“If you’re dead to her,” Clay remarked drily, “that’s going to be one hell of a funeral.”
“Shit,” was all I could say.
“You got that right,” Barrett added. “That’s not the look a girl gives a guy she doesn’t care about.”
She still had feelings for me. Feelings so strong everyone in the yard had noticed. And from the way my heart beat like hummingbird wings, I knew her response wasn’t one-sided.
Possession rose up, threatening to engulf me, as I contemplated ever letting her move on or go away without me. I couldn’t let her walk out of my life again. It wasn’t happening. She was mine. Always had been. I saw it so clearly now. We’d tried avoiding one another, tried getting on with life, but we were drawn together once more, and that spark between us had quickly burst into a wildfire.
“Food’s up!” Lawson called. Between the eight of us, we’d finished the burgers and all of us were ready for more food.
I tried to act casual, but my mind was so full of newfound possibilities that I just kept stumbling into people and dropping things while I lined up with a plate and took some bread, ready for Lawson to give me some of his famous barbecue beef. I wasn’t paying enough attention to be embarrassed by my clumsiness. Further down the line, I sensed her. I was hyper-aware of her presence, and my body itched to do things to her that were going to get me in a whole heap of trouble. I didn’t think I could stop myself anymore. Wasn’t sure I wanted to.
The only thing I could focus on right then was the fact I wanted to grab her, pin her down over a hay bale, spank her ass with a riding crop until she begged me to fuck her, then take her, roughly, until she came so hard she screamed herself hoarse. I’d brand her insides with my cum until she knew she was mine, only mine. And then I’d do it all over again.
* * *
Dylan
I was falling under his spell all over again. I had to go. Needed to get away from him. This couldn’t happen. I knew, if I stayed here, there was only one way this could end.
I got to my feet, struggling to balance. One of the women put her hands out to steady me. I stumbled into Lawson’s house and flopped down on the couch.
“You okay?”
I startled for a split-second before my brain registered the fact that a woman had spoken. Looking up, I saw Alana.
“I’m sorry. I just—” I stopped myself before I said too much.
“Come on upstairs, where we won’t get harassed by well-meaning people asking why we came indoors,” she told me.
Numbly, I followed her into a guest room. She sat on the bed and indicated for me to do the same.
“Something happened between you two, didn’t it?” she said gently.
I nodded, staring at the flowers on the wallpaper. “I mean, obviously, since we’re not together anymore.”
“Yeah, but you said you guys broke up what... two years ago? Usually people don’t react like that all this time later.”
I didn’t get the impression she was prying.
“I did a stupid thing. Then I left him to deal with the consequences.” My strength ran out and I began to cry for everything we’d had, before I destroyed it. “You know all the guys are... into things, right?”
“By ‘things’, you mean kinky stuff? Yeah, I may have noticed.” Alana’s sarcasm made me smile for a moment before the heartache overpowered it again.
“I knew before we did anything. We’d talked about it extensively. I had a safeword. We had discussed limits. Jake did everything the way he should have done.”
“What happened?”
“I consented. I told him I’d try being spanked. It’s not that complicated, is it? I mean, all I had to do was stay still and let him do stuff, right?”
“Not really; in my experience, a submissive needs to be in the right mindset, but carry on.”
“Well anyway, I got into position, he tied me down and when that first swat landed on my ass, I just lost it. I don’t think I was ready for how I reacted. He sure wasn’t. He untied me as quickly as he could, but I was just so upset. I don’t know what I’d expected, but something about it just made me feel so powerless, and that made me angry and hurt.” I stared fixedly at that flower on the wallpaper as I confessed the terrible thing I’d done. “I called the cops on him.”
“What?” Eyes wide with shock, Alana covered her mouth with her hand. “On Jake?”
I nodded, trying not to see her reaction. I knew I’d done a truly terrible thing that day.
“They arrested him. I calmed down, and I didn’t press any charges but that doesn’t change what I did.”
Alana exhaled slowly. “Did you talk things through with him?”
“No.”
“And today has dragged it all up again.” Against all odds, her voice was sympathetic.
I finally admitted the truth to myself and I began to cry. “It’s taken me so long to realize, but the reason I got so mad was... was... oh, shit, I really need to talk to him.” I stood up but Alana put a steadying hand on my shoulder.
“Stay here, unless you want to answer a zillion questions. I’ll go get him.” She got onto her feet slowly, and I felt guilty for causing her to do so much moving around, because she was clearly recovering from childbirth, still.
“Are you sure? I can go...” I protested.
“I gotta get back outside anyway. It’s just a question of whether to go now or in a few minutes.”
She disappeared and I felt so alone, and so very, very stupid for everything I’d put Jake through.
He came upstairs and fresh tears began to fall.
“What’s going on? Alana just said I had to come talk to you.” He sounded confused. He had every right to be.
“I’m sorry,” I wept. “I’m so sorry.”
“Are you drunk?”
“No! I was talking to Alana and I realized why I got so mad when you sp-sp-spanked me.” Damnit, why was it so hard to say that word in front of him?
“You took two years to figure out what upset you?”
“Yeah. I avoided thinking about it for the longest time because I was so ashamed of what I’d done.”
“And now you’re gonna tell me?”
For a moment I thought he was going to walk out without letting me explain.
“If you want to hear it,” I replied, uncertain about whether he was open to talking or not. It had been so long, and I’d never made any attempt to do this before.
He regarded me for several seconds, his eyes scrutinizing my face like he was waiting for me to tell him this was all a joke or something. I wondered what he saw when he looked at me, now.
Finally, he nodded.
“Explain. But I don’t have to accept what you say.” That hurt, but I guessed it was only as much as I deserved.
“When you said you wanted to spank me, straight away I had this gut reaction. I was scared but I knew I wanted to try it. Everything we talked about sounded okay... then I got over your knee, and I felt so vulnerable, so submissive and under your control, that I didn’t know how to feel.”
“There’s no right or wrong way to feel,” Jake remarked.
“There was part of me—the part that had to be twice as good as all the guys in vet school, the part that climbed trees higher than anyone else as a kid, the part that urges my horse to keep going even when other people would stop—that felt like it was completely wrong to let you do that. It just... reared up, I guess, and trampled on the other part of me—the part that wanted you to take control and spank me—and I panicked and started fighting you.”
“I remember. Seemed to come from nowhere.”
“And then, I couldn’t reconcile the two halves. I got angry about the whole situation. Angry that you’d made me feel like that. Angry with myself for letting you. And worst of all, angry with myself for wanting you to. Then I felt so ashamed.”
“So instead of talking things through, you ran away. And called the cops.”
My eyes were full of tears, now, I
suddenly noticed.
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
“You realize you could have left me with a serious criminal record that might have destroyed my future?” he asked bluntly.
“I wasn’t thinking about that.”
“I know. You were only thinking about yourself. And now, you’re still only thinking about yourself. You think you’ve got the right to tell your side of things, you’ve got a right to be listened to, but you don’t. I heard you out, from courtesy, plain and simple. But you don’t have the right to be forgiven for what you did. And it’s not your decision to make.”
“Please,” I begged, tears falling down my cheeks now and landing on my shirt.
“No. You definitely don’t have the right to try and change my mind. You threw all that away two years ago.”
I stared at him as if he’d slapped me.
“Stop thinking about you, and what you want, and what people can do for you. Maybe then you’ll be able to submit to someone. God knows, you need that spanking, but I’d have to be a complete fool to give it to you.”
He gave me a hard look, of the sort that made me want to throw myself over his knee and wait for him to do what he would.
“I can’t trust you, Dylan,” was his parting shot before he walked out. The pain in my heart that had long-since been hidden by emotional duct tape suddenly caught me once more, and I gasped, breathless, trying to control my reaction. There would be time to cry once I wasn’t here.
Chapter 5
Dylan
I didn’t feel like going back down to the barbecue and facing all those people, but I knew I had to, at least to get someone to help me take the horse.
I decided to approach Clay, since he didn’t look too engrossed in the conversation.
“C-could you help me get Betsy in the trailer? I’ll need s-someone to s-sign some p-p-paperwork,” I said, struggling to stop myself falling apart in front of everyone.
Clay looked over at Jake, then back at me. For a moment I thought he was going to insist that Jake and I work together, but he didn’t.
“Sure. We can do that right now, if you need to go.”
“I do.”
I left the words in the air and let Clay lead the way to the stable.
“Things looked like they were going so well, didn’t they,” he murmured thoughtfully.
I gritted my teeth. “Yeah. But some things are just too broken to fix, apparently.” My voice was subdued and near-dead. I didn’t want to talk about this right now because I was going to go to pieces.
“You hurt Jake pretty bad, before, but I reckon you know that, already. That why you feel so guilty?”
“I feel guilty about a lot of things, when it comes to Jake.” Please, stop talking, Clay. I couldn’t hold the pain inside me much longer. It was almost like he was doing it on purpose.
“That’s true enough. But if you leave, now, you know nothing will change.”
I broke.
“What else can I do?” I wailed in exasperation, sorrow and frustration. The tears started again and I tried to ignore them. “He doesn’t want me! I fucked things up too badly! So this is all I get. I get to see him getting on with his life but I never get to be a part of it again.”
I fell heavily on the dirt floor of the stables and sobbed, not caring anymore that I’d fallen apart in front of Clay.
I didn’t care about anything.
“You tried talking, but you know Jake. He’s not a talking kind of guy.”
“What else can I do?” I repeated.
“If you two are meant to be, you’ll find yourselves back together again.”
“I don’t believe in fate. I believe in people messing things up and breaking stuff and getting in their own way.”
To my surprise, Clay got down onto the floor and pulled me onto his knee. He held me and rocked me back and forth, shushing me like I was a baby. For some reason, it was comforting.
“Fate’s got nothing to do with it. You two fit together. You’ve both been too proud and stubborn to accept it, these past couple of years, and now you’re starting to bend. Jake’s a man. He’ll come around. He’s just gonna do it on his own terms; his own schedule. You’ve done everything you can, right?”
“Short of taking my panties off and throwing myself over his—uh—throwing myself at him.”
“So now it’s time to let him do some realizin’ of his own.”
“You said I shouldn’t go. But now you’re saying I shouldn’t get in his way. I don’t understand. And anyway, if he doesn’t want me around, I’ll just go. I don’t want to push my company on him.”
Clay sighed.
“Listen, everyone around Jake can see he’s been pining for you this whole time. Come back to the barbecue, finish your food, get phone numbers for the girls. I’m sure the four of you hit it off already.”
He didn’t outright say it, but it sounded to me like Clay was trying to engineer some sort of grown-up version of The Parent Trap.
“Okay.”
“Of course, it would be a whole lot easier to get you over here if you’d just take up vetting again. You know we’re on the lookout for one and the cattle and horses need something pretty regularly.”
I shook my head. “Some things... some things end, and it’s best to just let them be over.”
There might be a chance for me and Jake, but there was no way I was ever going to work as a vet again.
“Offer’s there, if you want it.”
I felt like there was a fork in the road ahead of me. One path led to the safety of being by myself. All I had to do was insist on taking the horse, right now, and I could be gone from here and never look back. Maybe quit my job at the sanctuary and move state so I never had to think about Jake again. The other path was frightening. It led to the uncertainty of waiting for Jake to forgive me—if he ever decided to. And in the meantime, I’d probably have to deal with a lot of crap from him.
Was what we’d had two years ago worth fighting so hard for?
My heart already knew the answer.
“It’s pretty hard to say no to Lawson’s barbecue,” I conceded.
“Atta girl,” Clay said, helping me get back up again. I’d forgotten what it was like to have Clay and Lawson looking out for me, like two older brothers. “C’mon. Kinsley made dessert and I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”
I nodded and blew my nose before following Clay back to the food.
* * *
Jake
When Clay returned with Dylan, I inwardly groaned. She was like a bad penny; I just couldn’t seem to get rid of her. I’d thought my harsh words upstairs would have gotten her to leave, but here she was, covered in dirt and with puffy eyes and tear tracks down her face, sitting beside Alana who was clearly trying to keep the conversation going. Had Clay just spanked her? The possessiveness in my chest swelled again and I looked over at him pointedly. He frowned back, as if I’d done something.
“You should try Kinsley’s cheese,” Alana said, handing a bowl of homemade soft cheese to Dylan.
“Thanks,” Dylan mumbled, and her voice was still crackly.
“Clay, can you help me get more beer?” I asked, giving him a look.
“Sure.” He got up and we went to Lawson’s kitchen.
The moment we were alone, I rounded on him.
“What the hell?” I demanded.
“You’ll have to be more specific,” he replied in an amiable tone.
“I thought she was leaving!”
“She changed her mind.” His calmness was infuriating.
“Did you spank her?”
“What?” Clay demanded. “No! I’ve already got a girl, remember? If I wanted to spank Dylan, I’d have to talk to Kinsley, first. Did you see me talking to Kinsley?”
I backed off. “No. But you two were gone a while and Dylan’s clearly been on the ground somewhere, and her face is all swollen like she was crying.”
“So you thought I’d spanked her? Way to jump to conclu
sions!”
I threw my hands up in the air in exasperation. “What am I supposed to think?”
Clay sighed deeply. “You know, she asked me the same question about something you did. And it’s gotten me thinking, perhaps the two of you need to stop trying to figure out what you’re supposed to think, and just do what you feel.”
I shook my head. “It’s complicated.”
“Only because you’re both making it that way. She’s shown you she’s willing to bend. What are you going to do about it?”
I stared at him for a long minute. It was hard to think straight when she was so close.
“I thought you had my back, Clay,” I growled.
He put a hand on my shoulder and I shook it off. “One day, you’ll see that I do,” he replied.
“I want her more than I want food and drink. But how can I ever trust her not to do the same thing again?” My voice cracked a little.
“You both gotta take it slow. Trust is earned. Talk to Barrett, find out how he handled it when Harper ran out on him.”
I shook my head. “That was different.”
“Was it?” Clay raised a brow and I sighed. I hated when he was right about stuff.
“When I was alone with her, it took everything I had not to drag her panties down and square things between us,” I confessed. I knew Clay would understand.
“But you didn’t. You know why?” Clay asked.
I shook my head.
“You’re a good man, Jake.”
“I feel like an asshole,” I admitted. “I was pretty hard on her upstairs.”
“It’ll pass. C’mon, let’s get those beers before people think we’ve eloped.”
I snorted with amusement and opened the fridge.
“Looks like Lawson forgot to stock up,” I remarked.
“I’ve got plenty.” Clay led the way to his place and I thought over the events of the afternoon. I wanted Dylan, but I was a man, and I couldn’t just run back to her, lay down and wait for her to fuck me over again. I had my pride.
It would have been so easy to let her back into my life and pretend like everything was just the way it used to be, but at the same time, she needed to know in no uncertain terms that I wasn’t going to stand around and let her hurt me again.
Leave Me Breathless: A second chance romance Page 3
