She nodded rapidly, then took his hand in hers and reached between their bodies, placing his fingers over that small nub that he knew made girls go crazy.
He rubbed it lightly, up and down. “Like this?”
“Harder,” she whispered, closing her eyes again and melting into his touch.
He pressed harder, and she moaned and arched her back. He watched her face, and he could see when he hit that special spot that was making her wild. Grinning to himself, he repeated the motions, as he also started pumping in and out of her again.
She seemed to lose the ability to be quiet then, gasps and cries leaving her parted lips.
“Oh, oh God, yes.”
“I want to watch you come,” he said in her ear, and she did, seizing up and pulsing around his dick so hard, he followed her immediately, his own release like nothing he’d ever experienced with his hand or Karen Anderson. No, this was like orgasm deluxe. Super orgasm. Orgasm on steroids.
And it fucking rocked.
“God, I love helping you do new things,” he murmured after they’d both recovered.
“Mm,” she answered sleepily.
T.J. watched Vaughn as he studied an Edvard Munch painting where it hung in a small corner of the room, its vibrant colors not at all what she’d thought the painter was known for.
“This is the guy that did The Scream, right?” she asked as he cocked his head and leaned in a touch closer to the canvas.
“Yeah, but this painting was made forty or fifty years later.”
“I thought his stuff was all dark and creepy,” she added.
“The Scream was, but look at some of these over here—” He led her around the corner where a set of three canvases hung on a floating wall in the center of the next room.
The three paintings were different, even from one another, but they all had vibrant colors and people who mostly resembled people rather than ghosts.
“These look impressionist, but not quite,” she said.
“Good observation. He did impressionist work, but he thought the style was too limited, so he went beyond that. He was a mixture of symbolism, expressionism, and impressionism. And he had a lot of psychological references in his work—expressions of emotions and people’s state of mind.”
Her heart bloomed with a new awareness—Vaughn had life experiences beyond her. Knowledge he’d never shared, ideas she wasn’t privy to. It simultaneously thrilled and confused her. Because she thought she knew him. Thought she knew everything about him, his emotions and plans and ideas.
But somehow as she watched him there, in a place she’d never even thought to associate with him previously, she realized that just as there was a T.J. who Vaughn didn’t know, there was a Vaughn, T.J. didn’t know. And she was anxious to change all that.
“All that time we were texting and seeing each other on vacations during college, you hardly ever talked about your art classes,” she said.
He glanced at her and gave a small shrug. “Really? Huh. I guess home stuff was home stuff, and school stuff was school stuff.”
She thought about that for a moment. “So, tell me more. About school stuff, and stuff that you didn’t think I’d be interested in,” she said.
He moved on from the Munch paintings heading toward a room full of Paul Klee, and she followed, waiting expectantly. She didn’t know what she thought she’d hear, but somehow it seemed important that she’d finally asked.
He reached over casually and took her hand in his again, then led them to a padded bench at the far end of the room. There he sat and pulled her down next to him, wrapping an arm around her waist and tucking her into his side.
“I never really worked very hard at integrating into college. I came home a lot of weekends, hung out at the ranch, worked with the crew.” He stroked a hand down her arm, leaving little tendrils of electricity everywhere he touched.
“When I was there during the week, I spent a lot of time in the studios. Painting was still my favorite, but I also did some sculpting and photography.”
“You’ve never shown me your photos.”
“I’ll shoot you sometime. You’d be my favorite subject ever.” He kissed the side of her head, and she murmured something approving, so he kept talking, opening up more as he went along.
“I had a couple of friends who I’d go to parties and bars with, but we weren’t really close. I never really…” His voice suddenly faded, and he cleared his throat.
“What?” she asked, even though she had a pretty good idea what road he’d been headed down.
“Nothing.”
“Did you have any girlfriends?” Her voice was soft and tenuous.
He placed a finger under her chin and lifted it so she was forced to meet his gaze.
“I didn’t have a girlfriend in all that time. I think the longest I dated anyone was three weeks. I kept up the same kind of behavior you’ve seen at home since we graduated and moved back.”
She nodded, but her heart ached, torn because while she didn’t want him to be with anyone else, she also never wanted him to be alone.
“And T.?” he asked, his voice low and raspy. “I never wanted to date anyone. Screw them? Sure. I’m a guy, I kind of can’t help that.” He chuckled, and she looked down to hide her own grin.
“Why?” she asked. “Why didn’t you ever date anyone, and why did you sleep with all those women once we were back home?”
He looked thoughtful. “You—you were the reason for everything I did. I didn’t want a girlfriend because she wouldn’t be you. I slept with other people so that I wouldn’t be tempted to sleep with you.”
“Yeah, because God forbid.” Her pride stung, and she tried to pull away from him, but he was having none of it, so he yanked her back and held her tight.
“Baby, you have to understand, I’ve never been good enough for you. I’ve never had it together enough, never been prepared to take care of you the way you deserve. I knew when I was fifteen and realized that when I dreamed of a girl to jack off to at night, it was you I was dreaming of, that I couldn’t do what I wanted. I had to earn you. I had to make myself worthy of you.”
She leaned back and stared at him.
“And after my parents died? It was even more true. Because without them, you, Ty, and Cade were all I had left. They had to stick with me, but you didn’t. So it was even more important that I be the perfect guy for you, and I was further from being perfect than ever before.
“I’ve spent most of my time since I was fifteen worrying that you’ll leave me. But when I saw that if I didn’t let you in, you were going to leave me anyway? I had to take the chance. So now I still spend most of my time worrying that you’ll leave me, but I do it while I’m holding you in my arms instead of watching you from afar.”
Her eyes flooded with tears, and she put a hand over her mouth as she struggled to gain control of her emotions. Because they were zinging all over the place—happy, sad, horrified, angry, flattered, passionate. Every bit of it all at once. It was enough to put a girl into an emotion coma.
She took a shaky breath, and Vaughn watched her warily.
My God but he was an idiot. The sweetest, most beautiful idiot on the planet, but still an idiot. What the hell was it going to take to make him understand that all she wanted was him? All of him, the deepest parts of him, the real him? She didn’t need him to take care of her. She just needed him to love her.
“Do you love me?” she finally asked, drawing in a shaky breath.
He swallowed visibly. “You know I do.” His voice was soft, and his touch on her cheek was softer.
“When will you realize that’s all I need from you? Just your love. There isn’t any achievement you can have or item you can own that will matter to me as long as you love me. I don’t need some idealized version of a man. I just need you.”
“I wanted to build you a house, and have our own ranch, something that you could know I gave you, not my brothers.”
“Jesus, Vaughn, you’re
one-third owner of one of the biggest ranches in the state—”
“Because I inherited it, not because I earned it!”
She grabbed his jaw none too gently and forced him to look at her. “And Cade and Ty inherited it too. And your dad inherited it before them. And your mother and your grandmother got it through marriage. But every one of you has contributed to it, added to it, molded it, changed it. Big Sur Ranch is what it is because of each and every Jenkins who’s been a part of it.
“You know I come from a ranching family. My grandfather started our place too, and it may not be as big as yours, but it works the same way. Someday I’ll inherit it, and it’ll be mine just as much as it’s my dad’s now.”
She dropped her hand after caressing his cheek. “I don’t need you to get me a new ranch. We already have two of them, for God’s sake. Why would we want to take on more work than that?”
“But don’t you want us to have our own place?”
“Well, if we ever live together, yes. We ever going to do that?” She looked at him in frustration.
“Of course we are.” His answering exasperation was clear.
“So, you think between all the acreage we have on those two ranches, we can’t find a place to put a house?”
He ran his hands through his hair, mussing it in that perfect way that made her want to throw him on the ground and eat him up.
“Well, I guess, but wouldn’t it be better if it wasn’t your dad’s land or my brother’s land but our land?”
“Vaughn,” she snapped. “You’re an idiot! It is your land. I’ll repeat—you own a third of it. Whether you feel like it or not, you do. And if you want to feel more ownership, then do what Cade’s been telling you and learn about the other parts of the business. Or if you’d rather come learn my dad’s business, do that. He’d be happy to have you work there. Quit trying to make our lives hard when fate’s already made them easy!”
His eyes turned hard, but his voice was soft, almost sad. “You don’t get it. I want something that’s only yours and mine. I don’t even care what it is, I want it to be ours from the start. I want to feel like I gave you something no one else could—not my brothers, not your father, not that fucking guy you were dating. You deserve to have something that I can give you all on my own.”
“You do,” she gulped as a tear finally spilled. “You give me you. You give me your love. That’s what you’ve always given me. Unconditional love and friendship. No one else can give me you.”
He kissed her again and murmured something about how she’d always have that. But she knew this wasn’t the end of the problem. She knew him well enough to know that he wasn’t going to be satisfied until he’d figured it out on his own. She could only hope that it happened sooner than later. Because now that Theodora Jayne was all in with the man of her dreams, her dreams were growing large.
Their week of vacation took them to Sacramento, where they saw Vaughn’s favorite band, Lush, in concert, then on to Las Vegas, where neither of them had ever been. They stayed in everything from 1950s motels in tiny dusty towns, to the Bellagio in Vegas. They hot-tubbed naked, played roulette, and slept until noon. They also visited more museums, stopped at an amusement park where they drove bumper cars and rode the Ferris wheel, and saw Hoover Dam.
The last morning, they woke in a cabin in Death Valley National Park. Vaughn rolled over and wrapped an arm around the buck twenty of warm, pliant woman that had already become a necessity in his bed. Since he’d never really dated anyone any length of time, his experiences of actually sleeping with women were limited and mostly happened when he’d been too inebriated to get up and go home.
Sleeping with T.J. was like nothing he’d ever done before, and he had to admit it fucking rocked.
He nudged his morning wood up against her ass as he slid a hand down her soft belly to the heat that waited for him between her legs.
“Baby,” he murmured in her ear, rubbing his nose along her neck. “You awake?”
“Mm,” she moaned.
He nudged his hand farther down, reaching her clit and beginning the little circular motions he knew drove her wild.
“We need to get up and get going.”
T.J. burrowed farther into the blankets but arched her back so her ass pressed into his cock harder. Little tease.
He rocked against her a few times, and she slowly began to breathe harder, little gasps and moans that drove him wild with need.
She placed her hand over his as he rubbed her clit, and together, bodies pressed tight, his hard-on wedged against her ass, they brought her to an orgasm. Her cries had barely quieted before he rose up and slid her underneath him. Looking at her flushed face and tangled hair, her bright eyes and full breasts, all he could think was that in spite of dead parents and missing limbs, he might be the luckiest man on the planet.
And as he slid into her tight, slick heat, he told himself that he would do anything, absolutely anything, to make sure he stayed just this lucky.
19
It was movie night. She loved movie night. Even though she knew deep down that it didn’t mean anything to him, for just a few hours once a week, she could pretend that everything was back to normal. The way things used to be years ago when he still loved her.
“Is this all the popcorn that’s left?” Vaughn called out from the kitchen.
T.J. lounged on the couch in her pajama pants and a tank top, flipping through the Netflix options. “Yeah, I need to go to the store,” she answered, selecting Mission Impossible six billion and thirty-three—or whatever.
She heard the sounds of the microwave opening and closing, and a few minutes later, he came in with two bags of popcorn, two beers, and a half gallon of Chunky Monkey ice cream.
“You know me so well,” she purred, watching as he set the feast down on the coffee table in front of them.
“Better than anyone else,” he said, giving her a smile so beautiful, it made her heart squeeze.
They sat back and started the movie, each of them munching their way through a bag of popcorn and half the gallon of ice cream.
After he finally set the empty carton on the table, Vaughn leaned back, wrapped his arm around T.J’s shoulders, and pulled her close to him, tucking her head under his arm, against his chest.
“Man,” he said casually, as if he hadn’t just embraced her. “I may not eat again for a few days.”
His hand on her upper arm began a dance, fingers sliding against her skin, stroking up and down, up and down.
Her breath grew shaky, and he leaned down and kissed the top of her head. “Mm,” he said absentmindedly, “you smell great.”
She didn’t answer, didn’t move, didn’t dare do anything, because this right here was what she lived for on movie night. That moment when Vaughn would relax enough to forget that they weren’t in love anymore—or that he wasn’t in love with her. Those brief times when he would snuggle up with her and she would feel like they still belonged to one another.
Near the end of the movie, as T.J.’s eyes were beginning to get heavy, and Vaughn’s hand had moved from her shoulder to her arm to her rib cage, his thumb gently stroking little circles just beneath the underside of her breast, a chiming sound came from his pocket. He started, almost as if he’d been half-asleep himself, then reached around to his back pocket with his free hand and pulled out the phone, swiping the screen to life.
T.J. tried not to look, but she saw the name “Joanne,” and a pang shot through her like a splinter that jammed under the outer layer of her heart.
Vaughn cleared his throat and stiffened, taking his arm out from around her. She sat up, his absence already giving her a chill. As she waited, the cold and the lonely creeping in bit by bit, he responded to two more texts before he put the phone back in his pocket. Then he sat silently, arms pinned by his sides, as they watched the last five minutes, almost as if they were each alone, the barrier between them was so thick.
As the end credits rolled, Vaughn nearly vaulte
d off the sofa. “Hey, I uh, said I’d meet some friends, so I need to get going.”
She nodded, the pain that had been eating away at her soul for years now back with a vengeance.
“Well,” she said, following him as he moved toward the door briskly, “have fun.”
He turned and looked down at her, and for a split second, she thought that he might change his mind, might stay with her a little longer, hold her in his arms, soothe her with his touch. He reached out a hand as if he was going to caress her face, but then he blinked and snapped it back, almost like he’d been poisoned or stung by her.
Then he simply swallowed and nodded before whispering, “Good night, T.J.”
As he walked out into the night, she thought how terribly sad it was that every time he left, he took a piece of her heart with him, and she wondered if she even had enough of one left to live.
They’d been home for three weeks, and T.J. was almost scared to admit how happy she was.
She met with Vaughn three days a week for PT, and every night for what was becoming their life together. He always stayed at her place since he was still living in the main house with Katie and Ty and Lynn, but he was there every night, faithfully, cooking in her kitchen, eating at her table, sleeping in her bed. The days he didn’t have PT, Vaughn had been spending his mornings learning the business side of things with Cade, but his afternoons researching something secret that he wouldn’t yet tell her about. Admittedly, it was driving her crazy, but she was working to be as patient as possible. If he had things he was planning, she sure wasn’t going to stop him. A Vaughn with plans was a vast improvement over the Vaughn they’d all been living with for the last few years.
It was after seven o’clock when she finally got home from work on a Tuesday night. Tuesdays were her day to be on call, and that often meant last-minute emergency sessions with clients who’d had a surgery or recent injuries.
The sky had been darkening with big storm clouds since late afternoon, and the first drops of rain were starting to come down when she pulled up in front of her house. Her dad was just walking off the porch when she got out of the car.
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