by Maisey Yates
Right now his fingertips were skimming over the silvery stretch marks on her stomach, that bit of extra skin that she had now, that kept her stomach from being as tight as it used to be.
And the sound he made... A guttural sound of pure, male satisfaction left her in no doubt that he did not find her wanting.
And as much as she had hated her body two days ago when she had been thinking about making love to a stranger, she loved it now, because this man growled when he got his hands on it.
Slowly—torturously so—his hand migrated upward, his thumb skimming just beneath the bottom of her bra, up to the curve of her breast.
The calluses on his fingers made a rough sound against the smooth satin of her bra, and she suddenly cursed the slight padding in the undergarment, because it kept her from feeling his touch as keenly as she might.
Suddenly, it seemed like he broke his own rules, his hand moving more than just the small fraction he’d been teasing them with this whole time. He cupped her breast, that large hand engulfing it completely, and he squeezed her, bucking hard against her body as he did. She gasped, digging her fingernails into his shoulders.
He relaxed his hold slightly, moving his thumb over her cloth-covered nipple, and then she was grateful for the padding, because even with it, his touch was creating a sensation so sharp and keen she wasn’t sure she could withstand it.
And still, he was kissing her. Slow, deliberately slow, maddeningly sweet.
He pulled his mouth away from hers again, brushing their noses together before he went back to her, consuming her. The fire suddenly seemed too hot because his body was like an inferno, above hers, around her somehow, hard and uncompromising, a living rock that seemed to have been pulled directly from a flame.
She kept waiting for him to remove some of her clothes, or his, but he didn’t. He pushed both hands beneath her shirt, his thumbs working in tandem over her breasts, bringing her arousal up to levels she had never before achieved with clothes off, never mind with them on.
She didn’t know who she was.
She didn’t know what she was.
But somehow, she still knew who he was. She could see his face, whether her eyes were open or closed.
Her world narrowed, centered on this moment. On his hands, his big body, that hard ridge between her legs. She arched her hips rhythmically against his, in time with the stroke of his tongue against hers, her breath coming in short, sharp bursts.
He nuzzled her neck, peppering kisses down the tender skin before moving back up to her mouth, kissing her deep again.
“Please,” she whispered against his lips. “Caleb, please.”
He lowered his head, clenching his eyes shut. His teeth gritted as he stilled his movements. Then he looked at her and shook his head, but as he did, he moved his hand to the button on her jeans, undid them, brought her zipper down partway. Her heart hammered in anticipation, and his fingertips dipped down beneath the waistband of her panties, and then found that place between her thighs, sure and certain, slick and rough.
He fused his mouth to hers, rubbing his thumb over her clit, her orgasm breaking over her like a wave. She arched up off the floor, his lips capturing her cry of pleasure as wave after wave of sensation battered her like a lost sailor cast adrift. It wasn’t gentle. Or easy. It didn’t flood her with a sense of warmth.
It made her feel broken.
Shattered. Spent and storm-tossed and barely able to breathe.
And not finished.
Very much not finished.
She lay there, breathing hard. Every sip of air containing shattered glass.
But then Caleb got up and moved away from her. His face was like a stranger’s, the expression there that of a man who had been on a torture device, and not just kissing her.
“I think that fulfills item number four,” he said, the words jagged.
She swallowed hard, suddenly very aware of the fact that her jeans were open, and her shirt was pulled up halfway, exposing her very plain and unremarkable bra.
She looked silly.
She hadn’t cared a minute ago, but she cared a lot more now.
Arousal was like a fogged-up mirror. And now that the passion had cooled, she could see things just a bit too clearly.
She tugged her shirt into place and began to work at buttoning her pants.
“Why don’t you come upstairs,” she said, the words coming out in a rush.
He got down on one knee in front of her, grabbing hold of her chin with his thumb and forefinger. “Because you’re not ready,” he said. “You’re not ready for it to go that way.”
“I am,” she said, reaching out and putting her hand on his chest, wondering if the intimate touch was acceptable now that they weren’t kissing. That was something of an unexpected snag.
She felt a certain level of entitlement to his body now.
He had just touched her...there.
The second man to ever do that. Surely, she could touch his chest, even if they weren’t currently making out.
He moved away from her, though, and it made her feel like she had done something wrong.
She wasn’t used to that feeling with Caleb, but it had happened a lot over the past week or so. Starting with that Christmas tree farm, and her selfishness, and ending here.
“You’re turned on,” he said. “Not the same thing.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I am turned on. Very turned on. And I would really like...” Something wicked slid down her spine, created a hollow base of need in her sex, completely unexpected considering the orgasm she’d just had.
“I want you to fuck me,” she said, biting her lip after, embarrassment coming on the heels of the boldness that she’d felt only a moment ago.
His eyes went blank, dark, and suddenly she found herself being lifted from her position on the living room floor and brought up over his body, where he crouched on the ground, her thighs on either side of his hips as he pushed his fingers into her hair and brought her face down for a searing, intense kiss.
He was shaking.
She could feel it.
Could feel that he was on the edge of his control. Could feel that he was on the verge of losing it completely. And then he lifted them both to their feet, and set her apart from him. He was like a wild thing, and suddenly she had the strangest feeling that she had been keeping a lion as a pet when all this time she thought he was a house cat.
Safe, only because he allowed her to be.
“No,” he said, his voice rough. “Not tonight. Because that’s not what I’m going to do to you. Do you understand me? Fucking is fun. Make no mistake. But it’s hard, and it’s quick. And what I want to do with you is not quick. And it’s not just hard. I want to go fast, and I want to go slow. I want soft and hard, and I want you to beg for it. Do you understand me?”
“I think what I did was pretty close to begging,” she said, shivering slightly.
“You don’t want it bad enough,” he said. “I need you to want it badly enough that you realize the list was a bad idea, because it could never be anyone but me.”
And with those rough words still hanging in the air between them, he turned and walked out of her house, leaving her there both satisfied and aching for something she didn’t even have words for.
CHAPTER NINE
YEARS LATER CALEB would still wonder where he got the strength to walk away from Ellie Bell with those words on her lips.
Hell, as he got into his truck, his hands shaking, he wasn’t even entirely sure what he was trying to prove.
He had her beneath him. Had felt her desire for him, slick and ready between her legs.
Dammit.
He wanted to charge back into the house, drag her upstairs and finish it.
But that was the problem. She wanted to finish it fast, and he didn’t like that, any mor
e than he liked the idea of her going off and being with a stranger.
Any more than he liked being an easy substitute for that.
No, he wasn’t going to let that happen. Guilt churned through him. Guilt that he was finally doing this. Guilt that he had denied her instead of giving her what she wanted.
Which was worse?
That he was finally fulfilling the long-held fantasy of being with Clint’s wife? Or that Ellie had come to him for something, and he was now taking it, twisting it and using it for his own satisfaction?
He did not the hell know.
He found himself driving to his parents’ ranch, and God only knew why.
No. He knew too.
He needed to go for a ride. Even in the dark. Needed to do something to cleanse this raging, ridiculous need that was consuming him like a monster.
He pulled up to the barn and sat there for a moment, gripping the steering wheel tight. He closed his eyes, and he remembered.
Remembered what it had been like to watch Ellie walk toward him in a white wedding dress.
Knowing that she was walking toward the man standing to his right, and not to him.
It had nearly destroyed him, but he had stood upright.
All those years had been difficult, but he had stood upright.
And in his mind, he had Ellie more times than he could count, and according to the Bible it was all the same. If he’d even lusted after a woman in his heart, he’d committed adultery with her, per the scriptures.
But to Clint...it wasn’t the same. And to Caleb it sure as hell wasn’t.
He had never touched his friend’s wife.
He had wanted her, but he would never have betrayed him like that. But what was this?
What did he want?
To step into Clint’s life? To take his wife and his daughter?
It was so close to things he had thought of, to things he had wanted, before Clint’s death, that it made him feel like doubling over.
His feelings for Ellie were part of another time, tied up in a whole lot of things.
Maybe this was the perfect way to let it go.
To finally draw a line under it.
She wanted him physically, but she didn’t want him emotionally.
And what he wanted...
Well, what it all came down to was that he couldn’t be the man she’d had. And he never would be.
And she deserved to have everything she wanted, not an approximation, a sad replacement that existed just because of proximity, and not because of feeling. What he knew about her was that she had never intended on getting involved with anyone while she was going to school, but they had met, and he had demolished her defenses.
He was just here. And he hadn’t actually managed to eradicate his desire for her; that much was clear.
So why not have it?
He got out of the truck and headed toward the barn, shocked to see that there was a light on at the far end. He heard someone moving around and he froze.
“Hello?”
A man appeared in the doorway of the tack room, his broad frame filling up the space. “Caleb?”
“Yeah,” he said.
It was West.
“Sorry. Hank said that I could come by and ride whenever I felt like it. So...” He shook his head. “I don’t sleep well.”
“That’s why I’m here, too,” he said.
“Because you don’t sleep well?”
“To ride.”
“Well, what are the odds that we would both deal with things by going out riding late at night?”
“Apparently decent?”
“I guess that kind of defeats the purpose of going out and finding solitude.”
For some reason Caleb didn’t mind. Maybe because West hadn’t been here the whole time. Maybe because West didn’t really know Ellie, or him, for that matter.
“It’s all the same to me. Anyway, you don’t know the terrain. You should probably follow me.”
“I assume the horses know the terrain well enough.”
“True. Do you have a headlamp?”
“Yeah,” he said.
Caleb fished one out of the tack room, and the two of them set about to getting horses ready to go. They worked in silence, and Caleb was overcome by a sense of strangeness. That you could be so like someone you had never met. They even finished tacking up at around the same time.
“How did things go with my parents? I only saw the aftermath.”
“Good,” he said. “I mean, as good as can be expected.”
“You said you were looking for a family.”
West paused, holding on to the horse’s reins, his expression obscured by the relative darkness in the space.
“I’ve never really had one before, so I can’t be sure about it. I made it a long damn time without one. And then everything kind of went to hell in my life. I never cared about anyone or anything. Except for my wife. She screwed me over worse than anyone else ever has. Prison’s not fun, if you were wondering.”
“I didn’t figure.”
What he did wonder is if it was the reason that West didn’t sleep.
They led the horses outside the barn, and then slipped their headlights onto their cowboy hats before mounting up.
“How did you grow up?” Caleb asked.
“With my mom,” he said. “Some of the time. I was in and out of foster care. And by the time I was sixteen I was on my own. I moved to Texas because I thought that was the Wild West.”
“Oregon is farther west,” he pointed out.
“True. But you know, with a name like West Caldwell, I figured I was born to be a cowboy. I found a hell of a lot there. More than I bargained for. Made some money doing things I shouldn’t have done. Underground fighting, things like that. Made some money doing some okay things. Bull riding. And then found out I had a decent head for numbers. I set up some investments. Then I figured, why not do it for other people? My primary focus was agriculture and livestock. Farm implements. All that kind of stuff. But I started expanding. Got well versed in a whole lot of up-and-coming industries. I learned as I went. That’s what I’ve always done.”
Caleb grimaced, thankful his half brother wouldn’t be able to see him. “You know, Hank would’ve been thrilled to have you. He never could get the three of us to want much more than ranching, and he hated that. He had money. But... Jacob and Gabe didn’t want college, and me? He didn’t even bother to try and talk me into it. Anyway, we Daltons can’t be told.”
“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me. So tell me about Hank,” he said.
“Well,” Caleb said. “He spent the majority of his marriage cheating on his wife. That’s not a secret. What was a secret was the consequences of all that cheating. McKenna came first. Well, we thought McKenna had come first.”
“I never knew my mom hit him up for money,” West said. “I wasn’t even living with her back then.”
“Well, maybe she wanted money so that you could.”
West chuckled. “Maybe. Or maybe she needed money to bail herself out of some jam or another. I send her money now and again. I’ve done well for myself, so there’s no reason not to. She gave birth to me. I suppose for that I owe her a little something, because she didn’t have to. But I don’t send her too much money, because she didn’t really raise me, either.”
“I wonder if any of you fared all right.”
“McKenna was in foster care, too?”
“Yes. She never knew her mother at all.”
“Could have been worse, I guess. For me.”
“McKenna came here for money,” Caleb said. “At least, that’s how it started. But I can’t rightly figure out what it is you want.”
Caleb felt like a hypocrite saying that to the other man. Caleb had no idea in hell what he wanted. Well
, he did know. But he didn’t know what the end of it was. Didn’t know what the point of it was.
“I proved that I could be successful on my own. I spit in the eye of everybody that ever told me I wouldn’t be anything because I was nothing more than a bastard kid from nowhere. I made my way. Forged a path. Well, I reached the end of that. It came back and fell down on me like a ton of bricks. And I guess sometimes a man has some questions. About what would have happened if his foundation had been just a little bit different.”
Caleb wondered that. He wondered that a lot.
Because one thing he wondered was that if his foundation was different, if he had come from a different family, if he had been shown different things, if he would have been a man who could have loved Ellie right.
Could have loved her like she deserved.
As it was...
A dyslexic cowboy with toxic roots in his family tree...a man with more anger in his chest than love. Yeah, he wasn’t the man for her.
She’d had the best.
He would be a piss-poor consolation.
“I expect those are questions that sometimes need asking,” he said.
“How about you? What things do you question?”
“What makes you think I’m going to talk to you about that?”
“Well,” West said, “my very appearance required an explanation. So now you know more about me than anyone at home does.”
“My appearance here doesn’t require an explanation,” Caleb said.
“Your appearance at the barn tonight might have an interesting one.”
“I’m the youngest,” he said. “There’s nothing impressive about me. I’m not a rodeo champion like Gabe. Didn’t save lives like Jacob. Didn’t get good grades like Clint.”
“Clint?”
“An honorary Dalton. He was a good friend of ours, practically grew up at the house. Dad offered to pay for him to go to school.”
He was deliberately bringing Clint up now. Because apparently, West could have benefited from Hank’s tuition offer that he gave to Clint. And it was all a sore subject where Caleb was concerned.
“And he didn’t offer to pay for yours?”
