18
That night, I sit beside Conor and Jarret on the back-porch steps. We showered, ate dinner, and finished the daily chores. Sore muscles, stiff joints, leaden exhaustion—I earned every ache alongside my girl, and despite the sweltering humidity, I’m blissfully content.
Only two things could’ve made this day better. Bringing Lorne home and killing my father.
Conor reclines between Jarret and me, arms braced behind her and face tilted toward the stars. Beneath her serene expression, the long day weighs heavily on her eyelids.
I examine the delicate lines of her profile, marking each long, low sigh from her lips. “You’re tired.”
“Just a freckle.” She holds up a finger and thumb an inch apart and winks. “Is overworking me part of my therapy?”
She has no idea.
“Speaking of freckles…” I circle a finger in front of her flawless face. “Where did yours run off to?”
“Haven’t been in the sun much and…” She shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe I grew out of them?”
“All of them?” I direct my eyes to her tank top, to the vicinity of her right nipple and my favorite freckle.
“Not all of them.” She looks away, and the corner of her mouth crooks up.
My groin tightens, and my breaths deepen. What I wouldn’t give to see that freckle tonight, to hold it in my hand and sink my teeth into it.
“I was thinking…” She stares out at the dark field and absently picks the dirt from her nails. “I’d like to visit Lorne.”
“I talked to him today.” Jarret bends his legs on the stairs and drapes his arms over his knees.
“You did?” Her voice rises in pitch. “Does he know about Levi Tibbs?”
“He stays abreast of everything.” I draw her eyes back to me. “Half the time, he’s the one keeping us informed.”
“I told him you’re here.” Jarret bumps his shoulder against hers. “He wants to see you, Conor. Very much.”
“Hard to believe that.” She pinches her lip, her expression troubled. “Last time I saw him—”
“His reasons were the same as ours.” I tug her fingers from her mouth and hold onto them. “He was protecting you.”
“And now?” She slips her hand from mine. “Your dad’s out there, wherever, and I’m supposed to blindly trust that I’m safe if I don’t leave the ranch. Except the last time I was here, you chased me away to allegedly keep me safe. It doesn’t make sense, and I need it to make sense.”
I share a look with my brother. “I’ll answer one question tonight.”
“In exchange for…?”
“Let me worry about that.” I tuck her hair behind her ear, clearing my view of her stunning face. “What’s the one thing you want to know more than anything else?”
Her lashes lower. Her brows pull in, and she makes a soft Hmmm sound in her throat.
Then she flicks her eyes to me. “How did you lose your virginity?”
My heart jolts, pounding a roar in my ears. Of all the questions she should be asking—about her safety, the ranch, our dads’ involvement—she asks about me . A personal detail like that wouldn’t concern her unless she’s thinking about us.
She’s thinking about our kiss.
I study her as she studies me. The silent stare off makes my dick swell and my throat go dry. Christ, I want to fuck her, roughly and recklessly, until she screams my name and begs for mercy.
But more than that, I want her to start living.
“It’s…uh, really hot out here.” Jarret hooks a finger under the neck of his shirt and tugs.
“How hot?” Her eyes light with mirth, locked on mine, as she initiates a game the four of us used to play.
Jarret taps his fingers on his leg. “I’m sweatier than a pregnant nun on a Saturday.”
“Sweatier than two mice fucking in a wool sock.” I grin.
“Sweatier than a cowboy writing a love note.” Conor arches a brow.
We continue for a few more rounds, drifting into easy laughter before falling silent.
“It is hot.” I climb to my feet and offer her my hand. “I’ll answer your question inside.” In my bedroom.
She grips my fingers long enough to stand, follows me into the house, and through the sitting room.
“Conor?” Jarret pauses in the main hall between the two wings and waits for her to face him. “It’s really good to have you home.”
She goes still, expressionless. Then her mouth parts. Her fingers touch her throat, and she walks to him.
She reaches him with her arms open, and he scoops her up in a tight hug, his eyes squeezed shut.
When he lowers her feet to the floor, his gaze finds mine over her shoulder. The relief on his face spreads a loosening warmth through my chest.
He needed that…that reassurance from her. It’s not forgiveness exactly, but it’s progress.
“Night.” She steps away from him and strides past me, heading to my bedroom.
I trail behind her, shamelessly staring at her ass in those cotton sleep shorts.
Waves of natural red hair hang to her tiny waist. She’s tiny everywhere, from her bare feet and slender legs to the cute biceps of her inked arms. She’s so delicate she looks ethereal, but there’s plenty of muscle on that petite frame.
I felt it flexing and bunching this morning when I had her pinned against me.
She enters the bedroom and perches on the foot of the mattress.
“Well?” She glances around the room and squints. “I don’t see any stumps to stand on. What’s the form of payment for tonight’s emotional blackmail?”
Straight to the point and full of piss and vinegar. This should be fun.
I stand in front of her and clasp my hands behind my back. “I’m sleeping in here going forward. With you . That’s the deal.”
“No.” She scans my face, and her head gives a slight shake. “No way.”
“Clothes on. No sex…until you’re ready.”
“Until I’m ready?” She surges from the bed, hands fisted at her sides. “I didn’t return home for buckin’ or bakin’, Jake Holsten. If you’re looking for someone to keep your sheets warm, check the Big Sugar. There’s a table of cheap boots waiting for their seventeen orgasms.”
“Sit down.” The bark in my voice makes her jump. I lower my tone, but it’s no less stern. “Sit. Down.”
She does, glaring and balling her fists on her lap.
I bend over her, with my hands on the mattress, bracketing her hips. “I’m going to sleep in here with you and stay at your side, because that’s what you need and that’s what I want.”
“I need to be alone.” Her gaze lowers to my chest and skitters away.
“You’ve been alone for six years.” I grip her chin and force her to look at me. “No more.”
She yanks free of my grasp, and her eyes dart around the room, looking at everything but me. She wants to flee, but she won’t. She’s too damn tenacious.
“You better not give me a half-ass answer.” She pushes against my chest until I move. Then she tosses me a world of contempt in her eyes. “If you’re sleeping in here, I want to hear every detail about your first time. Who and how and where. No filtering.”
She doesn’t just want to torment herself. She intends to use that information to resent me, hate me, and push me away. Because I’m affecting her, exposing vulnerable parts of her she doesn’t want to acknowledge or examine. Self-preservation demands she put up walls to keep me out.
And I’m prepared to kick them all down.
“She was nineteen.” I sit on the bed beside her. “I was twenty.”
“Twenty?” Her mouth falls open, closes, and opens again.
“That can’t be right. I saw you with Sara Gilly, and you…
Well, you sure looked like you knew what you were doing.
And what about all your pole ponies at the bar?
The things those women said…” She rakes a hand through her hair, eyes wide.
“You’re telling me you were a twenty-year-old virgin? How is that even possible?”
“If you let me talk, I’ll explain it.”
Her teeth click together, and she narrows her eyes as if to say, Get on with it.
I pull a knee onto the bed between us, turning sideways, so I can monitor her breathing and expressions.
“I lost my virginity at a field party.” I wet my lips. “In a barn. It was dark and godawful loud. The rowdy crowd and music…”
She claps a hand over her mouth, and a sheen of moisture shines in her eyes.
“I stripped her from the waist down and ate her pussy.” Blood rushes to my cock. Christ, I can still taste her shivering desire, her sweet innocence. “Then I fucked her against the wall.”
“No.” She chokes and leaps from the bed. “It wasn’t you.”
“We were surrounded by rutting college kids, blinded by total darkness, and I think the noise permanently damaged my eardrums. But she was all I felt, and I took her hard. Lasted an embarrassingly short couple of seconds. She was so tight and wet, and I was inexperienced and overexcited. To this day, I still regret that she didn’t come. ”
“It couldn’t have been you.” Her knees wobble, and she rubs her arms, blinking rapidly. As if out of compulsion, she reaches toward me and touches my hair, the stubble on my face, and my lips. Then she yanks her arm back. “You’re lying. The man I was with had black curls and—”
“I wore a wig under the baseball cap. Waxed my face to remove the stubble.” I hold up my hand. “Fingerless gloves hid the scar. Your scent saturated the leather for months.”
I inhale slowly, reliving the memory. I slept with those gloves long after her smell wore off.
“They’re in the nightstand.” I gesture behind me.
Her chest hitches, and her feet move, circling the bed. She yanks open the drawer and strokes a hand over the contents.
“They’re just gloves.” Her gaze snaps to mine. “He didn’t taste like you.”
“I bummed a cigarette at the party to mask my breath.”
She backs away from the bed, vigorously shaking her head. “I would’ve known it was you.” Turning, she paces through the room. “How could I have not known? God, you must think I’m the biggest idiot.”
“You’re the smartest, sexiest—”
“Stop!” She presses her fingers against her temples and closes her eyes. “You stood in the doorway of that barn. You stood there, staring at me like you knew.” Her lashes lift, her features cast in teary accusation. “You knew why I was there.”