Chapter 15
I never worried about being bad or being good. I worried about being alive.
—Austin Wilder’s journal, May 25, 1857
M illie couldn’t believe this was happening. Really, she couldn’t believe any of the last hour had occurred.
And now Austin was kissing her again. But it was hotter, more dangerous than the kiss they had shared in his driveway.
She knew she could say no. Because he was angry and wild, and she wasn’t much better.
But she didn’t want to. Everything she had ever known about her life had just been dismantled neatly with one box of documents.
She would always be suspicious now. Of how much her family had known and hidden from her.
Of how calculated the legend was. To keep the Wilders in their place, while elevating the Talbots.
To keep this narrative as it was, rather than making room for the truth.
So maybe it was all right to just kiss him. Maybe it was all right to give in to the less rational part of herself. He had said it, and it had made her angry: that she wanted to know what it was like to ride an outlaw.
She never would’ve admitted that was true. But it was. Mostly because she wanted to tap into a part of herself that had been ignored all these years.
She wanted to feel something. If she couldn’t feel good enough, then she wanted to feel exciting. She wanted to feel . . . pleasure. Need. She wanted to feel desired.
You’re unhappy.
Heather’s words echoed inside her.
She had a feeling Heather was right.
She was dismantling her life because she didn’t like it.
And this . . . it was going to be a disaster. It was never going to be anything more than just this one night. And then they were going to have to contend with each other all the days afterward.
But she was already living a disaster, and none of it was of her own making.
Just as it wasn’t his.
Not really.
Yes, they had made choices within the framework they had been given, but that framework had been so . . . set. From the beginning.
They hadn’t had a say in that.
So now she wanted to make her own mistake, maybe.
To do something ill-advised.
Wasn’t that her right?
Because she wasn’t inherently good. And if she wasn’t inherently good, then maybe she didn’t have to work so damned hard.
So she kissed him back. Let him consume her. Let her need for him burn through her like a wildfire.
His touch was firm, almost brutal. And there was a desperation in it that was healing.
No man had ever touched her like this. His hand skimmed down her back, down to her rear, and he cupped her through the thin fabric of her dress, squeezing hard.
“Oh,” she gasped.
“You want this?” He kissed her deep, dizzyingly. His tongue licked slowly against hers. And then he looked at her with those wild blue eyes, and her heart beat a rapid response.
“Yes,” she said.
“You gotta be sure. Because I don’t do things by halves. And this? This might burn us both to the ground.”
“Good,” she said, the word coming out a raspy whisper. “I am so tired. I’m so tired of being careful. I have been careful all my life, and what has it gotten me? Nothing. I don’t want that. It didn’t protect me. I want to feel something.”
“Hang on then, Sheriff. Because I’m damn sure going to make you feel more than you ever have in your life.”
He picked her right up off the ground, as if she weighed nothing. His kiss was like an all-consuming fire as he carried her out of the living room, up the stairs.
“Which bedroom?”
“I’m still in . . . I’m still in my old room.”
It felt silly then. But she had never moved into her dad’s room. Because that had seemed wrong. Austin carried her over to the bed and placed her in the center of the mattress. And he looked down at her. She couldn’t believe this. She could not believe she was about to do this. But she wanted it. And she didn’t want to do anything to break the spell. She didn’t want to do anything to make him stop.
“Did you have sex with him here?”
His words shuddered through her, making her heart stop.
“I . . . what?”
“Michael. Did he have you in this bed?”
She looked away. “Yes.”
“Good. Because I’m going to obliterate that memory. Next time I ask, you’ll say no. Because sex with him isn’t anything like sex with me. You understand?”
This was terrifying. Because then and there, she knew that he was going to ruin her for other men. Michael hadn’t done that. She’d never worried he would. But now she was terrified. Because she knew that Austin was going to keep his promise. He was going to show her something so different from what she’d experienced before, it was going to shift her world on its axis. Everything about him was like that.
He challenged her on every front. Why should it be different in bed?
“Have you ever had sex with a woman in her own house?” She didn’t know where she found the boldness to ask that question; she didn’t even know where it had come from.
“No,” he said.
“Just hotel rooms.”
“Yeah.”
“So you won’t have to walk by and wonder if she’s still there. If she has another lover. But you’ll have to do that with me. So maybe you should be a little bit worried about how tonight is going to change you too.”
He leaned down over her. And her breath left her body. Hell, her soul just about left her body. He smelled so good, so intoxicating and wonderful. She wanted him. She had never felt like this before. She had felt the need to be close to somebody, and she had felt flattered by Michael’s attention, but she hadn’t felt desperate before.
“I’m not worried.”
She didn’t have time to ask him what he meant, because he was kissing her again. Carrying her off to another place and time.
She would’ve believed that he was an outlaw. Bad enough to rob a bank, a train, a stagecoach. He seemed that dangerous.
And if she wanted that, then what did that make her?
Definitely not the woman she’d believed she was her whole life. Definitely not.
“These buttons,” he growled. “I’ve been thinking about these buttons for too damned long.” He began to undo them, parting the fabric, and looking at her, bold and hard.
She had mostly had sex with the lights off. She didn’t know what to do with this frankness. She also thought it was silly to protest. If you wanted someone’s hands on you, wanted their mouth on you, wanted them inside you, how could you complain that they were looking at you?
He stripped her dress away from her body, leaving her in her simple white cotton bra and matching underwear.
He rested his forehead against hers, and he was breathing hard.
“What’s wrong?”
“Trying to get it together.”
His bravado broke then. That certainty he’d been trying to project that she wasn’t going to do to him what he was doing to her.
Something about her extremely unsexy underwear was pushing him to his limit. She had seen it. He couldn’t take that knowledge away from her.
Then he reached up and unclipped her bra, exposing her breasts to his hungry gaze.
They were small. Nothing to write home about, really, but he looked as if he was starting to compose a letter.
Then he grabbed the waistband of her underwear, tugged them down all the way to her ankles.
“Damn,” he said, raking her with a fierce look. “You are . . . hiding under those dresses. Behind that library counter.”
“I’m not really hiding behind the library counter. I’m doing my job behind it. It’s just people assume things about librarians. . . .”
“Yeah, we’re the kings and queens of assumptions around here.”
“I want . . . I want to see you,” she said.
“Just a minute.”
He kissed her neck, down to the crest of her nipple, which he tugged into his mouth, wringing a hoarse cry from deep inside her. Then he kissed his way down her body, to the center of her thighs. He pushed them wide, and buried his face there, his lips and tongue stunning her, the move so definitive and bold, all she could do was cry out.
“Austin.”
He held her still, clinging to her hips as he ate her. She had . . . she had read about this. In that romance novel. But she had never once experienced it. She had thought it sounded embarrassing. Wet and unsavory. And anyway, Michael had never offered to do it, and she was never going to ask.
But Austin was.... He was putting the illicit descriptions on those pages to shame. Each flick of his tongue was a revelation as he drove her closer and closer to the brink of something she couldn’t quite reach.
“Yes,” he growled, pushing two fingers deep inside her as he continued to taste her.
Her hips arced upward, shock lancing her.
And with two deep strokes of his fingers, she unraveled, crying out his name, her orgasm breaking so easy, so fast, she hadn’t even seen it coming.
She had never . . . understood. Why people lost their minds over this, why somebody would wreck a relationship.
She had assumed it was just men. Men who got off easy, who liked variety, who could engage in this sort of thing without feeling deep intimacy.
But suddenly, it was as if blinders had been torn from her eyes.
I didn’t buy you the vibrator as a joke. . . .
But she had thought so. Because she hadn’t. . . . She just hadn’t understood. She wasn’t sure she did now. But she was . . . undone. Utterly and absolutely.
And then he moved away from her. She was still shaking and shuddering. He stood back and took his shirt off in one fluid motion, his body leaving her speechless.
He was entirely made of muscle, with tan skin stretched tight over the top of enticing ridges. Dark hair covered his chest, moving down his stomach in a line that left her mouth dry.
He undid his belt fluidly with one hand, demonstrating just how good he was at this. At this entire thing. She would maybe be jealous at some point, but not now. Now she was just grateful that she was benefiting from all his experience. From the fact that he knew how to put on a show, and also deliver.
Her body was buzzing with the aftereffects of the orgasm he had just given her.
Nothing like any of her previous experience.
She’d had orgasms. But they had been hard ones. Something she’d fought for with her eyes squeezed shut, something that she had taken control of in bed with Michael.
If she could be on top, if she could direct the movements, then she could make it happen. Having someone else wrench a climax from her when she hadn’t even been trying, when she hadn’t even expected it, well, that was something she hadn’t known was possible.
She forgot to be insecure. Forgot to wonder what he thought about her.
The first time she ever had sex, she had been flattered. Grateful that Michael found her attractive enough. That he wanted to take on the difficulties of being saddled with a twenty-four-year-old virgin.
Because honestly, most men found it weird. Not that she had been close enough to any to really know how weird they found it, but she’d felt as if her virginity hung over her head, a great big scarlet V that followed her around and made her Teflon to men. They just sort of slid right off.
But Michael had said he liked that about her. That she had made it something special. Because she had waited.
She had never pushed back and said that she hadn’t waited on purpose.
Instead, she had fallen into line. Had played into his idea of her. Maybe a little bit too much. She had difficulty being bold. Voicing her opinions. She had wanted to stay attractive to him. And he had indicated that he found her traditional values, his words, attractive.
So when he had gone and slept with somebody else, it had hurt in a very particular way. Because she had felt incapable of fulfilling his fantasy.
She didn’t care about Austin’s fantasies.
She wanted to laugh. She didn’t care at all. He was her fantasy. And right now, that was all that mattered. Right now, she wanted to bask in that realization.
As he undid his jeans, she stared at him, shamelessly. She watched him get naked. And she bit her lip when she looked at that most masculine part of him. Thick and long, more than she had ever seen. More than she had ever imagined was possible.
Her internal muscles clenched tight in anticipation. She was aching already. She had never wanted it like this before. She had never wanted another person like this.
She had never had a fantasy that felt like this.
Before she could overthink it, she got up onto her knees, then moved to the edge of the bed. She put her hand out and touched his chest, a sensual shiver moving through her body. She kissed his jaw, and he made a deep, masculine sound that resonated in his chest.
Then she kissed his neck, down his chest, his stomach.
Her stomach tightened with a sense of dread and anticipation.
She had done this before. But it was a strange, uneasy sort of thing. Again, as if she was violating her Madonna image and straying too far into whore. Not that she thought there was anything wrong with it. It was just....
She wanted to do it for Austin. Because he was beautiful. It was about her, not him. And that helped banish her trepidation. She leaned in, flicking her tongue over the broad head of his arousal. She shivered.
He tasted so good.
He growled, his hand moving back to grab her hair.
He guided her head down onto him, and there was no question about whether or not he was enjoying this. Whether or not he wanted it from her.
He wasn’t subtle, Austin.
She found that she liked that about him.
She also liked the flavor of him, filling her mouth, the feel of him.
She was helplessly aroused by what she was doing. By her own boldness.
She didn’t feel like a sad, insipid woman who ought to be grateful for a man’s attention. She felt empowered.
She felt desired. And better still, she was desirous.
She felt she deserved it.
And she was going to have it.
He urged himself farther down her throat, and she accommodated him like a valiant soldier.
She had never thought this could be arousing. But she was helplessly turned on.
Suddenly, with just as much certainty as he had brought her to him, he moved her away.
“Fuck,” he said. “I don’t want to finish like that.”
He bent down and grabbed his wallet.
She watched him with round eyes as he opened it up, took out a condom packet, and tore it open. He took out a second condom packet and threw it onto the nightstand. Then he rolled the latex over his long, hard length, his eyes never leaving her as he did.
It was so erotic she could barely breathe.
And she never would’ve said something so clinical could be sexy.
But it didn’t feel clinical. Not with him. Not now.
“Are you ready for me?”
She nodded, words failing her.
“Lie back, spread your legs.”
Heat rushed through her face. But she did exactly as he instructed. Because she wasn’t going to flinch now.
He was an outlaw. And he was going to take what he wanted.
She was an outlaw. She was going to have what she wanted.
And right now, what she wanted was him. Filling her, buried deep. Thrusting inside her.
She was trembling with anticipation. There was no room for nervousness. No room for anything but need.
“Please,” she said.
He moved to the bed, his blue eyes intense on hers as he captured her mouth, positioning himself at the entrance to her body. Then he moved his hand on her thigh and hooked her leg up over his lower back as he thrust deep.
She gasped.
He was so big. And it was so good. She let her head fall back against the pillow, arching her hips upward into his. Meeting him thrust for thrust.
Gratitude, she realized, put you in a passive position. All you could do was lie there, thankful for the attention. Trying to make sure you didn’t disrupt the enjoyment of the other person.
This was about her own pleasure.
Her own need. And she was thankful, but not in that other way.
Not in a way that rendered her an inert vessel for someone else’s enjoyment.
She was wild.
She dug her nails into his shoulders, let them scrape down his back. She made sounds that she had never thought herself capable of. She didn’t have time to be embarrassed, because that would require pausing to think. And she wasn’t going to do that.
His thrusts became shorter, harder, his forehead resting against hers, his eyes blazing. He spoke dirty poetry against her lips, and she didn’t know if she could ever read erotica after this, because how could it ever top his words?
“Come for me,” he said.
A simple command. But so, so effective.
Because he wanted her pleasure. Her pleasure mattered.
It was enough to send her right over the edge, tumbling down into the abyss.
Then he froze above her, his own release coming on a hoarse cry.
And as they lay there, clinging to each other, their breath mingling, she understood something else she never had before.
People went out of their heads when they were turned on.
She had never understood that. She had never understood how much of a different person you could be when what you really, really wanted was to be touched. Possessed.
She had never understood how something that might otherwise shock you felt completely reasonable when you were in a deeply sexual haze. Because now she was just lying there. With this man who in some ways she had known all her life, and in other ways was a stranger.
Having just had a fight that had turned into sex.
He had been venting his anger, and she had been lost in the moment.
He had asked her to be sure. She had said that she was.
Because the Millie Talbot who had so badly wanted his hands on her body had been willing to say anything, even if she wasn’t totally certain. She had been willing to try anything. To do anything to have him.
And now she felt . . . small and scraped raw. Alone, even though he was literally still on top of her. Still inside her.
She felt foolish.
She felt as if she had been on some wild, destructive path all day. Longer than that.
Maybe Heather was right. She wasn’t happy.
And she was doing things to try to disrupt her life. Trying to change it, to fix it.
She was still holding on to his shoulders.
It was a terrible moment. This in between. Waiting for what was going to happen next. But it was worse when he actually moved. Worse when he put distance between them.
“Bathroom is down the hall?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said, her voice scratchy.
She was lying there in the middle of the bed like a starfish as he left the room. Then she scrambled beneath the covers, her heart beating fast.
She felt fragile.
She didn’t quite know what to do.
She had no idea what he was going to do.
It was a strange and terrible thing, being on the edge like this. Wonderful too, in a weird way. She had done things in the correct order before. She had been in a serious relationship before she ever let it get sexual. Tonight was the result of being with a man she just didn’t know all that well.
Maybe he was halfway out the door now. Butt naked.
She stared at a spot on the ceiling and swallowed hard. Then she heard footsteps.
She didn’t look at the doorway.
She kept on looking at the ceiling.
“Millie?”
“Yes?”
“Are you going to look at me?”
She did. She wished she hadn’t. Because he was still gorgeous, and he was standing there completely naked. Broad shoulders, muscular chest, lean waist, thick thighs.
It was a bit much. He made her heart flutter. Made her feel an ache between her thighs again already. There was still another condom on the nightstand.
“It’s getting very late,” she said.
“Yes, it is.”
“Your truck is in my driveway.”
“Yeah.”
“People are going to talk.”
“They’re already talking.”
“I know,” she said. “But until tonight they were wrong.”
His mouth tipped up at the corner. “Were they?”
“Well, I . . . I guess not.”
He stood there, his arms folded across that broad chest, and she had the terrible feeling that he was only still there because he was being nice to her. Because he believed she was too soft to handle what he would normally do. Which would be to leave her.
“I don’t need you to stay.”
They both looked over at the second condom. “I mean. . . .”
“Yeah.” He took in a sharp breath, then went and began to collect his clothes. “I’m sure you don’t.” He tugged his pants on, then his shirt. “We need to go through all the rest of those papers,” he said tonelessly.
She felt disconnected from their discovery now. What did the past matter when the present felt like this?
Too big, too confusing.
Spectacular and awful all at the same time.
“Well, not right now,” she said.
He pulled his jeans on, and then sat down on the bed. Probably to put his boots on.
“Scoot over.”
“Excuse me?”
“Unless you’re desperate for me to leave because you don’t want people to see my truck in the driveway.”
“I. . . .” This debate felt unwinnable. Because she kind of didn’t want people to see the truck in the driveway. But it wasn’t because of him, it was because of her. Because she didn’t want to explain the insanity that had just overtaken her when she couldn’t even explain it to herself.
She didn’t understand what was happening.
“I’ll sleep on top of the covers. But I don’t want to leave you. It doesn’t feel right.”
He sounded as if he was weighted down with the duty of staying with her.
But if she told him to leave, then it would seem as if she was ashamed of him.
And she wasn’t.
She really wasn’t. It was just that she wanted to hide from him. And herself.
“You don’t have to worry about the second condom,” he said. “I’m not going to ask anything of you.”
She wasn’t sure how she felt about that either.
“I thought that men notoriously didn’t like talking after sex,” she said finally.
“I usually like to be in the car headed home after sex,” he said. “Maybe stopping at the Wendy’s drive-through on my way.”
“That . . . doesn’t help me.”
He cleared his throat. “Sorry.”
She didn’t like thinking about him with other women. But, of course, there had been a lot of them. He was a hookup guy, and he was staying with her because he felt sorry for her. She felt a little sorry for herself, though, so she wasn’t really in the mood to kick him out. Even if she should.
“Well, Michael’s the only man I’ve been with, so. . . .”
“Right,” he said. “It doesn’t make you a bad person because you wanted to have sex.”
“We had sex for a bad reason,” she said.
“I was angry,” he said. “And I’m sorry. I’m sorry it started that way. I’m sorry I let it continue that way. There isn’t an excuse for that. But I wanted you, make no mistake. It was just that being angry was what made it all right.”
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“Not even a little? I just had to be thinking a little bit less clearly.”
“That’s not really flattering.”
“That’s not about you. It’s about me.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.
“So don’t,” she said.
Her voice sounded small and stubborn, and even she realized that what she was saying was ridiculous.
Because she felt sore right now. And who knew what else could be done to her. In the name of sex. In the name of change. Self-exploration. Exploration of a hot cowboy....
“You know, my sister saw you kiss me.”
“Oh,” she said.
“And she was mad at me. Because she figured that you were a nice girl, and I was not a nice guy. She’s not wrong, Millie. I have never had a relationship. I’ve never even wanted one. Until recently. I’ve started thinking about getting married, having kids. Leaving a legacy of some kind. But even so . . . it’s not. . . .”
She didn’t need him to explain further. He was talking about legacy, not romance. Not falling in love. She hated that she understood. That his goal was closer to her own journey than she would like to admit. And definitely one that she was never engaging in again.
“Do yourself a favor,” she said, looking up at the ceiling. “Don’t get married for legacy. I got engaged for it. I convinced myself it was love, because nobody wants to believe they’re doing things for the wrong reason. I was. I didn’t love Michael. I wanted to. I wanted to be good. I wanted to carry on the Talbot legacy. I wanted to do it while my dad was still alive, and I wanted to do it so badly that I was willing to be in the wrong relationship. To overlook everything that was wrong.”
“I wouldn’t need to believe I was in love.”
The way he said that told her everything she needed to know about the differences between them.
The realization was stark. A little bit painful.
She was starting to get sleepy.
“Go to sleep,” he said.
“So you can take off as soon as I close my eyes?”
“No. I’m not leaving.”
She could ask him to go, and he would. She really didn’t want him to. She didn’t want to examine how much she longed for him to stay.