Chapter 15 #2
When he parked the truck and turned off the engine, Sierra didn’t wait for him to get out and open her door. She hopped out, said, ‘I’ll help you pitch the tent!’ in a voice that sounded strange even to her own ears.
In an attempt to distract herself, she took in Wrangler’s Clearing after more than a year away.
The little dell, between the hills off the main trail, had been the original Hunt homestead site, and although the trees had started to slowly creep closer, the valley remained despite the many years that had passed since any humans had lived there.
The ground was covered with soft fescue grass.
The oak trees stretched, their canopies meeting high above in a hug that sheltered the clearing.
The outhouse Mav had built many years ago sat on the very edge of the clearing about twenty feet from a hitching post for when they brought horses up, and in the centre, a stone fire pit had been hobbled together.
‘It hasn’t changed,’ she said to Benji as he lifted the canvas bag with the tent out of the bed of the truck.
‘Yeah, Mav and I come up here and do some light maintenance once or twice a year.’
‘Really?’ Sierra frowned. ‘I didn’t know that. I thought the homestead site was a scar that stopped the trees from growing.’
‘It did originally. But your dad started maintaining it about thirty years back, and Mav and I took over once he passed. We don’t do much – trim some branches, till over the clearing, that sort of thing. It gives us an excuse to ride up and spend the night drinking and gossiping.’
Sierra wondered why she hadn’t known that, even as she acknowledged that it was such a Mav and Benji thing to do – maintain something that was barely used simply because it had always been done.
They might not have been brothers, but the fact that they had both been raised by James Hunt was telling. They nurtured. They cared.
When he unzipped the tent bag, Sierra put the picnic basket down and went to help.
In the summer, they could come up with nothing but a sleeping bag and food, but the winter weather made for a rough experience without a tent.
Still, the tent that Benji had brought was a light all-weather one, and even with darkness falling, it popped up with very little inconvenience or cussing.
As soon as it was standing, Sierra started lugging bedding from the trunk to the tent. ‘It’s going to get down to forty-two tonight.’
Benji stopped hammering at the last peg.
He stood and came to her.
His big hands ran down her arms, from shoulder to wrist.
His eyes, so serious just then, studied her face closely. ‘Why are you anxious?’
Sierra exhaled deeply. ‘That obvious?’
He smiled, tipped his head. ‘I think we’re past talking about the weather.’
She plonked her forehead on his chest. ‘I don’t know,’ she answered finally.
But her skin still danced with goosebumps.
Her heart still fluttered with nerves. ‘It feels like there’s too much between us sometimes.
And even though I know we’ve been together a thousand times before, everything’s different now.
’ Rambling with nerves, she added, ‘Mav said that I needed to be careful, and now I—’
‘What?’ Benji demanded hotly.
Sierra moved back so that she could look up at him again.
‘He’s worried about you,’ she said quietly.
‘About me hurting you. And he has good reason to be worried. God, Benji, I’m worried I’ll hurt you.
’ As that age-old pain filled her chest, she added, ‘I’m not good for you.
’ She laughed tiredly, whispered, ‘I’m not good for anyone right now – maybe ever. I—’
‘Sierra,’ he snapped. And when she met his eyes, he demanded. ‘Stop.’
He took a deep calming breath. Cradling her face in his hands, he kissed her.
And he was so gentle, so sweet, that the gesture brought tears to her eyes.
‘On your worst day, you’re perfect for me.
Christ, Si, you’re the only woman in my head and in my heart.
You always have been.’ He pulled her into his arms, wrapped her in an embrace that warmed her as much inside as out. ‘I’ll speak to Mav.’
‘No.’ Sierra shook her head. ‘Don’t do that. He loves you. He’s just worried.’
‘Maybe. But he has no business getting involved.’ He rested his chin on her head in an old habit that had always made her smile, but that only made her ache now.
‘People think my eyes aren’t open. But they are.
I see you, Sierra. And I know you’re not the same – but neither am I.
’ He was quiet for a moment before he continued.
‘The way I see it, we used to be a perfect image, etched in glass. And we dropped and shattered. True. But the pieces are all still there, and it’s up to us – only us – to put them back together.
And even though we’ll never be the same, we can still create something beautiful, something that might even be stronger and more unique than before. ’
Her heart hurt. There was no excited patter or racing now.
This was a deep, physical ache. He had always known what to say to comfort her, and although she hadn’t let him for the past year, Sierra suddenly and deeply regretted that she’d been unable to accept his comfort.
Because Benji would have made things so much easier.
He would have carried her on those days when her grief had made getting out of bed difficult.
‘Benji?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Thank you – for being you.’ She closed her eyes, and hurriedly said, ‘I love you so much.’ It wasn’t fair of her to say it, but Sierra wanted him to know. ‘I admire the man you are.’
His arms tightened around her even as his body trembled against hers. ‘I never stopped loving you. Not for a single moment. You’re my woman, Sierra.’
This time when he kissed her, he did not hold back. His mouth seduced her, his hands roamed, stroking up her sides and then down her back before resting gently on her ass so that he could pull her closer.
Sierra needed no further encouragement. She plastered herself to him, and when her need became frantic, she tugged his shirt up and slid her hands against his hot skin.
Benji made a rough sound in the back of his throat, half groan, half growl and exhaled as if he were in pain. ‘Do you know how many nights I’ve dreamed of you and woken up aching for you?’ He trailed his lips down her throat, pulling a violent shiver of pleasure from her.
Sierra could only nod. Because even though she hadn’t wanted to, she had dreamed of him too.
Many times. But instead of waking up aching, she’d woken up irritated and grieving, too angry at the world to acknowledge her need, too bitter to admit how easy it would have been to quell by just picking up the phone and calling him.
‘What do you want?’
The question needed no explanation. It was one he’d often asked her before sex. ‘I want us to be naked under the stars the first time,’ she replied, and without hesitation, started on the buttons of his jacket.
The moment the last button popped free, he shrugged out of the heavy garment. ‘Hold on.’
He left her there so that he could pull the huge sleeping bag out of the tent and spread it over the ground. Sierra thought he would come to her, so she was surprised when he went back to the truck, pulled a bundle of firewood from the bed and proceeded to build a fire in the pit.
She sat on the sleeping bag and yanked her Ugg boots off. Her fuzzy socks she left on, despite how unsexy they were. But when she started to lift her hoodie over her head, Benji said, ‘Don’t,’ without even looking her way.
It was just one word, but the authority in it had her slowly lowering her hands.
‘I want to do it,’ he explained with no self-consciousness as he doctored the fire.
Sufficiently chastised, Sierra didn’t remove anything else. She sat and watched him work, his big hands so competent, his blond hair glinting gold in the flames, his faded blue jeans stretching taut over strong thighs, his boots poking out from underneath them.
She inhaled the crisp night air, now threaded with the faint tang of campfire smoke. Benji washed his hands using the huge five-gallon water container he’d brought, and by the time he made his way back to her, his eyes dark with his own excitement, Sierra was already hot and wet with need.
He lifted his long-sleeved shirt over his head, revealing a tanned chest and torso honed to definition by hours of routine physical labour. Sierra’s hands itched to touch, to chase that familiar hot blood as it flowed beneath his skin.
Benji threw his shirt onto the sleeping bag and knelt beside her.
He reached for the hem of her hoodie, lifted it off slowly as if it were the sexiest dress in the world.
Sierra helped him, raising her arms and squirming out of the sweatshirt, and once it was off, she fought against the urge to cover her battle-tried body as she so desperately wanted to.
‘Christ, you’re so beautiful.’ Benji’s rough palm ran reverently down her side to grip her waistband. He tugged the sweats down, over her butt and hips and, again, she helped him, this time lying back and lifting her hips.
She kicked her feet out of the pants, but stayed on her back as he tossed them into their little clothes pile.
She felt self-conscious and restless, dressed in nothing but the black, lacy lingerie.
She even had an odd urge to explain, to tell him that even though her body had bounced back after pregnancy, it was still different. Altered.
Sierra opened her mouth, and then promptly snapped it shut when he leaned over her and pressed a single, lingering kiss to her gently rounded stomach.
Everything stopped.
The cold night settled around them, sealing them alone in the moment even as the flames from the fire illuminated them imperfectly, half in the light, half in the shadow.
And over the sensation of her own breaking heart, she felt the exact moment his first tear fell on her skin.
Sierra didn’t say anything. And neither did Benji. But she reached down and ran her hands through his hair, soothing, comforting in the only way she knew how when no words would suffice.
Benji wasn’t embarrassed by his tears. But he was angry with himself. He had wanted this moment to be perfect. He had wanted to hold her and love her and remind her why they were destined, not make her feel everything all over again by losing his own control.
And, still, he couldn’t quite bank his grief. Sierra Hunt was lying on his old sleeping bag, waiting for him to touch her. But in seeing her, in reminding himself why he had to be gentle, he had accidentally opened that box he’d sealed so tightly shut for so long.
When Sierra’s hands rose and ran through his hair, the grief only intensified, and when she whispered. ‘It’s okay, Benj. You don’t have to be strong for me all the time,’ he simply rested his forehead on her stomach, defeated.