Chapter Nine
It was ten o’clock and he couldn’t sleep. And he was sick of this. It was her. She haunted him. And he didn’t do haunted.
He thought back to his time playing poker in Vegas. Traveling around to different games, wherever they might be. There was
a thrill to it. To being separated entirely from the world that he knew, from the people who cared about him. From the place
he had a responsibility to.
He had been able to engage in anonymous sex easily. And he had liked it.
He liked that feeling, of not having any debt between him and the woman in question. Because his whole life was a debt. Inherited
from a father who had been a monster. There had only been so much he could do in his life with that kind of legacy. And the
truth was, he wasn’t entirely innocent of it.
He had loved his father.
What boy didn’t? More than that, he had admired him.
He and Daughtry were the oldest, and they had loved being their father’s right-hand men.
They had gone out and done whatever he wanted them to do.
Their father had told them that they were protecting the ranch, that they were protecting their legacy and the other children by making sure to collect money that belonged to them.
He had positioned everybody who owed them as gamblers.
They were the ones that were drunks, that were irresponsible.
That were in the wrong. They had borrowed money and they hadn’t paid it back, and Denver had believed that.
Perhaps not even because it was a very good life, but because it was one that he had been ready to believe. Because it was
one that painted them as the good guys.
Denver had never wanted to be a bad guy. But his morality had been flawed. His father had been able to manipulate it, and
he had.
There was a weakness inside of him.
And when he carried all of these responsibilities, all of these burdens, then he couldn’t indulge that weakness.
When he went out of town, it all fell away. And it felt something like this. Like a need that he couldn’t quite get on top
of.
Except then it was generic. The desire for anonymity, a night of oblivion.
It didn’t matter who the woman was, just like it didn’t matter what kind of whiskey it was.
Now, though, it was like that . . . like that undeniable, burning need had gathered in his gut and increased exponentially,
but could only be satisfied by her.
He rejected it. He didn’t like it.
Because he had a responsibility to her. He damned well did.
And that was why he decided to go out. That was why he decided to do something he so rarely did. Which was to go to Smokey’s
and find him a woman. He preferred to go to places with women who might not know who he was. Who might not know his reputation.
But hell, there were plenty of women who came from out of town, plenty of women he didn’t know. Plenty of opportunity for
anonymous sex, even in a town this size, because people liked to mix it up. They moved around between bars, because otherwise,
things could just get too tangled up.
What he needed now was a quick fix. Something to get Sheena Patrick off of his mind.
Sex would be a great way to do that. Something to help him blow off steam. He wasn’t a damned teenager; he wasn’t going to
huddle up in a shower and take himself in hand. Hell no. He wasn’t going to jerk off while thinking of the woman who had been
left vulnerable and alone in the world thanks to his father.
That was a bridge too far.
No. He would just go find somebody who was looking for the same thing he was. Who had their own demons to exorcise.
He didn’t feel guilty about the thought at all. When it came to this kind of sex, everybody was using everybody. As long as
both parties were left satisfied, he didn’t figure it much mattered.
He put on a black T-shirt, dark jeans. And grabbed a black cowboy hat. He took some condoms out of his nightstand, put two
in his wallet.
Because what Denver King set out to get, he got. And then some.
Sheena.
He couldn’t stop thinking about her, when he should just be thinking about sex.
He didn’t understand this feeling inside of him, and Denver didn’t truck in things he didn’t understand.
He’d had to be in control, and in charge from a very early age.
The night that Sheena’s father died was the night that the scales had been ripped from his eyes.
That was when he had understood there was no way that they were the good guys.
They were terrorizing people. There had been children in that house, terrified children.
They were . . . they were the bad guys. Anyone who terrified children was a bad guy.
When they had approached the house, the homeowner had come out, and Dan Patrick had drawn his weapon, which had resulted in
his death. Because the homeowner had taken his shotgun out from behind the door, and had decided to make sure he wasn’t the
victim.
Denver had no doubt that his father would have returned fire, that he would’ve felt absolutely no guilt killing that man,
but it would’ve done them no good. The man owed him money. And he didn’t want to be at the center of a mass death. He didn’t
care enough about Dan Patrick to defend him. To avenge him.
Because his father hadn’t actually cared about anyone but himself.
It took years to untangle that kind of mental abuse. When you had been tricked into caring so very deeply about a man who
loved nothing but himself, when your whole reality was shaped around the lies that he had told you . . .
Denver never wanted to be tangled up like that again.
He had found that his responsibilities made things a lot clearer.
He got into his truck, and started to pull away from the farmhouse. And then saw headlights. He slowed down, and his brother
Landry pulled up alongside him. “Hey. Where you off to?”
“I might ask you the same question,” said Denver. He could see that Fia was sitting in the passenger seat. “You’re headed
in the opposite direction of home,” he commented.
“True. We were headed up to the old cabin.”
He knew a little bit from his brother about the old cabin. Basically, when they were teenagers, that was where he and Fia had engaged in illicit activity. He had a feeling that he had caught his brother about to go have an assignation with his wife.
“Nostalgic,” Fia said, grinning.
Lord. Not even having a new baby and a teenager could calm those two down. And having a built-in babysitter with Lila—who
was extremely delighted by her little brother—gave them some freedom.
“Great. I’m just headed out to the bar.”
“Really,” said Landry.
“Yes, Landry. Really. Do I answer to you now?”
“No,” said Landry. “How’s the axe throwing project going?”
And just like that, Sheena was top of his mind again.
The woman was a menace.
“Going great. Everything is great.”
“You seem tense,” said Landry.
“And you seem nosy. I’ll see you later, little brother.”
He rolled his window up, and punched the gas, heading toward town. He needed to do something to exorcise this desire from
his body. She was driving him crazy.
All he could think about were those tattoos. The way that she smelled. The way that he had wanted to take her mouth when they
had been standing there in front of . . . decorative animal corpses. Honest to God.
He was acting like a kid with a crush. And he could never remember being a kid with a crush. He had been a helpless soldier
in his father’s army. A weapon. And then he had fashioned himself into a responsible, decent human being. And it had been
an effort. It had been something he’d had to learn. It certainly didn’t come natural when you were raised by Elias King.
But this desire, this desire felt like something that came from him. That he would want, more than anything, this woman who . . .
They were too tangled up in each other. Bottom line. And there was too much power that belonged to him, and he avoided that.
He avoided the power trips, he avoided any hint of wielding his position, his money or anything else as a method of manipulating
somebody. And he really did feel that it was almost impossible to know if you were manipulating somebody when you had that
much more than they did.
And that was him and Sheena.
He replayed that script over and over in his mind until he pulled up to Smokey’s. Until he got out of his truck and walked
across the gravel drive, and up the rickety steps into the building.
He repeated it to himself until the thick crowd around the jukebox parted, and he saw her. Standing there in one of the shortest
dresses he had ever seen, revealing a mystery that had been driving him crazy.
That tattoo he was able to see on her arm continued down her side. Vines and flowers twining down the side of her leg all
the way to her knee. Which meant it must go along her hip, her side, her whole body.
He wanted to trace it. With his tongue.
And then, like a magnet drew her gaze to his, she looked up.
And that burning in his stomach ignited.
This was a cosmic joke. With everything that had gone wrong in Sheena’s life, it would be easy to see why she was a person who didn’t have much faith in there being a higher power.
She could understand why many people in her position no longer believed in such things.
But Sheena found life far too ironic, and deliberately irritating to believe that there wasn’t some deity somewhere mixing things around and laughing at the chaos of it all.
Because she had come here tonight to forget Denver King. She had broken her own role. Put on the most obvious dress she owned,
and taken her ass down to the local bar to find a man.
Because she needed something. She needed to feel in control was what she needed.
She was used to making men fall to their knees for her. What she was not used to was what Denver made her feel. What she was
not used to was this out-of-control, burning desire that had overtaken her earlier at the build site.