Thornton

by Tee, Marian

  Elizabeth caught sight of the police chief and grinned at the way the police chief was trying to escape unnoticed. "Good morning, Chief!"

  Aidan froze.

  Shit.

  And what he feared would happen did happen as he saw the petite brunette on one of the counter seats swing to face him. Shit, he thought again even as he summoned a smile in greeting for his brother's employee.

  Blake beamed back at her beloved's twin. "Chief Blackwood, hello!"

  "Morning, Blake, Elizabeth."

  The last one came with a glare that promised retribution, but this only had Elizabeth grinning. Men were just wussies when it came to heart-to-heart talks, and apparently even Hartland's princely police chief was no exception.

  Blake started chatting as soon as Elizabeth was done taking the chief's orders, and Blake was still happily at it when she came back to serve Aidan's coffee and pancakes. The only difference was this time, the police chief's smile had turned stoic while Blake went on pestering him about the possibility of Thornton falling in love with her.

  The girl had asked Elizabeth the same thing, too, actually, and while she always did enjoy talking to Blake, she did have work to do---

  "Finally."

  Large strong hands clasped Elizabeth's waist the moment she entered the kitchen, and she could only giggle as Arden spun her around to face him.

  "Don't get me wrong," he grumbled. "Blake's nice and all, but she does tend to monopolize you."

  Elizabeth burst out laughing, but the sound was quickly muffled by Arden's mouth covering hers.

  "I have ten minutes to ravish you," he murmured against his fiancée's lips.

  "B-b-but---"

  Arden didn't give her a chance to argue. He had been waiting all morning, and now that the chief had Blake occupied...

  Oh God. Elizabeth's eyes involuntarily drifted shut as she felt Arden's fingers squeezing her breasts just the way she liked it. And when his fingers moved to her nipples...oh God. All other thoughts disappeared as she looped her arms around Arden's neck and gave in to his demands.

  Ten minutes, didn't he say they had?

  Arden's lips trailed down the side of her neck as she felt him reach under her skirt.

  Oh God, it was going to be ten really fantastic minutes.

  * * *

  Aidan's ears were still ringing with all of Blake's gushing and nagging when he walked inside his office and found it already occupied by a scowling carbon copy of him.

  Thornton heard a groan behind him and turned in his seat to see his older twin standing by the doorway, a grimace on his face.

  "Let me guess," Aidan said with a sigh. "You want to talk about Blake?"

  Thornton's gaze narrowed. "She talked to you first?"

  "She nearly talked my head off is what you meant, right?"

  "What exactly did she say?" Thornton asked as Aidan slid into his seat behind the desk.

  "How about you tell me first what you came here for?" his twin bargained.

  Thornton snorted. "I think you already know."

  "Just humor me---"

  "She knows I want her," Thornton said abruptly.

  Aidan had a hard time keeping his face straight. "Ah, yes, she did tell me she had seen, er, hard evidence of that."

  Thornton's answering wince was much more than Aidan could ever hope for, and he couldn't help grinning. "You want her that bad, Thorn?"

  An incoherent growl, which the police chief simply took as another form of assent.

  "Just wish she'd stop," Thornton forced himself to admit between clenched teeth.

  "Stop what?"

  "Trying her damnedest to seduce me."

  Aidan gaped at his brother. "That's your problem? A nice, pretty girl is doing her best to get you into bed with her? Is that why you've come down to the police station for?" Aidan asked sarcastically. "You want to file a complaint against your shop assistant for having a crush on you?"

  He saw his brother's jaw clamp shut at his quip, but that was it. Thornton only stared at him, and that was answer enough. Most people assumed his younger twin was a rather complex being to understand, but actually, it was the opposite. Being a man of few words, Thornton could be expected to always respond with a swift yes or no to any question. His two short but grueling years in service, on the other hand, made Thornton a man of honor, and one could reliably expect his brother to always speak the truth.

  As such, Thornton refusing to answer a question only meant one thing.

  "Why are you having such a hard time admitting to the fact that you want her?"

  Thornton struggled to put his thoughts into words. "I'm having a hard time understanding why...she likes me so much. How she could like me so much...from the start. It doesn't...make sense."

  And that was the crux of the matter, Aidan realized. Even when they were kids, Thornton had always been the type to rationalize things. Applying reason and logic had been his twin's way of processing their parents' indifference and, later on, their untimely death, and it had also been Thornton's coping mechanism when encountering the unspeakable atrocities of war.

  Only Blake's instant attraction to him had defied logic, Aidan thought ruefully, thus his twin's instinctive resistance. A pity, really: if only Blake had played it just the slightest bit coy the way other women did, then she wouldn't have had any problems getting Thornton to admit his feelings.

  But if she had been like other girls, she might not have captured Thornton's interest from the start. She might never have been hired in the first place even, and so there couldn't have been a chance for Aidan's twin to gradually become attracted to her.

  "Aidan." Impatience faintly edged Thornton's tone. "I know you've figured things out."

  "Not that easy," his twin answered with a grimace, "since this is you we're talking about."

  "Just say it."

  "Alright." Aidan leveled a look at his twin. "To start with - you do acknowledge that she likes you. Right?" He saw Thornton actually seem to seriously consider the question and almost groaned. "For fuck's sake, man."

  Thornton scowled. "It just---"

  "Doesn't make sense, I know." Aidan was exasperated. "But for this to work, how about we set all reason aside for now and start with the premise that she does like you."

  "She's young," Thornton muttered. "And she's never had a boyfriend. There's a possibility that she's misunderstanding---"

  "Thorn," Aidan growled.

  Thornton threw his hands up. Whatever. If Aidan believed acknowledging the girl's feelings for him as real was the only way to get the ball rolling, alright then.

  Aidan could already see Hartland's collective population shaking its head at Thornton's sheer denseness. One only had to be in Blake's company for five minutes to know just how head over heels she was for his twin, and it wasn't just because she enjoyed wearing her heart on her sleeve. She also loved talking about it - a lot - to the point that people tended to make up excuses to leave the moment she mentioned Thornton's name.

  It was exactly what happened earlier, actually. Their younger brother Ethan, along with his close friend Doctor Ronan Slater, had dropped by at the cafe, and the moment they heard Blake saying Thornton's name, the two men had practically tripped over each other in their haste, wanting to leave before Blake could see them.

  "Fine, she likes me," Thornton was saying in a hard tone. "What next?"

  "And you like her back, correct?"

  "Not at first." Thornton's tone was discomfited. "But yeah, eventually."

  "And that's what's bothering you, isn't it?" Aidan carefully pointed out. "That things didn't really start out the same time for the both of you?"

  Thornton grunted.

  "So if you were to do something about it, and your suspicions about her not really liking you turns out to be true, then you'd have made your life unnecessarily complicated." He only got another grunt in response, but Aidan was far from bothered. With his twin, answers that were anything less than straightforward automaticall
y meant he was winning the argument.

  "You're holding yourself back on the presumption that her interest in you is just a passing fancy, but what if I can prove to you that it wasn't?" Aidan challenged.

  "If that only means you're simply going to ask her---"

  "Actually," Aidan cut his twin off, "I was going to ask you something."

  Thornton frowned.

  "Have you never wondered how countless women have thrown themselves at you," Aidan murmured, "but you were never bothered about taking what's on offer...regardless of how they truly felt about you?" He saw Thornton shift in his seat, a sign that he was finally getting somewhere with his brother, and Aidan didn't hesitate to press his advantage.

  "I know most of the locals who don't know about your past think you've led a monk-like existence all this time. But we both know the truth. You were as much as a womanizer as most of us were---"

  Thornton raised a sardonic brow at his brother. "Were?"

  The police chief simply shrugged. "Still are then," he corrected himself, unconcerned. "Point is, you were like us. Women meant nothing to you. And yet Blake..." He let his voice trail off, and not even a second had passed when his twin reached the same conclusion.

  "She was different from the start," Thornton said reluctantly.

  "Exactly." Aidan leaned back against his seat. Thornton might not have been consciously aware of it at that time, but he had been interested in Blake from the start...the way Blake had fallen for him at first sight.

  Thornton rubbed his jaw. "I never realized..."

  "That's fine, man," Aidan dismissed. "What matters is what you plan to do now."

  "Nothing, I guess. That's the best thing to do, don't you think?"

  "That is---" Aidan stilled. "Wait. What? You're going to do nothing?"

  His brother stared at him. "What else should I do? If it's what you said, and things might also be a passing fancy for me for some reason, then time alone will tell, won't it?"

  How the fuck had Thornton come to that conclusion?

  But his brother was already getting up from his seat.

  "Sorry I had to bother you about this," Thornton said gruffly. "But I get it now."

  It was only when the door closed behind Thornton that Aidan finally snapped out of his shock. What the fuck? Like seriously - what the fuck? He had intended to get Thornton to give Blake a chance, so how the fuck had he ended up convincing his brother to stay away from her instead?

  Chapter Six

  All her life, Blake had known how most people tended to pity her for being orphaned early and having just her grandmother to raise her. In truth, however, her life with Amanda had been so filled with love, happiness, and fun that she hadn't felt anything lacking.

  Or rather that was how she had felt...until her first glimpse of the unmistakable bulge behind her boss' jeans. Maybe if she had been raised a little less conservatively or she was a little more sexually liberated, maybe she could have turned the whole situation to her advantage.

  Maybe.

  But since she wasn't, her beloved Thornton was therefore the first man Blake had ever seen fully aroused, and when she had glimpsed the ravenous glitter in her eyes---

  Oh sweet baby Jesus, but what she hadn't dared even let herself dream...

  There was no denying it now, not when his erection just kept getting harder and bigger in front of her very eyes.

  He wanted her.

  Blake's knees had knocked against each other at the realization, and that was just the start. In seconds, her body had felt completely alien but oh so thrillingly weak, with the way pressure started building fast inside of her...before bursting out into a thick hot flow of moisture. She felt her folds swell and pulsate as her panties became drenched, and if not for Thornton suddenly turning away, God knew what her first taste of desire could've pushed her to do.

  But with the spell broken, a rare blaze of embarrassment had her gasping and she practically stumbled in her haste to lock her inside the bath. As soon as the door slammed shut and the lock slid into place, Blake slowly sank to the floor in a breathless heap of limbs. She felt hot all over, her heart beating like crazy, and oh God, she didn't even dare let herself think of the way her pussy continued to twitch in a mix of agony and pleasure.

  That night, she had been unable to sleep, tossing and turning, the image of an aroused Thornton refusing to leave her mind.

  He wants me. He wants me. He wants me.

  The words drummed inside her head over and over, and though she knew what she saw, there was also the tiniest insecure part of her that refused to believe this. That part demanded proof before it could surrender to mindless desire like the rest of her body had already melted into.

  I need to make sure, she had thought feverishly. I need to know it wasn't a fluke.

  And so before she could even think twice, she was already putting her plan in motion, tiptoeing out of her room to get her trembling body under the shower. Because she knew Thornton's schedule by heart and her beloved was a man of routine, it wasn't long after that she heard movement in the kitchen.

  Let this please be what I hope for, Blake found herself shamelessly praying.

  And then it was showtime.

  She stepped out of the bath, with just the tiniest towel wrapped around her dripping wet body, and deliberately making enough noise that Thornton hadn't any choice but to turn her way.

  Oh God.

  She literally saw it happen this time, his cock swiftly swelling and turning rigid under his sweatpants, and when she had unconsciously wetted her lips...

  The sudden, fierce blaze of lust in his eyes almost had Blake crying out and her body literally shuddering in acutely sexual awareness.

  He really does want me.

  And it was then they started to play, a cat-and-mouse game in which she took the unexpected role of aggressor and seducer...and her dangerously sexy boss became prey.

  * * *

  Blake was a woman on a mission after that. She read and watched whatever she could, did anything really, save asking an actual person for advice about seducing a man.

  Although she had always been the shirt and jeans type, she had taken to wearing tank tops and off-the-shoulder blouses that almost had her breasts spilling out. And despite the steady drop of temperature, Blake had just gritted her teeth against the cold while she insisted on wearing mini-skirts and barely-there shorts.

  Anything to drive Thornton wild with need, and while the impact of her scantily-clad body had an extremely evident impact on his own body, Blake had been unwilling to rest on her laurels. She had also made sure to employ slightly dirty tactics just so she could throw herself at him.

  She'd lose her balance when he was near, pretend to have a faint-inducing headache, even lie about seeing a snake in the bushes.

  Anything just so she could press her body close, rub her breasts against his chest, and grind her crotch against his erection.

  The first time she did it, Blake had pepped herself in front of the mirror for an entire hour. But after that...after feeling the way he had held her to him, imprisoning her length against his for long, precious moments---

  It had been ridiculously, electrifyingly easy after that, and with every day that passed, his reaction became more telling, with the way his fingers would seemingly carelessly drift down her spine or the way his hands would possessively squeeze her waist before letting go.

  The more time passed, it was as if she was being seduced, too, with the carnal promise in his eyes as his gaze roamed over her barely-dressed figure.

  More and more, she couldn't help hoping that one day...it would happen.

  He would give in...and kiss her...touch her...fuck her.

  One day.

  But instead, everything suddenly changed.

  * * *

  "And that's it. I just don't know what happened," Blake finished between sniffs. "One moment, we're okay, next moment he's like Mr. Snowman, and I need to put on a thermal jacket around him. Othe
rwise, he'd have me freezing to death with his sudden coldness."

  "I'm sorry, B," Frankie said helplessly even as she cursed Thornton Blackwood inside her mind. Cruel, evil man! It was so obvious that Blake's boss had just led her on, something even Frankie would never have suspected Thornton of. Just goes to show, Frankie thought angrily as she dug her spoon into her ice cream bowl. Men were never ever to be trusted.

  While her friend went on her usual, slightly prejudiced rant about no-good men, Blake could only toy listlessly with her crème brûlée, unable to enjoy her favorite dessert even with Elizabeth having gone out of her way to top it with fresh berries.

  She and Frankie usually had lunch together at the cafe on her off days, but today Blake had asked Frankie if they could eat at the latter's office instead. Blake had a feeling she was going to cry the moment she started talking to Frankie about her boss, and she had been right.

  "I just wish he'd tell me why at least," Blake broke in as soon as Frankie paused her breath.

  "Did you try to ask him?"

  Blake nodded.

  "And?"

  "You know how he is when he doesn't want to say the truth," Blake sighed.

  "Actually," Frankie said honestly, "I don't know."

  Her friend made a careless gesture with her hand, saying, "He just stares at you."

  "Really?"

  Blake nodded. "Yup."

  Although Blake's tone was as desolate as the look on her face, there was also conviction in it, and Frankie wondered if Blake realized what this signified. With perhaps the exception of the other Blackwoods, no one else in town knew about that particular trait of Thornton, and Frankie had a feeling it was just one of Thornton's many hidden sides that her friend only knew of.

  Blake was obviously special, so why in the world was Thornton treating like shit?

  "What am I going to do, Frankie?" Blake asked miserably. "I really like him. Really, really, really like him---"