Chapter 11
DESPITE THE MUSIC, Emma had heard the deep, familiar voices outside her door.
Not wanting a confrontation with Cade over moving out of the house without his almighty consent, she’d sneaked to a side window.
The tall window would open enough to let her slip the screen off, crawl out and disappear into the night unnoticed.
Yeah, he’d figure it out and give her hell, but that was fine.
That would happen later, and she’d surely be more prepared later.
Slipping her hands behind the curtains, she flipped the window latch and pulled it up as gently as she could, pulling harder as it went higher.
And then it got stuck. She couldn’t get it to budge, neither up nor down, and cursing it hadn’t made a bit of difference.
It was well and truly wedged in place. A hard yank and the bottom of the screen popped off.
Emma caught it seconds before the whole screen flopped—loudly—onto the ground.
“Note to self,” she whispered, words hard-edged. “Check all cabin windows for functional emergency egress before escape proves necessary.”
With a little contortionist-like maneuvering, she managed to squat in front of the almost floor-to-ceiling window, the screen’s frame held gently in her palms. She hoped the conversation between the men was a short one.
If it wasn’t? If her muscles cramped? The screen would crash.
Discovery loomed, imminent, immense and inevitable.
Busy contemplating the probability that one could, in fact, die of mortification, it took her a moment to realize the conversation had stopped with the sound of skin hitting skin. Hard. Then heavy breathing.
“Cut it out, little brother.” Eli.
“Thanks for the reminder on the official rank and order.” Cade. “What are you doing out here?”
“Came out here to ask you the same thing. All the lights went out but you never made it to the house. Wanted to make sure you didn’t lose your way.”
“Unless you decided to wear ruby slippers, clicked your heels together, whispered ‘There’s no place like home’ and dropped the house on some unsuspecting soul somewhere else, I’m good, thanks.
” Cade. That voice—normally smooth, now gravelly with emotion—carried across the night air.
It held in it a whispered promise of violence, a rough assertion to Eli that he should get out of Cade’s personal space.
There was nothing ambiguous or benign in the statement or, apparently, between the brothers.
Eli had clearly come down to check up on Cade and stage a little intervention, which meant he had to have suspected his younger brother would deviate from the straight line that ran from barn to house.
And Emma was right in between the two buildings, representing that deviation. Cade had been at her door.
He’d come to her.
Her stomach did an involuntary gymnastics routine.
She sucked in a breath. Cade wasn’t a man to waste words, and Emma wasn’t stupid.
He’d have laid things out in black-and-white, explained how things between them were going to go.
She’d have argued, negotiating the finer points as a matter of self-respect, and he’d have ended up in her bed tonight.
That he’d shown up meant he wanted her. It was only a small skip and a hop from his wanting her to her mattering to him, and that was likely the reason he sounded so irritated at having been caught sneaking around by none other than Eli.
“What are you, Graystone? Fourteen? Act like a woman, for heaven’s sake,” she muttered.
Stuck as she was, still half crouched, half squatting with a large window screen in her hands and hiding half behind the curtains, she realized she had two choices—if Cade had, indeed, come to her, she could set the screen down, thus announcing her presence before opening the front door as a normal person would.
Or she could continue as she was and eavesdrop on a conversation she surely wasn’t meant to hear.
Her cheeks heated with humiliation. Cade deserved better than this from her.
Emma opened her mouth to announce her presence when she heard retreating footsteps. The conversation must have wrapped up as she held her internal ethics summit. So much for opening the door and being the one to ride to her cowboy’s rescue.
Her cowboy. She grinned. Juvenile, yes. Impossible, even more so.
Still, she liked the way that sounded. Standing, she let the screen slide through her hands.
It hit the ground just as Cade’s voice, tormented with embattled senses of ageless despair and immediate fury, tore across the still night air and obliterated the distance between Eli and him.
He shouted at his older brother, his voice—and her heart—breaking over the things he’d obviously longed to say to Eli for more than a decade.
Words that revealed a bond that had been broken by one’s dreams and another’s desperation.
And none of it mattered but that Cade had suffered, still suffered, from a history neither he, nor the brother he held responsible, could change.
A fierce desire to protect him rose in her, to pull him close and put herself between him and that history, to somehow change or erase the things that had hurt him and still haunted him. But life didn’t offer do-overs.
The hardships Cade laid bare were paired with the isolation that had followed him into adulthood, and they combined to break her.
Emma wrapped her arms around herself and moved toward the front door as if pulled by some invisible rope, some intangible thing she didn’t understand.
All she understood right then was that she had to get to Cade.
She pulled the front door open to find nothing but silence and a sky full of millions of stars—any of which might have been those wished on by the boy Cade had been.
CADE STORMED THROUGH the house, boots on, and went straight to his room. He wasn’t in the mood to play the role of perfect middle child, the brother who fell in line with the returning elder brother’s brilliant plans to save the day and be grateful for the handouts. Screw. That.
Stripping down to his boxers, he pulled on a pair of nylon training pants and sneakers, grabbed a towel and climbed up the stairs. Ignoring Reagan’s curious stare, he grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and wordlessly brushed by both Tyson and Eli on his way to the front door.
Tyson started to say something, but Eli cut him off with a low comment.
“Stay the hell out of this, Ty,” Cade barked. “And you keep your damn mouth shut, Eli.”
He slammed out of the house and broke into a jog, heading to the barn. Passing Emma’s cabin, he noticed that one of the screens had come off the window and almost stopped to fix it, but it could wait until tomorrow. Right now he needed to unleash some of the violence surfing his temper’s high tide.
He opened the barn’s breaker box and flipped the appropriate switch, lighting up the massive building.
Horses shuffled and snorted in protest, some sticking their heads over stall doors to figure out what the late-night fuss was about.
Unimpressed when Cade threw his hat Frisbee-style across the alley and bounced it off a vacant stall, most of them withdrew.
Cade went into the tack room and hoisted the aged canvas punching bag over his shoulder. He pulled down the large hanging scales and hung the punching bag. He should have brought the tape, wrapped his hands and taken care of his body, but the truth was he didn’t care. He let loose.
Punches flew, the solid thud of each impact muffled in the barn’s wide alleyway. The bag swung wildly. Support chains creaked in protest as they took the brunt of each blow and brought the bag back for more. One knuckle split, then another. He just kept whaling on the bag with everything he had.
Sweat ran into his face and blinded him. He began to crave the water he’d brought with him, but his rage, his raw hurt, ran too hot to stop. Not yet. God save him, maybe not ever.
“Cade.”
The soft entreaty had him whipping around, the bag swinging into him and knocking him forward. Toward the voice. Toward— “Emma.”
She wore cowboy boots with a short, silky sundress that flowed around her as she walked toward him with slow deliberation. Something in her seemed off, troubled even, when she paused.
“You left.” The accusation slipped out between his heavy breaths. She was close, too close.
“I’ve been within your reach since the moment we met in Amarillo. You’ve only had to reach out, Cade. Then...and now.”
He started for her with no idea what he’d do when he got there.
She did the same, yet her movements were filled with purpose.
They met in the middle, her musky, sultry-as-sin smell hitting him a second before his mouth closed over hers in an unspoken demand that she answer in kind.
It was a demand she met with her own counterclaim, one that required he give himself to her in equal measure.
Tongues tangled together with something far more raw than even their first wild night.
Arms wrapped around bodies. She slid one of her legs up the outside of his thigh. He gripped her behind the knee and pulled that leg higher, settling his rock-hard erection against her cleft and thrusting, short erratic movements that drew soft sounds of encouragement from her.
Her nails scraped his scalp as she raked her fingers through his sweaty hair.
He craved this, this wild, uncontrolled passion, this silent affirmation. She’d come to him. His chest swelled, his heart thundering even harder. She wanted him, needed this from him. Seeking him out for a communion of bodies, for a connection. She craved him. Only him. For her, he was enough.
Tearing his mouth away from hers, he buried his face in the crook of her neck and breathed her in.
Her fingers tightened in his hair. “Don’t slow down. I want you, Cade. Only you.”
The echo of his thoughts broke the last of his hold on his sanity. He bent his knees, wrapped his arms around her and lifted. “Legs around my waist.”
She complied even as she hauled his face up and reclaimed his mouth, her tongue mimicking the sexual thrust and retreat he hungered for.
Only from her.
Raw, aching hunger made him clumsy as he stumbled forward. He held her up against the tack room door and let his weight follow. He took her mouth again as he worked his hands under her dress.
No panties. Nothing but skin.
Cade groaned, his hips driving forward so hard the head of his cock breached her sex through the fabric of his workout pants.
She moaned, reaching between them to sweep a thumb over the head.
That touch, firm and demanding, had him yanking his pants down. “I don’t have a condom.” He leaned forward and nipped her ear.
“I’ve got it covered.” She mimicked his action, but she bit him harder.
And he loved it.
“Now stop talking,” she whispered before licking the sting of her bite.
Cade widened his stance, positioned himself and drove forward, sheathing himself. He buried his face in her neck again, muffling his shout of pleasure against her sweat-slicked skin.
She gripped his shoulders and tightened her legs, riding him just as hard as he drove into her.
Their coupling was fast, far faster than he wanted it to be, but just as fast as he needed it. The tack room door rattled violently as he loved her well. He filled her, withdrew, and filled her again, setting a relentless pace and insistent on delivering unquestionable pleasure.
Emma took everything he gave and demanded more, whispering encouragement with language he’d never considered she might use.
It was a wicked side he hadn’t anticipated, and it was the spark that fanned the flames of his desire into an inferno.
The burn started at the base of his spine and spread as if driven by relentless spring winds over parched grasslands.
Orgasm imminent, he changed the angle of his thrusts to ensure Emma received more than enough stimulation to drive her insane.
Wrapping her arms around his neck and putting her mouth to his ear, she upped the dirty talk between pants and small mewls of pleasure.
He shifted a finite amount, finding her spot.
Finally, she came apart in his arms. She shook with the power of her release, her walls tightening around him until he couldn’t hold out any longer.
Cade let go, biting his lip to keep as quiet as he could. His orgasm seemed to go on and on until he shook as hard as she did. He took her down with him to the sawdust-covered ground.
“Holy hell,” he panted. “You come out here to seduce me or kill me?”
“You’re still breathing,” she answered, her own breath just as irregular.
“If this is what I get for working late nights, I’ll leave you my schedule for every night of the next six weeks so you know where to find me.”
She laughed, her breath soft and cool against his heated skin. She shifted in his lap, curling up and laying her head against his shoulder. “Spend the night with me.”
He languidly stroked a hand up and down her spine.
“I’d prefer you spend the night with me.
That way when you get up in the morning and come out of the main house, there won’t be talk, since no one’s aware you’ve moved into the cabin except...
me.” And Eli, but he refrained from adding that little tidbit, the knowledge not sitting well with him that he’d have to explain how Eli knew.
When she stiffened slightly, he pressed on.
“I want tonight with you, Emma. A whole night with you in my arms, your body under mine.” When she didn’t immediately answer and she definitely didn’t relax, he pressed harder. “Please, Emma. Give me tonight.”
Silence hung heavy, and Cade’s heart constricted.
He had to have tonight because she’d be leaving him in a week.
He’d forgotten. In the midst of finding such an enormous and unexpected measure of happiness, he’d set aside the fact it was temporary.
For the first time in his life, he didn’t want temporary.
He wanted a chance. He wanted the opportunity to convince her to stay with him beyond the terms of her contract.
But above all? He wanted her to want him, to need him, the same way he wanted and needed her.
She drew a breath.
“Okay.”