Chapter 7 #2
“She pointed out something that I hadn’t really considered back then.” She backed herself up to the support beam opposite his and leaned against it. “You were one of the best students in our class. You didn’t really need tutoring.”
He slowly shook his head. “No, I didn’t.”
“So, why were you getting tutored?”
His focused gaze remained on her. “I’m going to let you figure that one out on your own,” he said. “Because, if I remember correctly, you were pretty sharp yourself.”
Shock coursed down her spine as her mouth fell open. “Are you kidding me? You really came to the animal shelter to see me?”
“What do you think?”
“But…why?” she asked.
“Why? It isn’t that hard to figure out.”
Her eyes widened even more. They grew so wide that Paxton was afraid she wouldn’t be able to close them again.
“That’s just crazy,” she said.
“Why is it so hard to believe that I had a thing for you back in high school?”
“Because it is,” she said. “Girls threw themselves at you left and right. Prettier girls. More popular girls. Girls who were known to put out. Why would you have wanted to date me back then?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said with a casual shrug, but his voice belied the nonchalant body language.
“You were smart, cute, tough. You didn’t just fall in line with what everyone else did.
You actually had a mind of your own, and you weren’t afraid to use it, no matter what other people thought about you. ”
“And you found that…attractive?”
“Extremely attractive,” he said. “I still do.”
She sucked in the deepest breath possible. “Don’t say that.”
“Why?” He pushed away from the beam and started toward her, his slow and steady stride like a panther’s stalking its prey. He stopped mere inches from her, his hard chest incredibly close to hers.
The image of how it looked naked, shimmering with sweat, ripped with muscles, flashed before her eyes. That image was imprinted on her brain, a sexy, sensual reminder of her one unforgettable night with him.
Paxton’s eyes shut as a tidal wave of want crashed through her.
“Tell me, Pax,” he whispered. His warm breath fluttered against her skin. “Why don’t you want to hear how much I want you?”
“Because…” she managed to say past the lust wedged in her throat.
“Is it because it makes you think about how much you want me?” He leaned in closer, his lips a hairbreadth from hers. “Tell me you want me. Admit it.”
She shook her head. In a desperate whisper, she said, “I don’t want to fall for you, Sawyer.”
His deep chuckle reverberated against her skin.
“Don’t worry, love,” he said as he closed in on her. “I’ll make it worth the fall.”
It started out slow, this kiss she had secretly been wanting since the last time he’d kissed her.
But his pace quickened with lightning speed.
Just as it had the night she’d driven him home after he drank too much at Harlon’s, the night he’d stripped her clothes from her body right in the middle of his parents’ living room.
The night she’d gripped his naked hips in her hands, dropped to her knees, and taken his sinfully hard flesh into her mouth.
Now it was his tongue invading her mouth, pushing past the seam of her lips and thrusting inside.
As his tongue explored, his hands slipped onto her hips and then to her sides and finally up her back.
He pressed his fingertips into the small of her back before inching lower, grasping her butt.
He tugged her closer to him, hardening against her stomach.
Paxton moaned.
God, she’d wanted this. Had craved it. How foolish she’d been to try to find it with other men. No one could hold a candle to the way Sawyer commanded her body.
Her nipples grew tight and achy, the sheer and lace of her bra abrading the quickly hardening buds. She rested her arms on his broad shoulders and ran her palms along the back of his head, pulling him closer.
Emotions she had been too afraid to feel flowed through her as he moved his lips from her mouth to trail them down her jaw and along her neck.
His touch was loving, almost worshipful.
It made her pulse with pleasure with every single caress.
His featherlight kisses triggered goosebumps.
They elevated along her skin, popping up wherever he touched.
He nudged his nose behind her ear and whispered, “It’s a risk to go any further in a public park, but I’m willing to go all the way if you are.”
Even as his words caused a shudder to run through her, they jerked Paxton out of her sensual daze. She couldn’t get lost in his kiss again. She wouldn’t. She still shouldered so much guilt from the last time they did this. She couldn’t take on any more.
“I can’t,” she said, pulling slightly away. She gave him a gentle push when what she really wanted to do was pull him closer.
Dammit. She so didn’t want to stop.
But she knew she should. After the way she’d preyed on his vulnerabilities the last time, using him for her own pleasure yet again would just complicate things. They still had to work together; she could not afford complications.
He swooped in for another kiss, but she held him back. “Stop,” she said.
Paxton could feel the reluctance in the way his shoulders dropped, but he backed away.
When he looked at her, his expression was a mixture of annoyance and lingering desire.
“Why do you keep doing that?” he asked. “For someone who’s so damn smart, you keep making this same stupid move. We can be good together, Pax. Can’t you see that?”
“No,” she said, straightening her blouse, which had been skewed during their unbelievably heated kiss.
“Why not? Why is that so hard for you to accept?”
“You want to know why?” she asked, finding her footing again. “Because this isn’t a fairytale. This is the real world. And in the real world, Paxton Jones from the wrong side of Landreaux Creek is not the kind of girl people expect to see on Sawyer Robertson’s arm. It just doesn’t happen.”
“Who cares what people expect? And in whose world are you talking about? Because in my real world, we’re damn near perfect for each other. We fit. Accept that.”
“We do not,” she argued, then gestured to him. “Look at you. You’re Sawyer Robertson. Prom king. Captain of the football team. It was like the damn sea parted every time you walked down the hallway.”
“That was twenty years ago. Get over it.”
She jumped back at his tone.
“And if you hadn’t been so hell-bent on making me into whatever untouchable, unattainable thing you created in your head, you could have been walking down that hallway with me, right by my side.”
Even as he said the words, Paxton still couldn’t bring herself to believe them. They were in direct opposition to everything she’d thought for too many years for her to just accept them as truth.
“If anyone is to blame for us not being together in the real world, it’s you,” he said. “You’re the one who closed yourself off. You never even gave me a chance.”
She stared at him for several heartbeats, her blood moving so swiftly through her veins that she could actually hear it.
“Like you said, that was twenty years ago. The distant past. It makes no sense to talk about it now, right?”
“Right,” he said. “Forget high school. I want to talk about the here and now.”
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s say we do it. Say we sleep together. Not once, not twice, but for the next few weeks. Me and you, every single night.”
“I can get with that plan.”
“What happens after that?” Paxton asked. “Would you really consider there being anything more between us than just sex?”
“Why wouldn’t I? Do you really believe your own bullshit about the two of us not being together because I grew up with money and you didn’t?”
Her shoulders deflated as she suddenly became too exhausted for this conversation, especially after the whirlwind emotional roller coaster she’d been on with this morning’s tour.
“I don’t care how you slice it, Sawyer. It’s the same pie. You get the bigger piece because you come from money.”
He pitched his head back and let out a curse. “This is insane.”
“I agree, just not on the same thing that you do. I think it’s insane for you to think that there could ever be more between us than that one night. We are too different, Sawyer. We’ve always been too different.”
His jaw grew rigid as he stared at her with an intensity that made her nerves stand on end.
“Just tell me one thing,” he said, his voice low and thick with accusation. “If the thought of the two of us being together is so damn improbable to you, why did you sleep with me at all?”
“Simple,” Paxton said with a casual shrug, hating herself for the lie she was about to tell. “I wanted sex.”
The sting of those three words hurt more than Sawyer could have imagined. The defiant lift to her chin stung even more.
But the sting only lasted for a second. Because he wasn’t buying it.
She’d tried this before, when she told him she was over that night they’d shared together, and he’d proven her wrong. He would prove her wrong again, because it had not been about just sex that night.
She could tell herself that lie all she wanted to. But he would be damned if he let her go on believing it for one more day. She was going to admit that she felt something for him.
“So, that’s all I was for you that night?” he asked in a deceptively casual voice. “Just an available body?”
He relished the discomfort he caught when her eyes flashed to his.
Good. She deserved to feel uncomfortable.
Instead of answering his questions, she asked her own. “Are you saying it was more than just a drunken night of sex for you?”
“Only one of us was drunk that night,” Sawyer said.
And it had been him. He knew she wasn’t drunk because when he’d first offered to buy her a drink she declined, telling him that she never drank when she tended bar. She eventually relented after he’d pleaded with her, indulging in only one shot of tequila.