Chapter Ten
This was crazy. But she was feeling particularly unhinged. And when his mouth met hers, it was like the world shifted. Good
and bad didn’t matter anymore. Proclamations of how she wasn’t going to sleep with him didn’t matter anymore. The fact that
somehow, with him, her intentions folded like a house of cards didn’t matter anymore.
Nothing mattered but this. But him. But the firm press of his hot mouth against hers.
But that hard, solid body that was unlike any she’d ever had pressed against her.
She had been right about him.
He growled, gripped her hips and backed her up against the wall. His hold was firm, bruising. His kiss was punishing. And
she liked it.
But it was only one night, so it didn’t matter if it was a trip into totally foreign territory. If she was walking into a
deep dark wood, unsure of where she was going. Because she would only be lost for a night.
Because tomorrow they would go their separate ways.
Because they both knew how to have sex, and turn it into nothing. Nothing but a nice memory. So it wouldn’t be any different between the two of them than it had been any other time.
There had been some good reasons to resist, but they weren’t good enough. That was the thing.
Nothing was good enough for her to deny herself this.
Maybe, in the fullness of time, this was the real way he could pay her back. With that glorious body of his.
This kiss. Which was so far removed from any other kiss she’d ever had in her life that it was almost an entirely different
activity. His movements were confident, controlled and feral all at the same time. His tongue went deep, sliding against hers,
and she nearly melted. But thankfully, his hold was strong enough to keep her from collapsing.
He removed one hand from her hip, gripped her jaw, held her face steady as he licked deep into her mouth. She shivered, shuddered.
The hand on her hip began to drift beneath the hem of her dress, and around between her thighs, where he found nothing but
a pair of thin, wispy panties that she knew betrayed how wet she was. Immediately, instantly. For him.
He growled, his fingertips brushing beneath the edge of her underwear, the first time his rough hands made contact with her
tender skin like an electric shock.
“Denver,” she gasped, and she hadn’t meant to say his name. She didn’t call out a man’s name during sex, because if anybody
was responsible for her pleasure, it was her. And she was okay with that. But not now. He was making her mindless. He was
ruining her.
And she liked it.
God help her, she liked it.
She began to pull off his T-shirt, pushing her hands beneath the fabric, touching his taut abdomen. He was so . . . everything.
She couldn’t wait to see him naked.
And she realized that they were actually going to end up having sex in this bathroom, with fifty people on the other side
of the door who had seen them go in.
Okay. She was feeling out of character, but not that out of character.
“We need to go,” she said, panting.
“I’m good,” he growled.
“I’m serious. I’m not doing it with you in the bathroom.”
He lifted his head and looked around, his expression dazed. His cowboy hat was pushed back on his head. And she realized that
he had actually lost track of where they were.
If she wasn’t so out of sorts she might’ve been flattered. That she was desperately needed. So much so that he didn’t want
to pause even for a breath.
“Let’s go,” she said.
She gripped his hand and unlocked the door, pulling her dress into place as they walked out, and straight through the bar.
She didn’t stop to look. Didn’t stop to see if they were being gaped at. She didn’t work here anymore, so it wasn’t her problem
if the men in this bar thought that she was a slut for Denver King. Maybe she was.
That was just fine with her.
They stepped outside of the bar, the cold air hitting her straight in the chest, like a punch directly to the lungs. “My place,”
she said.
And yes, she had just thought that she was never going to bring one of those men back to her house. But it was Denver. He
already knew where she lived. They were . . . enmeshed.
No, that wasn’t ideal. No, it wasn’t something she would’ve chosen. But she hadn’t chosen this. She hadn’t chosen the intensity
of the attraction that she felt for him. She hadn’t chosen to want him more than she had ever wanted anybody else.
Maybe this was a closure thing, in a very weird way.
Maybe it was part of drawing a line under the past and really moving forward.
Yes. Maybe it was.
Because she had thought that he was beautiful for the first time that day her daddy had died. And she had thought it so many
days since. While he was out there being this dark, angelic figure that had never been quite the substance of heaven. When
he had given the money, and made sure that they could survive. When he had been there without actually being there, because
he had been determined to let them have their own life. He had actually been the best, truest man she had ever known without
really knowing.
And in some ways, this entanglement with him was about getting untangled. But maybe this was part of it.
All these unresolved feelings looking for a place to go. Well, great. They would resolve them. Tonight. In her bed.
“You know where I live,” she said.
“I do.”
It was unspoken. They wouldn’t go over together. They couldn’t. Not just because somebody would see their cars parked in the
parking lot. She didn’t care about that. She had sex, big deal. That wasn’t the problem.
It was . . . She didn’t stay the whole night with men. She bet that Denver didn’t stay a whole night with a woman. They would
need their vehicles. They were hardly going to be driving back down to the bar together in the morning on their way to work.
No.
This was an isolated incident. What happened in her bedroom tonight was going to stay there.
Thank God they hadn’t lost their minds and done it in the bathroom.
“Lead the way,” he said.
She got into her car, her hands shaking, and drove up the road. She tried to stay focused on where the headlights bathed the
asphalt. Tried to keep herself from vibrating into a thousand pieces. This was just sex. And it might be with Denver, but
that didn’t make it something completely foreign.
Just one night. Just one night. One night. That was all.
And that was her mantra. That she repeated the whole way. All the way out of town, and up to the more windy, mountainous stretch
that led to where her little house was.
They drove past the trailer park, and the little houses, ramshackle and coming apart at the seams, up the side of the hill,
to the place she called home.
She had done her best to keep it neat and tidy. But it was old.
It needed a new coat of paint and it wasn’t going to get it.
The siding was split, and haggard. But it was dark out, so he wasn’t getting the full experience. Not that he hadn’t seen
it before.
She pulled up to the front, and turned her car off, getting out and walking to the front door. She heard him get out of his
truck. She didn’t wait for him. This wasn’t a date. They were going to hold hands and walk up to the threshold. She wasn’t
going to look up at him and beg for a kiss with her eyes.
No.
He didn’t seem to need that either. He simply followed her inside, shut the door behind them and locked it as he had done
in the bathroom.
She dropped her purse on the ground, and flicked on a couple of lights. She had very good curtains in this house. Because
she didn’t need anybody peering inside and seeing any of her business. Which was handy, because that meant she could easily,
and without concern, look at all of Denver’s business without starting rumors.
It was one thing to not care if the barflies knew that she had hooked up. It was another for her neighbors to know that she was hooking up with Denver King. Because Elias King had done a fair amount of damage to all the people here.
And that was a conversation she didn’t need to get into.
This was her mistake. Her wreckage.
It didn’t need to become a community consensus.
“I want you to strip for me,” she said.
He looked at her, and there was a light in his eyes that made everything in her go still. “Is that where you think this is
going to go? You think you get to tell me what to do?”
“I want to see you,” she said, tossing her hair. “And we’re in my house.”
“I guess we are,” he said. “I’ve got no problem giving you a show, Sheena. But what you need to understand is that I don’t
take orders.”
“Well, tricky thing. Neither do I.”
“Do you ever stop?” he asked.
“Stop what?”
“Opposing everything and everyone just for the sake of it. What’s it all for? So that I know you’re tough? So that you know
you’re tough? I already know you are. You forget. I was there. When your dad died. I know that you’re tough. I know that you’re
strong. So why don’t you let me take control tonight.”
“I could say the same thing to you,” she said. “You do all the work all the time.”
“True,” he said. “But I consider this a working vacation.”
“Cute.”
“Take your dress off.” She froze. Because her first instinct had been to obey him. And that freaked her out a little bit.
“Do it, Sheena. Do you have any idea how much time I’ve spent wondering how that whole tattoo looks? I want to see it.”
And he looked at her with so much hunger.
Not the general sexual hunger that men always looked at her with.
But appointed, sharp need that felt like it had lodged itself right between her ribs, and flexed.
It took her breath away. It made her feel like she was .
. . like she was losing her mind. Like she was the one who was suddenly pinned to the spot, undone by sexual hunger.
She had met her match.
That thought was so shocking, and so horrendous, that she pushed it aside and vowed never to think it again.
“I want to see your skin. I want to see every inch of you. I want to lick you. Everywhere. Follow the whole line of that damned