Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Billy
I plunge headfirst into the wall of rain, the cold a shock against my overheated skin. My boots sink into the mud, each step a struggle. My chest burns, my lungs heaving for air as I run.
I don’t slow down until I near the woods that border the property. I’m trying to outrun her, outrun my need for her, but she’s everywhere.
I can still taste her on my tongue. Rain and mint and something that is purely, intoxicatingly Sedona. The memory makes my cock ache, a hard, painful line trapped in my jeans.
I trip over a root, catching myself against the rough bark of a pine tree. My breath comes in ragged, painful gasps, each inhale pulling the scent of damp earth and wet leaves into my lungs.
“Baby.”
She called me baby.
It was an endearment from another lifetime, a word she used to murmur against my skin after we’d made love, when the world was soft and warm and ours. Hearing it now is like pouring gasoline on a fire that was already burning out of control.
I press my forehead against the cool, rough bark of the tree. My body is a live wire, every muscle coiled tight with a frustration so deep it feels like grief.
Five years. Five years I’ve spent building walls around my heart, brick by painful brick, convincing myself I hated her. And in one kitchen, in less than five minutes, she tore them all down.
The pressure at the base of my spine is unbearable. My knot. It’s forming, a hard, insistent swell that demands release.
It’s a biological betrayal, my Alpha body responding to its Omega as if no time has passed at all. As if she didn’t leave me. As if my heart isn’t a shattered mess in my chest.
My hand moves of its own accord, fumbling with the button of my jeans, then yanking down the zipper. The cold rain hits my hot, straining flesh, and I hiss at the shock.
I wrap my hand around my cock, the grip rough and punishing. This isn’t about pleasure. This is about survival. I need the release.
I need to purge this feeling before it consumes me whole.
I close my eyes, and the memory of her crashes over me. The feel of her hands under my shirt, tracing the muscles of my back. The sounds she made. Her skin…
Fuck.
I stroke myself faster, my movements uncoordinated in the pouring rain. Each pull is an act of anger, at her, at myself.
I’m angry that I still want her this much. I’m angry that my body remembers hers so perfectly. I’m angry that one taste, one touch, was enough to almost bring me to my knees.
My hips jerk, fucking into my own fist. The pressure builds in my groin. I can feel the knot swelling, the skin stretching.
I think of her mouth, her lips swollen from my kiss. I think of her neck, the delicate skin over her scent gland, and how I wanted to bite her, to mark her, to make her mine again so no one could ever take her from me.
The orgasm hits me, ripping a groan from my throat. I come hard, the hot, slick pulses of my release lost in the cold rain.
My body convulses, the pleasure so intense it’s almost pain, a wave that crashes over me and leaves me shaking, braced against the tree.
But there’s no peace. No relief.
I lean my head back, letting the rain wash over my face, trying to clean the taste of her from my lips, but it’s no use.
She’s imprinted on me. On my tongue. In my blood. In my soul. I’m completely and utterly fucked. And I have no idea what I’m going to do next.
The rain stops.
I stand in the dripping silence of the woods, water sluicing off my nose, my chin, pooling in the hollow of my throat. My chest heaves, trying to pull in air that doesn’t smell like her.
It’s useless. The pine needles and wet earth are overpowered by the phantom scent of honeysuckle and cedar. It’s inside me now, a second pulse beating behind my ribs.
My jeans are soaked, heavy, and clinging to my thighs. The evidence of my mistake washes away in the runoff, but the shame is sticky, coating my skin like sap.
I let it happen. I let her in. I let her hands touch me, let her mouth ruin five years of distance with one whispered word.
Baby.
I kick a rotting log, sending a spray of bark and beetles into the underbrush.
I have to move. I have to get back before someone notices I’m gone.
Before Seth realizes my bed wasn’t slept in. Before Tex starts asking questions with those eyes that see too much. Before Jasper starts snapping photos of the foreman having a breakdown in the mud.
I walk out of the tree line. The ranch is a different world in the gray pre-dawn. The storm stripped the sky clean, leaving it a bruised purple, lightening over the hills.
Puddles reflect the fading stars. The orange tape of the quarantine zone flutters in the breeze, a bright, ugly scar across the property.
The main house is dark. Thank god. I creep onto the porch, peeling off my boots, leaving them on the mat.
I don’t need to track mud through the house. I don’t need another reason for Seth to look at me with that disappointed tilt of his head.
I slip inside. The kitchen still smells like the chicken I abandoned. The plate is on the counter, the food congealed and cold. I stare at it.
The microwave clock blinks 4:45 a.m.
I need a shower. I need to scrub my skin until it’s raw.
I head for the stairs, moving on instinct, trying to be silent.
“Billy?”
I freeze. My foot hovers over the bottom step.
Seth is sitting in the armchair by the cold fireplace. He’s not asleep. He’s watching me, his hands folded in his lap. He’s wearing sweats and a T-shirt, his hair a mess.
“Where have you been?” he asks.
“Couldn’t sleep,” I say. My voice sounds wrecked. “Went for a walk.”
“In a thunderstorm?”
“Rain woke me up.”
He stands up. He walks closer, and I tense. He can probably smell her on me. The rain didn’t wash it off. It’s in my pores.
He stops a few feet away, his nose twitching slightly. His expression doesn’t change, but the air in the room gets heavier.
“You’re soaked,” he says.
“I fell.”
“Fell where?”
“In the mud.”
He looks at my boots by the door. Then he looks at my face. He sees the conflict, the war I’m losing.
Seth blinks. “Go shower,” he says. “Breakfast is in an hour. The CDC wants another meeting.”
“Seth—”
“I don’t want to know.” He turns away, heading back to his chair. “Just… clean yourself up. We have a long day.”
I stand there for a second, my heart hammering against my ribs. He knows. Of course he knows. He can probably smell her on me from a mile away.
I take the stairs two at a time, stripping off my wet clothes as soon as I hit the bathroom. I turn the water on, scalding hot. I step under the spray and let it burn.
I scrub my hands over my face. I scrub the soap into my hair. I scrub my neck where her mouth was. But the memory doesn’t fade.
It’s branded onto my retinas. The way her back arched. The way her fingers dug into my shoulders. The way she felt against me, like she was made to fit there.
I lean my forehead against the tile.
What the hell am I doing?
I spent five years hating her. Five years building a life that didn’t include her. I was doing fine. I was functioning. I was running this ranch, keeping my brothers alive, making sure the bills got paid.
And she walks back in, faints in the dirt, and suddenly I’m a teenager again, climbing her window, begging for a scrap of attention.
No. Not begging. I’m not that guy anymore.
I shut off the water. I grab a towel, rubbing it roughly over my hair. I shave. I brush my teeth. I put on clean clothes—jeans, a white T-shirt, a flannel.
Armor. That’s what clothes are. A uniform to face the battle.
When I walk into the kitchen forty minutes later, the sun is up. Tex is at the table, shoveling eggs into his mouth. Jasper is there too, looking terrified and tired, nursing a cup of coffee.
Seth is at the stove, plating bacon.
“Eat,” he says, sliding a plate toward me.
I sit. I pick up my fork. I don’t want food. My stomach is in knots, but I need the fuel. I need the energy.
“Dr. Thorne called,” Tex says between bites. “They have updates.”
“What kind of updates?”
“He didn’t say. Just that they need us at the command tent at eight.”
I nod. I eat the eggs. They taste like nothing.
“Did you check the cattle?” I ask.
“Seth did,” Tex says. “The separation is stressing them out. The calves are pacing. But the CDC won’t let us put them back together.”
“Damn them,” I mutter.
“It’s protocol,” Seth says, sitting down with his own plate. “We have to follow it.”
We eat in silence. The only sounds are the clinking of forks and the low buzz of the refrigerator. Outside, I can hear the trucks arriving. The government vehicles. The invasion.
I finish my plate and stand up. “I’m going to check the fences. The storm might have knocked some posts loose.”
“I’ll go with you,” Tex says.
“I can handle it.”
“I’m going with you,” he repeats, his tone firm.
He’s not asking. He’s telling. He’s worried about me. He thinks I’m going to do something stupid.
Maybe I am.
We walk out into the morning. The air is cool and wet, and the ground squelches under our boots. We head toward the north pasture, where the orange tape cordons off the CDC zone.
“You look like hell,” Tex says.
“Thanks.”
“Seth looks worried.”
“Seth always looks worried.”
“Not like this.” Tex stops walking. He kicks at a puddle. “Billy… what are you doing?”
“I’m checking fences, Tex. That’s my job.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.”
I stop. I turn to look at him. He’s younger than me, but right now, he looks older. His eyes are serious, stripped of their usual humor.
“I saw the way you looked at her,” he says. “When she fainted. And I saw you last night. You didn’t go for a walk.”
“It’s none of your business.”
“It is,” he says. “She’s part of this. She’s part of us. Even if she left. She’s back now, and she’s sick, and you’re… whatever you are with her.”
“I’m nothing with her.”
“Bullshit.”
I cross my arms. “Watch your tone, Tex.”