Chapter 27
LONDON
T his is not where I saw this night going when I accepted Madison's invitation to be her plus-one to the Fairfields' Belmont Stakes watch party.
I accepted for one reason: to see Laney.
I didn't know then that "yes" would turn into crawling on my hands and knees beneath a cloth-covered table, my pulse hammering against my throat as I search for any excuse to get her attention.
I saw her the instant I walked into the party.
She captured my attention without trying.
It took all of a second for honey brown eyes to connect with mine and make my heart pound.
I felt the electric current thrumming through her gaze from across the gardens.
I wanted to excuse myself and go to her right then, but someone else has had her ear all night—everyone except me—and I'm growing tired of it.
Her legs, from this view, are impossibly long.
They have haunted my every thought since they were wrapped around me under the dock and again in the barn.
I grind my teeth as I think of how she's ignored me for the past five days.
I know exactly why she's been ignoring me.
Her reason is the same reason I'm here: Madison.
Laney is determined to believe that we are a couple and that she isn't all I think about, even after I gave her those admissions.
I get it, though. I gave her words, and then she had to endure an afternoon on the back of a horse, watching me be friendly with a woman I've been intimate with.
If the roles had been reversed, I would have lost my damn mind.
I also know it's more than that. I'm not dense.
I heard her words after we came down from one of the best orgasms I've ever had, only topped by the only other one I shared with her.
I ran off. I ran to rescue the horse that had saved me, but it was the voice that called out for me that she saw me running toward, and the embrace I know she saw in the barn, that has her doubting what she feels in her bones: me.
She sought comfort in Noah, and now I'm being punished for doing the same.
It doesn't matter that Madison and I have shared a bed a few times over the years.
I was always going to belong to Laney. I've always been all hers, all in.
This is insane. This is crossing every line we've both been carefully straddling, but I can't do it anymore. Every missed opportunity, every word that's gone unsaid…I'm done with all of them.
The moment she shifts to cross her legs, my hand finds her ankle like it belongs there.
Laney goes rigid above me, whatever words were flowing from her lips cutting off in a breathless gasp that she tries to disguise as a cough.
I freeze, my pulse hammering against my ribs as I wait for the inevitable—for someone to notice, for the tablecloth to be yanked away, for this moment to shatter.
But it doesn't come.
The conversation above continues, oblivious.
She's covering for me, and the realization sends heat coursing through my veins.
Laney asked me to stay put, and I didn't. I couldn't. I moved closer, drawn into her orbit like I always am, helpless against her pull.
I saw the way she glanced over her shoulder earlier, the way goosebumps rose on her skin when she sensed I was still near.
I'm certain she's spotted my hat sitting brazenly atop the table—my not-so-subtle calling card .
My thumb traces a slow circle against her ankle bone, and I feel the tremor that runs through her.
Her breathing changes above me, becoming carefully controlled in that way that means she's fighting to stay composed.
The knowledge that I'm affecting her, that she's as desperate for this connection as I am, makes me bolder.
I lean closer, my lips hovering just above her inner knee.
My breath ghosts across her skin, and I watch, mesmerized, as goosebumps bloom in its wake.
She shifts slightly, whether toward me or away, I can't tell, but it's enough permission for me to press the softest kiss there, right where her skin is warmest and most sensitive.
The kiss is barely there, a whisper of contact, but I feel her whole body respond.
Her free hand drops to grip the edge of her chair, knuckles going white with the effort of staying still.
Above me, her voice wavers slightly as she responds to whatever question was just asked, but she recovers quickly, too quickly for anyone else to notice.
"Are you sure you want to hear what I have to say?" my brother asks, and satisfaction curls in my chest. Here I am, literally on my hands and knees for this woman, and I get to eavesdrop on whatever was so important he had to pull her away from me.
My fingers trail higher, just barely, testing boundaries. Her breath catches—a sound so quiet only I can hear it. She knows exactly what game we're playing, knows the risk we're taking, and she's letting it happen. That knowledge makes me reckless.
He knows she's mine. We've never had the conversation, never sorted through our tangled history, but some truths don't need words. And though he let me believe he was pursuing her, I know now it was never real—just another game in the complicated dance between brothers.
But this? This is real. The way she's fighting to keep her composure while my touch sets her on fire.
The way she's protecting this moment, protecting us, even as we teeter on the edge of discovery.
This is everything we've been building toward.
Every stolen glance and loaded silence is finally taking shape.
"I brought you to the table," Laney says, and I can hear the effort it takes to force calm into her voice as my callused hand glides up her leg. "Secrets are poison. I've lived with them for far too long, and I won't do it anymore."
I know those words are for me as much as they are for him.
Their irony leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.
I'm the one who asked her to coffee, who wanted to see her and finally talk through the wreckage we've been tiptoeing around for years.
Then she's the one who stood me up and had the audacity to get salty about it afterward.
And tonight... Christ, that comment about my aftercare in the barn.
She knew precisely what that taunt would do to me, knew it would burrow under my skin and fester, because she knows every fucking button I have.
She knows the way I loved her—wholly, completely, desperately.
She knows I've always taken care of her, that if she asked for five more minutes, she got them. One more kiss was never a question.
The memory of that one night six years ago burns through me.
How, afterward, I collected her dress from the grass, pulled it carefully over her shoulders, smoothed her hair with trembling fingers, and ran my thumbs under her eyes to catch the mascara that had smudged.
She looked so vulnerable then, so beautifully wrecked, and I treated her like she was made of glass.
Now she's too busy trying to fortify her walls, too scared to let me close enough to show her what we can be again if we're brave enough to reach for it.
I skim the backs of my fingers along the tops of her thighs, the silk of her dress hiking up as they make their slow, deliberate climb. Her muscles tense under my touch, a war between wanting to pull away and wanting to lean into the contact.
"I don't have any secrets," my brother says above us, and we both know that's bullshit, but I'm less concerned about whatever he's hiding when every nerve in my body is focused on the woman above me who's trying so hard to stay composed.
"Are you serious right now? You specifically asked me—or maybe threatened is the better word."
The word "threatened" detonates something inside of me, and I can't help but sink my teeth deep into her thigh.
I'm fucking livid that she'd allow my own brother to threaten her and not come to me.
It doesn't matter that we're caught in this gray space between together and apart.
It doesn't matter what labels we've discarded or what boundaries we've tried to draw.
There's no universe, no reality, no scenario where I would allow someone to intimidate her, not even him.
The hand that was tightly gripping the chair glides over my scalp, sending a shiver down my spine and straight to my groin.
A low groan rumbles deep in my chest as her fingers twist in my hair before she tugs with force.
My cock twitches hard before I relinquish her sensitive skin from my teeth.
We've been apart for six years. She can take care of herself.
Laney has always been fiercely independent, unafraid to dance to her own beat, never keen on conforming just to fit in. She likes being on the outside.
"Did I threaten you?" Trigg questions as Laney's hand disappears, leaving me alone under the cloak of the table cover. "Or did you not like the alternate ending?"
This week without her, this goddamn week of silence, has shown me something I can't ignore anymore. I can't do this dance again. I was already planning to lay it all out for her, all the truths I've been choking on, but I wanted them to come in the right order, at the right time.
"Does it matter?" she asks as I place a chaste kiss on her milky skin where a mark is already blooming into a bruise, the sight stirring to life something possessive—something territorial.
She's mine. I've only been lying to myself, trying to make myself believe there was a universe where I'd actually let her go again if she told me no.
I tried that. Living without her wasn't living at all.
I'd follow her to the ends of the earth and live in her shadow .