginning of her sophomore year, she’d experienced one of those fairy-tale moments when he’d done the impossible and asked her out. She’d almost died, feeling as if she’d walked into a dream. Nervous and painfully excited, she’d gone with him for a milk shake after school, and that had been the start. They’d been inseparable from that point on. Until he’d shattered her heart.

  Before today, she’d spent years wondering why she couldn’t get over him. Teenaged crushes were transient things, meant to come and go. Stolen moments in time to look back upon fondly, thinking how precious those first rushes of passion and discovery had been. They weren’t meant to scar you for life. To imprint themselves on you so deeply, it was impossible for anyone else to ever come close, to measure up.

  A few more steps across the dew-covered lawn, and she stopped, no more than a handful of feet separating them. Enough space for her not to feel crowded, but close enough that she could feel the blast of his hot, sharp-edged energy. Pull in the rich, mouthwatering scent of his skin. Her breath quivered in her throat, eyes hot…burning, as she stared through the moonlit night, soaking up the beautiful, breathtaking details. God, he was insanely attractive. Not pretty, in any sort of polished Hollywood kind of way. He was too hard, too rugged, too devastatingly male to appeal to the masses, his rough-edged masculinity sending a nervous shiver down her spine, as if she’d just encountered something beautiful…but deadly. A pitch-black panther roaming the foggy dead of night, or a long, sinuous viper twisting through the damp blades of savannah grass. The bump on his nose that he’d gotten during a varsity basketball game somehow only made him more appealing, as did the firm, sensual mouth that could no doubt induce hot flashes in the most frigid of matrons. And those Buchanan-blue eyes. Dark, intense, beautiful. She still saw those eyes in her sleep, the endless beauty of them making her awaken with her breath jerking in her lungs. Angel’s eyes, darkened now by some kind of angry, violent emotion that looked almost like pain. Fear. Desperation. Which was madness. Just her own emotions projected on to him. She couldn’t imagine anything in the world that would frighten a man like Riley Buchanan.

  He was a mountain. A rock. Something immovable and strong. Completely indestructible.

  He stood silent and still beneath her breathless scrutiny, then lifted the smoldering cigarette for another long, slow inhalation that made the tip burn like a tiger’s eye in the hazy darkness. “I can’t believe you smoke,” she finally rasped, her voice feeling strange in her throat, as if the husky sound didn’t belong to her. “It doesn’t fit with how athletic you were in school.”

  “Yeah, well, I can’t believe you live in Washington.”

  The graveled blast of his words made her flinch. “Small world, I guess.”

  He took another drag on the cigarette, the exhaled smoke curling through the damp night, while another storm brewed out over the water. She shivered, pushing her hands into the pockets of her jeans, and he said, “I thought I told you to be careful.”

  She frowned, recalling the lecture he’d drilled into her that afternoon about the need for her and Millie to be cautious until he and the redhead were out of town. He’d even gone so far as to demand that they not go anywhere alone, especially at night. She’d have scoffed at the ridiculous dictates, except for the fierce intensity with which he’d delivered them, as if he honestly did fear for her and Millie’s safety. And she supposed the fact that he was a lawman added an authenticity to his warnings that she couldn’t ignore, though it still drove her crazy that he’d refused to answer the barrage of questions she’d fired at him. “I know how to be careful, Riley. I always am.”

  “Speaking of careful, do you have an alarm for the house?”

  “We do,” she replied, lifting one hand from her pocket to push her windblown hair behind her shoulder. “Two women living on their own, in a place that takes in pretty good money.” She shrugged, adding, “Purity is a safe town, but we figured it would be stupid to take any chances.”

  The grim set of his mouth pulled her gaze, the brackets that lined those sensual lips becoming deeper as he said, “I have some things I’d like you to use on your bedroom doors and windows, just as an added precaution.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “As a heartbeat,” he muttered, tossing the cigarette butt into the damp grass, then grinding it out with the toe of his boot.

  “What are they?”

  Pushing his own hands into his pockets, he said, “Kellan makes them. Behind that irritating attitude, the guy’s some kind of genius when it comes to technology.”

  “And you say he’s the brother of a friend,” she said, a wealth of questions hidden beneath her casual tone that he seemed to pick up on.

  He held her stare, his nostrils flaring as he drew in a deep, searching breath that made her feel somehow exposed, as if he were pulling in her scent. Taking it in. Holding it. Finally, he gave a slow nod, a silky, ink-black lock of hair falling over his forehead. “That’s what I said.”

  “Okay,” she breathed out. “I’ll accept that, for now. And I’ll take the gadgets. I’m not stupid, and God only knows what kind of trouble you’ve brought with you. But you can stop lecturing me on the need to be careful, because I always am.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Coming out here by yourself at night is not what I would call careful.”

  “I’m not alone,” she argued, lifting her chin. “I’m with you.”

  He grunted under his breath. Internally debated with himself, she could tell. And then quietly said, “It’s not safe for you to be alone with me, Hope. In fact, that’s the last place you need to be.”

  A dry, brittle laugh jerked from her throat, the ragged sound lingering between them with painful, unsaid meanings. “It’s not safe in the town. Not safe to go out alone. Not safe with you. Is it just me, Ri? Do you think I’m so weak that I don’t know how take care of myself? And just what exactly do you think I’m going to let you do to me?”

  His eyes narrowed further at the provocative words, though she hadn’t meant them that way. Thick, curling lashes shadowed his gaze, but she could still see the startling intensity of that deep, dark blue. The same fierce, wicked color that had haunted her dreams for years.

  When he looked at her like that, she felt stripped. Naked. Bared down to the raw, as if he could see right through the protection of her clothes, her skin, down to the truths she tried so hard to hide. With so little effort, he could peel back the layers and stroll through her mind at his leisure. Through the mangled minefield of her issues and emotions.

  Needing a distraction, she lowered her gaze to the shoulder holster he wore over his long-sleeved black T-shirt, the dark handgun like some kind of perfect accessory, as if it were a part of him. “So you’re a sheriff, huh? That’s an awfully big position to fill at thirty.”

  He blew out a rough breath. “Yeah, but I’m ages older where it counts.”

  “You always were,” she murmured, and it was so easy to remember how much she’d worried about him when they’d been together. His dad had left when he was little, and after Ian had bailed out on them, Riley had been forced to become the man of the house, which had been a hefty role to play at such a young age. “And now you have the weight of the world resting on your shoulders. Protecting your town. Your family. Millie and me from some unknown danger lurking in the dark. It must be exhausting, Riley. No wonder you look tired.”

  “The danger is known, and all too real,” he grunted. “I don’t suppose there’s anything I can do to convince you to leave town for a while?”

  “Are you serious?” she asked again, lifting her brows, suspecting he just wanted to get her to leave so that he didn’t have to deal with her. And considering this was her home
, and her life, she wasn’t about to let him run her off.

  “Yeah,” he replied, his tone grim. “I’m deadly serious, Hope.”

  “Well, that’s too bad then. Because I’m not leaving.”

  RILEY WANTED TO ARGUE with the hardheaded woman, but choked back the sharp words burning in his throat, knowing she was determined to fight him, pushing against him out of anger and bitter resentment. Not that he blamed her. If she’d dumped him the way he’d done to her, he would have still been hurling nasty insults in her face. Instead, she stood there with her head held high, the epitome of cool, calm composure. It made him crazy just to stand there, so close to her. He wanted to map out those lush, womanly curves with his hands. Taste the pansy-soft texture of her mouth. The soft inner curve of that voluptuous lower lip that could have driven a saint to sin. And despite his annoying nickname, he wasn’t feeling at all saintly at that particular moment in time.

  No, there was something about the way the ethereal streams of moonlight were hitting the smooth, vulnerable stretch of her throat that pushed him into a dark, dangerous place. Made the night feel too close, as if the heavy weight of the darkness was pressing in on him with crushing force, his temperature rising from the strain of holding himself together, until a fine sheen of sweat covered his body. Memories of the girl she’d been had always tempted him in ways that no other woman ever had. But seeing her all grown up damn near killed him with need. There was a fertile, succulent facet to her scent that cranked his need up to the point where he worried he’d do something stupid. A stinging heaviness in his gums that signaled the release of the Merrick’s fangs. He knew that if he wasn’t careful, they were going to descend, eager for the chance to sink into that pale, tender flesh. To take her blood into his mouth, hot and sweet against his tongue, feeding the primal darkness within him.

  And no doubt scare her to death in the process.

  And while the hunger for blood was most definitely the Merrick’s doing, Riley knew he had to take responsibility for the violence of his desire. Though his Merrick blood was only just awakening, his physical appetites had always been dark…aggressive. It was just a part of who he was, and he’d always chosen women who could handle it. Handle him. Strong, independent, career-minded women, who had no desire for a relationship, but still needed a sexual outlet from time to time.