Chapter 12
HUNTER
The radio’s glow pooled through the cab of my truck and splashed over Maggie’s bare legs. Her boots were kicked up on my dash like she owned the damn place.
She wasn’t looking at me. She hadn’t looked at me since we’d walked out of the rodeo and climbed into my truck.
I cracked my neck and wrapped my knuckles around the steering wheel as the tires spun at the edge of the gravel before settling onto the highway. The silence in the cab was hot, pulsing, and driving me fucking crazy.
The road stretched out ahead of us, dark and endless, and I tried to focus on it.
“But do you think you could drop me by Brody’s?”
Like hell I would. I’d spent the whole week listening to people at the feed store, at the diner, at the damn gas station talk about the two of them and their date until I wanted to put my fist through a wall. And then tonight, I had to stand there and watch it with my own eyes.
I had to watch him put his hands on her and look me straight in the eye while he did it.
I gripped the wheel harder, a sick, jealous heat winding through my chest and settling low in my gut, coiling tighter every time Maggie shifted in the seat beside me.
The stretch of her tanned legs in the dashboard light was enough to kick my pulse up another notch, and I couldn’t even look over without wanting to drag her across the fucking cab.
If I’d had a lick of sense, I would’ve said something to cut the tension, something stupid she could roll her eyes at so we didn’t have to sit in this awkwardness.
But I was too pissed off and too wound up to go looking for a way out.
Instead, I just kept driving, the lines of the road blurring by in the dark, but I could feel her looking at me.
“Do you need Brody’s address?” Maggie finally broke the silence, her voice syrupy-sweet and irritated all at once.
The way she said it as if she was challenging me made every muscle in my body go tight. I closed my eyes at the red blink of the stoplight, just long enough to see it flash behind my eyelids as I stopped.
“I don’t need his fucking address.” I drew the words out slowly, each word a warning, but she was still staring at me. “You should have left with him if you wanted to go back to his place.”
“Trust me. I wish I had.” She huffed and turned in her seat until she was facing me fully, but my attention was back on the road as we passed by field after field. “What’s your problem with him anyway?”
“I don’t have a problem,” I shot back, and I had no chance of keeping the edge out of my voice. “I’ve had to listen to the whole town talk about you and him all week. Then we get here and I had to watch him fucking parade you through the rodeo like—”
“Like what?” she cut me off.
I clenched my jaw, trying to control my anger.
“Like you wanted an audience.” My voice came out rough, and I didn’t dare look at her. “Like you knew exactly what it would do to me.”
Her breath caught, and I heard her shift in her seat again. “God, you’d love that, wouldn’t you? If everything I did was just to get a reaction out of you.”
The heat between us crackled in the dark cab and sweat prickled across my shoulders as the yellow lines blurred under the headlights.
“Do you really think I spend my days thinking of ways I can get under my sister’s ex-boyfriend’s skin?”
“Don’t call me that,” I growled, but she was barely listening to me now.
“What do you want me to call you then?” She counted it off on her fingers. “Ella’s ex. My friend.” She paused on the third finger, and her eyes flicked to my mouth before she said, “An asshole.”
I jerked the wheel to the right and pulled off onto the shoulder, gravel popping under the tires as we lurched to a stop.
“What the hell are you doing?” She spun in her seat, one fist knuckling against the door to steady herself.
I threw the truck into park and kept my eyes straight ahead on the way the headlights just died out there. I was so goddamn aware of her that I could feel the heat coming off her skin from across the cab.
“Hunter.” She said my name so carefully, and it hit me straight in my chest.
She shifted toward me, and I made the mistake of turning my head.
The dashboard light caught the soft part of her mouth and the rapid beat of her pulse at the base of her throat.
I couldn’t look away.
“What the hell are we doing, Hunter?” she whispered, and I let myself look at her the way I’d been stopping myself from looking at her for a long time.
My eyes dropped to her mouth, and I watched her tongue move slowly across her bottom lip like she didn’t even know she was doing it.
“I don’t like you with Brody.”
Her expression shifted, quick and unguarded. “Why not?”
I reached over and tucked a strand of hair back from her face, slow enough that she could have pulled away. My thumb grazed her cheekbone and stayed there, and I felt her go very still under my hand.
“You know why, Sunshine.”
I slid my hand around the back of her neck, drawing her in so slowly it was almost cruel. She didn’t pull away, not even a breath. It was like she’d been waiting for me to do it, probably for far too long.
I tightened my fingers at her nape, feeling the flutter of her pulse, and all I wanted was to see her lose it for me, just once.
She stared at me, her eyes wide and lips parted. “Don’t call me that.”
“Why not?” My voice was soft, but there was nothing gentle in it. “What do you want me to call you then?” I repeated her words from only moments before.
Her mouth parted, and my hand twisted in her hair, steady at the nape.
She dragged in a shaky breath. “Does it matter what I want, Hunter?”
Her question slammed into me, battering against every excuse I’d ever made not to feel this desperate for someone.
I kept my thumb pressed under her jaw, not letting her look away, not letting myself look away, either. Every stubborn, complicated thing I’d ever felt for her trembled in my fingers and in the wild flicker of her green eyes.
She tried to twist away, but I wouldn’t let her. Not this time.
She glared at me, daring me to do something about it. So I did.
I tightened my hand in her hair and pulled, slow enough to feel every bit of her resistance before she came across the bench seat. Her breath left her in a rush when her knees hit my thigh, and she grabbed at my shirt like she needed something to hold on to.
I got my hands under her thighs and dragged her to me, until her knees bracketed mine and her back met the steering wheel.
She looked down at me, chest heaving, and her fingers twisted in the front of my shirt like she hadn’t decided yet whether to pull me in or push me away.
But fuck, I felt like I’d been waiting my whole goddamn life to look up and see her like this.
“Tell me to stop, Sunshine.” My thumb pressed against the hollow of her throat, feeling her swallow against it. “Tell me you don’t want this.”
She didn’t say anything for a long moment, just looked down at me with those eyes, her breath coming fast and shallow. She opened her mouth, and I watched her try to find the words.
“I don’t want you to stop,” she breathed.
I let my head fall back against the headrest, looking up at her through the dark, and tried to hold on to the last shred of whatever had been keeping me from doing this for so goddamn long.
It wasn’t enough anymore.
I slipped my fingers beneath the hem of her shirt, flattening my hands against her hips, and pulled her down until there was nothing left between us. She made a sound I knew would haunt me for the rest of my life, and I groaned as I let my mouth find the corner of hers.
“You should have lied,” I said against her mouth.
My mouth crashed into hers, and we were so desperate for one another, like I’d been keeping myself from this for so long I’d forgotten what wanting felt like until I tasted her on my tongue.
Her fingers twisted in my hair and pulled, hard enough to hurt, and I let her. I wanted her to. She kissed me back like she was furious about it, like she hated how much she wanted this, and fuck, that only made it worse.
I tried to keep it slow, careful, but she made it fucking impossible. She ground herself down against me, hips working slowly, until I was ready to lose my mind. I slid my hands down her body, gripping her ass, and dragged her tight against my cock that was straining against my zipper.
She was shaking, like holding back had been killing her, and now she couldn’t control the flood. Her fingers dug into the back of my neck, holding me right where she wanted, and I didn’t stand a chance.
“Fuck, Maggie.” My voice came out wrecked. “We shouldn’t have done this.”
She went still against me, and I felt the exact moment she started to pull back. I caught her by her hair before she could and tipped her head back until the long line of her throat was exposed in front of me.
I pressed my mouth to her pulse point, felt it hammer against my tongue, and she made a small, helpless sound that undid something in me I wasn’t going to be able to put back.
“Because now,” I said against her skin, dragging my mouth up the side of her neck, “I’m not going to be able to stop.”
One hand stayed buried in her hair, but the other found the button of those damn shorts and jerked it open. She sucked in a breath when I got the zipper down, her hips shifting forward before she could stop them.
The steering wheel creaked behind her as she arched into my hand.
I dragged one finger just inside the waistband of her panties and felt her stomach tremble under my touch.
I tipped my chin back so I could look up at her.
She was a mess of honey-blonde hair around her flushed face, and her chest shuddered as she tried to steady her breathing.
She hadn’t said a word since she’d told me she didn’t want me to stop, but I could feel it on her anyway, the want, the anger, and something wild underneath both of them I’d never felt before.