Chapter 7 Delaney
CHAPTER SEVEN
Delaney
It takes forever to fall asleep.
The sheets are soft. The pillow smells faintly of fresh laundry and cedar. The house creaks and settles, the distant murmur of Boone’s low voice and Sadie’s softer one trailing off down the hall. Somewhere outside, a horse snorts.
I close my eyes, determined to rest.
Ten minutes later, my thoughts have circled back to Caleb’s hands more times than I would like to admit.
The way they held that dish and his fingers brushed mine once when I passed him a glass, just enough contact to send a little jolt up my arm.
This is ridiculous.
I roll over. And then again. Flip the pillow. Try counting backwards from a hundred.
By ninety, my brain has decided to replay every moment Caleb spoke tonight. Quietly. Thoughtfully. Like each word cost him a lot.
By seventy, I’m imagining what else he might say if he ever stopped holding back.
By fifty, I’m restless enough to kick the blankets off.
At some point, exhaustion sneaks up on me and drags me under.
The last half-lucid thought I have is that my brain should be fixating on the actual problem. The one-night stand with Silas, who I now have to eat breakfast across from, or the fact that my new boss is tall, stern, and exactly the kind of authority figure I swore I’d never fall for again.
Instead, I’m in the barn.
The moonlight spills through the open doors, catching on saddles, railings, and coiled ropes, turning everything into silver and shadow. The floor is cool beneath my bare feet. The air tastes of hay and horse and soap.
Caleb.
I don’t know how I got here. My breathing is too loud. My pulse thrums high in my throat.
“Delaney.”
His voice comes from behind me.
Low. Rough. A command more than a word.
I turn.
Caleb stands in the aisle, half in shadow, sleeves shoved to his elbows, throat exposed, hair falling messily over his eyes like he’s been running a hand through it too many times.
He looks… wrecked by restraint.
And I’m the thing he’s restraining against.
My spine hits a stall door I didn’t realize I was backing toward.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I whisper.
He steps closer, the floor creaking under his boots as if it can barely take his weight.
“Probably not,” he says.
Another step.
“But you are.”
His presence hits me, solid, consuming, hungry. The barn shrinks around him.
“You’re off limits,” I try again.
He huffs a soft laugh. “You keep saying that.”
He stops just in front of me, tall enough that I have to tilt my head a little to meet his gaze. His eyes drag over me, down my throat, down the line of my shirt, down to my bare toes, and back up.
Heat pricks over my skin.
“I haven’t said it out loud,” I murmur.
“You don’t need to.” His voice dips, dark and smooth. “Your body says it.”
I open my mouth, but he’s already lowering his hand toward my face.
“Tell me I’m imagining it,” he murmurs. “Tell me you don’t want this.”
I try to form the words.
Nothing comes out.
He smiles, a slow, sinful pull of his mouth. “Didn’t think so.”
His fingers brush my jaw…
Light.
Testing.
And then his hand slides into my hair, gripping just enough to make my breath punch out of me in a shaky gasp.
My whole body jolts.
His mouth is at my ear in a heartbeat.
“That’s it,” he growls. “That pretty little sound you make when I touch you like this.”
My knees go weak.
He uses the grip in my hair to lift my face. He wants me to feel the pressure, the control, the permission in it.
“You don’t run from me in here,” he whispers. “Not in my barn.”
My pulse stutters so hard it hurts.
“This is a bad idea,” I breathe.
“Yeah,” he agrees. “But you came looking for me anyway.”
His body presses forward slowly, nudging between my knees, until my thighs widen on instinct.
He inhales sharply; the sight of that alone is enough to break him.
“Delaney,” he groans, shaking with restraint, “you have no idea what you’re doing to me.”
I grip the front of his shirt, desperate for balance, for him, for something to hold on to.
He groans. My touch hits him somewhere dangerous.
His grip in my hair tightens.
That small pull sends heat flooding through my body so fast I almost moan.
“Yeah,” he murmurs. “Just like that. You like it when I take control, don’t you?”
My breath shatters.
He hears it.
Feels it.
And his lips curve against my cheek in a wicked, devastating smile.
“Say it,” he whispers.
“I…” My voice breaks. “I don’t know.”
“You do.”
His mouth trails down my jaw.
“You like it when I’m close.”
Down my neck.
“When I pin you with my voice.”
Lower, to the place where my pulse is frantic.
“When I hold you right… here.”
He tugs my hair just enough to make the world tilt.
A whimper slips out.
He shudders.
“Fuck,” he growls. “You’re going to ruin me.”
He kisses me.
Hard.
Deep.
Possessive in a way that steals the air from my lungs. His hand stays tangled in my hair, angling my mouth where he wants it, controlling the kiss, not harsh, but sure, decisive, devastating.
My fingers fist in his shirt. My hips arch toward him before I can stop them.
He groans against my lips.
His hand leaves my hair only long enough to grip my hips, both hands now, pulling me flush against him so I can feel exactly what I’m doing to him.
“Delaney,” he groans, “if you keep rubbing yourself on me like that, I’ll put you over this railing and fuck the thoughts right out of your head.”
My whole body trembles.
He lifts his head, eyes wild in the moonlight.
His hands tighten on my hips, dragging me along the hard line of him, slow enough to make my vision blur.
“Look at you,” he murmurs against my skin. “Shaking for me, and I’ve barely touched you.”
My fingers clutch his shoulders, desperate and unsteady. “Caleb—”
He cuts me off with a quiet growl so deep it vibrates through my ribs.
“Say my name again.”
“Caleb…”
His lips brush my collarbone. “Good girl.”
The words hit me like a jolt straight to my spine.
He hears the way my breath breaks.
Feels the way I arch.
Sees every secret I try to hide.
“Oh,” he whispers. “You do like that.”
His thumb drags slow circles at the hinge of my hip, just shy of where I burn for him, the proximity enough to make my whole body tense.
“You want more,” he says, not a question. “You want it so bad you’re trembling.”
I am. Damn it, I am.
He leans in so close his lips almost brush mine, but he doesn’t kiss me yet.
He waits… watching me break apart inch by inch under everything he’s not letting himself do.
His breath ghosts my mouth.
“You want my hands on you?”
My answer is a shakily whispered, “Yes.”
His hand moves to the back of my neck, fingers curling there with a controlled dominance that sends heat pooling low and fierce.
“You want me to touch you where you’re aching?” he murmurs.
I nod, breathless.
“Use your words, Delaney.”
I swallow. “I… yes. Please.”
His eyes go molten.
“That’s it,” he praises wickedly. “Beg so sweet it hurts.”
Caleb’s smile is sin made flesh. His hand finally ventures between my legs, but not fast or hard or greedy. He’s excruciatingly slow, so that even the press of his palm is more promise than touch. My brain whites out in stops and starts, the air in the room too thin and too thick all at once.
He doesn’t move on me, not really. He just molds his hand there, heat radiating, thumb coasting the edge of my underwear in a lazy, taunting rhythm.
“Still trembling,” he observes smugly, “and you’re so damn wet for me I can feel it through your clothes.”
I can’t even bite back the sound I make. He’s not rushing, and it’s torture. I want to writhe against him, but he holds me perfectly still, his free arm wrapped across my back until my pulse is boxcar-hopping along my skin.
Any coherent thought of resistance goes up in smoke. I’m trapped, not just by his arm and the line of his body but by the way his hand cups me, an unyielding, gentle shackle. I don’t know if I’ve ever been held this way, if anyone has ever demanded so much with so little.
“You like that?” His lips graze my temple, his stubble scraping a line that makes my knees skitter. “You want me to keep going, or do you want to beg a little first?”
The flick of his thumb dips under the elastic, just enough for my hips to twitch, and now I can’t help it, I am whimpering into his chest. I sound like prey, and he knows it.
Caleb hums a satisfied affirmative. The faintest smirk plays at his lips when I look up at him, and he’s so fucking pretty about it, jaw sharp, pupils consuming his eyes.
I can feel him smiling against my jaw, feeding on my desperation.
I bite down on a knuckle to keep from making an obscene sound, but it escapes anyway, a wrecked little sob. I hear him inhale, as if the noise is a kind of drug. His movements hitch, just a fraction—the pleasure is mutual.
Then he leans in so his mouth is against the shell of my ear and says, altogether too softly, “I want to see you come apart. Right. Now.”
And his finger hooks, hard, turning every nerve under my skin into raw wire.
I’m already close, but the way he says it, command instead of question, shoves me over like a gust of wind. My pulse shatters, my whole body gathering and splitting into pieces, shaking so hard my teeth clack together.
There’s barely time for embarrassment, for anything but the pleasure that wipes every thought clean…
I wake up with my heart trying to punch through my ribs.
The ceiling of my room stares down at me, bland and innocent and very not barn. Moonlight filters in through the curtains, striping the quilt. My sheets are twisted around my legs, my skin damp, my pulse still racing like I’ve been running.
I don’t know where I am, heart slamming, lungs refusing to cooperate. Then the details land in a rush: Sunridge Ranch. Guest room. Night. No Caleb, no barn, no rough hands on my skin.
Just a dream that felt far too real.
I drag in a breath.
Then another.
“Whoa,” I whisper into the quiet.