Chapter 7 Wyatt
He opened the window.
That’s the first thing, and it tells me what I already know. I must still smell sweaty even though I showered. I scrubbed the back of my neck and behind my ears the way my mother used to make me, and I put on a clean shirt, and I still don’t smell right to him.
Or maybe he just thinks that I won’t. I see the way he looks at me, like I’m some country hick who can barely string a sentence together.
Okay, maybe he has me on the latter part of that. But I’m not stupid. I just struggle a bit verbally. It’s never been that important up to now.
I keep my eyes on the road.
He is sitting very still with his hands on his knees. He is looking out the window with his face turned away from me. The wind is coming in off his side and it is pushing his scent around the cab so that every time I breathe I get a little more of it.
It’s fine. The drive is only twenty minutes.
The road out of the ridge is empty at this hour. The light is going thin and golden over the west pastures and the shadows of the fence posts are long on the grass. Donna’s truck is two hundred yards ahead of us, tail lights steady.
I shift in my seat.
That’s my first mistake.
Because the second I move, I feel it: a low pulling in my belly. A heat that isn’t from the cab heater.
No.
No, not yet. It’s too early. I have another two weeks. I had planned for it. Donna has the boys penciled in on her calendar for the time I have circled in red in my kitchen. It’s not due yet.
I keep my hands loose on the wheel. I make my breathing slow.
Beside me Julian shifts in his seat. He does not look at me.
He smells so good. He might be a snob, but he’s a gorgeous snob who smells like he has come right out of every horny wet dream I’ve ever had.
My mouth has gone dry.
He is so close. If I moved my right hand off the gear shift and let it fall, it would land on his thigh.
I can see his hand, resting flat on top of it. His fingers are long. I can’t help but wonder what they would feel like on my skin.
What they would feel like inside me.
I press my thighs together.
That is the worst thing I could have done. The friction of my jeans against the inside of my thighs sends a pulse through me that makes my vision gray at the edges, and I feel, with absolute clarity, a small wet give on the seat of the truck.
Oh, God.
I grip the wheel hard enough that my knuckles go pale.
His nostrils flare. I see it out of the corner of my eye. It’s a small, involuntary movement. His head does not turn. His jaw tightens. His hand, on his thigh, curls once and then flattens.
He knows.
He has to know. There is no way he does not know.
He says nothing. He goes on looking out the window.
I keep driving.
Twenty minutes. It is the longest twenty minutes of my life. I count the fence posts as we pass, and the whole time there is a heat in my belly and a wet ache between my legs and the smell of him in my nose.
He does not speak and does not look at me. Mercifully, he doesn’t try to make small talk.
Thank God for that. If he talked to me right now I think I would drive us into a ditch.
The lights of town come up over the rise. The meeting hall is on the far end of the main street, next to the post office, across from the diner. Donna’s sedan pulls into the gravel lot ahead of us and parks. I pull in two spaces over. I put the truck into park. I turn off the engine.
I do not get out.
I sit there with my hands on the wheel for a second longer than I need to, and I breathe, and I tell my body that this is not the time. It doesn’t care.
“Go,” I say. My voice comes out rougher than I mean it to. “I’ll be a minute.”
He looks at me for the first time since we left the yard. His face is carefully blank. His pupils are very large.
“Fine,” he says.
He gets out and walks across the gravel toward Donna, who is already out of her truck and heading toward the diner with Matthew skipping beside her and Caleb trailing, hands in his pockets.
I sit in the cab and put my forehead against the steering wheel.
Too soon. It is too soon. I had more time. He was supposed to be gone by the time it started.
I was going to stock the pantry, put in a grocery order, take the boys to her place for the night, lock myself in upstairs with the fan on and ride it out like I have ridden out every heat since they started.
I lift my head. Through the windshield I can see Donna at the diner door, bending down to say something to Matthew. I see Caleb go inside. I see Donna straighten and then turn and start walking back across the road toward me.
I get out of the truck. I do it quickly. I do not want her coming close enough to smell me.
“How are you doing, sweetheart?”
I glance across the road where Julian is standing, looking at the town hall with his hands in his pockets.
“I’m okay. I don’t want him there,” I say, meaning the ranch.
“I know, love, but he seems respectful. And nice,” she says.
I don’t want to hear that Julian Duffield is nice. Maybe he is, but that doesn’t stop him from looking down on me.
“I don’t think he should be here either,” I say. “This is none of his business.”
“He’s an architect. Maybe he’ll know something we don’t,” she says. “Some new angle.”
“Fine.”
“And I want you sitting next to him while he listens.”
I look at her. I look hard.
She looks back, not blinking.
“Donna.”
“Wyatt.”
I can feel the color going up my neck. I can feel, too, with a slow dull drop in my stomach, that she can smell me from three feet away. She knows what an omega smells like when his body is turning over. She has known me since I was twelve.
Her face does not change. Her eyes go a little kinder, which is worse.
“Let’s get inside,” she says. “It’s not going to be that bad, Wyatt. I promise.”
The meeting is a blur.
I sit where she puts me in the second row with Julian beside me on my right. She takes the seat to my left.
The Linden Group people are up front. They have a slide projector set up. They start talking about jobs and tax base and a phased approach.
I pick up maybe one word in three.
I hear Julian breathing beside me. I hear the small shift of his trousers when he crosses his legs.
I feel the warmth of his arm through my sleeve where our shoulders are, not touching, but nearly touching. It’s an inch, maybe. I could close the inch without moving my body, just by breathing in deep.
I do not breathe in deep.
I do not look at him.
The heat in my belly has gone from a gathering to a settled burn. I have sweat at my hairline and a slow, steady wet at the base of my spine.
Donna asks three questions during the Q and A. She asks them well. I hear her voice and I hear the Linden woman’s voice answering and the words move past me.
Someone asks my opinion. I don’t know who. I hear my name. I hear Donna say, easy as anything, “Wyatt’ll back me up on the easement issue, won’t you, Wyatt,” and I manage a single word that sounds like yes, and she takes it from there, and the meeting moves on.
I do not embarrass myself. That is what I will tell myself later. I did not embarrass myself.
The meeting ends. People stand. There is coffee at the back and handshakes at the front. Donna gets up, and I get up, and Julian gets up, and before Donna can reach him I put a hand on her elbow.
“A minute,” I say, low.
She comes with me out into the corridor. I put my back to the wall. She looks up at me and waits.
“I need space,” I say.
It has been our phrase for years. It means I am going under and I need the boys out of the house.
She nods once.
“When?”
“Tonight. Tomorrow. Maybe.” I swallow. “Soon.”
“I’ll come back tonight and the boys can pick up their things.”
“Thank you.” I close my eyes. “Can you take him too?”
I open my eyes. She is looking at me steadily.
“He’s a grown man,” she says. “He has a car. If he wants to leave, he can leave. I am not running a bed and breakfast for government alphas, Wyatt Briggs, and I am not taking him off your hands so you can pretend this isn’t happening.”
“I’m not pretending anything.”
“Good,” she says. “Then you can figure out what you want to do about it like a grown man yourself.”
She pats my arm once, gentle, and goes back into the hall to find the boys.
The drive back is worse.
I don’t know how that’s possible, but it is. Finally, after what seems like years, I pull into the yard behind the barn.
I am out of the cab before he has his hand on the door handle.
I go straight for the house. I hear the passenger door open behind me and I hear his quiet footsteps on the gravel and I do not turn. I go up the porch steps two at a time. I go through the mudroom. I leave my boots on, which I never do. I go through the kitchen and I head for the stairs.
I make it as far as the sink.
I stop at the sink because my body stops me. I put both hands on the edge of the counter and I stand there and I breathe. I am sweating so much that my hair is wet at the temples. My shirt is sticking to my back. I turn the faucet on. I cup my hands under it and I splash it on my face.
The boys’ voices ring out, Matthew loud, Caleb quieter. They come in and go up the stairs, feet banging. They come back down minutes later with bags. The front door goes again and the engine from Donna’s truck starts up.
They are gone.
It is just me and him.
I straighten up. I turn around.
He is standing in the kitchen doorway. His face is very carefully still. His pupils are very large.
I take a step toward the doorway. I mean to go past him to the stairs. I mean to go up to my room and shut the door and put my head under a cold shower and stay there until my body gives up on me or until the house catches fire, whichever comes first.
I take a step. He does not move out of the way.
I brush against his shoulder.
That is all it is. A brush. My shoulder against his shoulder. Nothing. Less than nothing.
I stop.
He stops breathing. I can hear it. I can hear the small catch of him, the pause, and then the slow careful letting out of air through his teeth.
I turn my head.
He turns his.
We are very close. I can see the line of his jaw. I can see the place on his throat where his pulse is beating hard under the skin. I can see his mouth.
His hand comes up and he puts it, flat, on the side of my neck.
His palm is warm.
I make a sound. I don’t know what the sound is. It is not a word.
I kiss him.
His mouth is hot. His other hand comes up and finds my waist and his fingers close on the flannel of my shirt, a handful of fabric, and he pulls me in. I let him.
My hands find the front of his sweater. I pull. I push him back against the doorframe. He makes a sound into my mouth that is low and surprised and pleased.
I kiss him and he is kissing me back as though he has been waiting as long as I have.