Chapter 39 A Better Man
A BETTER MAN
Simone
Ineed you.
The words hung between us like the dust motes glowing through rays of sunshine.
Brendan stood silhouetted against the bakery window, the afternoon light casting shadows across his face that made his expression impossible to read.
He looked good on my farm. Maybe too good, which was why I’d been trying not to observe the way his long legs looked better wrapped in denim and flannel than his typical suits. Why I’d paid more attention to a broken door hinge than to my boyfriend.
He asked if I would ever come back here, and the answer came easily. But I’d kept one part back—the fact that my dream wouldn’t be complete without him in it. Not anymore.
Until he’d spoken in that deep voice turned inexplicably tender.
I need you.
Had he really said it?
He hadn’t said anything else. Now he seemed quite frozen.
“Brendan?” I asked. “W-what’s wrong?”
“Everything.” He shook his head. “Nothing.”
I took a step forward, reaching out for his hand. “It’s okay. The farm, my dad, I know it’s sad. But the money I’m earning with you is all going to this place, so it’s going to be okay, really.”
He’d been so quiet for the last several hours, I’d known something was churning behind that stoic facade. Of course he was still shaken up after what had happened yesterday with Kylie. Maybe being confronted with all my family’s problems was too much to take.
“Simone.” He toyed with my fingers, running his thumb between the grooves made by the bones on the top of my hand. “I need to tell you something.”
Automatically, I braced myself. He was going to tell me it was too much. That the differences in our lives were too vast. That someone like him couldn’t be involved with the gargantuan task of rehabilitating a family that included a depressed old man and a narcissistic sister.
“It’s okay.” I pulled my hand from his grasp. “I understand. You don’t have to explain.”
I popped up onto my toes and gave him a kiss.
It was meant to be a comfort, quick and soft. Instead, one of those broad hands grabbed my waist while the other captured the back of my head, and Brendan angled his mouth over mine with raw intent.
“Simone. Goddamn it, Simone.”
“What?” I asked through labored breaths, in between kisses I never wanted to stop. “Tell me what’s wrong. Let me fix it.”
Another groan escaped as his hands fell lower, just enough to sweep me up and onto the old wood table like I was little more than a ten-pound bag of flour.
“The problem is that I love you,” Brendan pronounced between kiss after savage kiss. “The problem is the more time I spend with you, the more I’ll never be able to let you go. And I will have to let you go, angel. I know it.”
Wait, what?
The confession was as bright as a bolt of lightning.
Brendan Black loved me. The Black Prince—no, he was so much more than that. He was my Brendan. My lover. The quietly sweet, ruthlessly protective, deeply loyal man whose mask fooled everyone else but came down for me.
He loved me. This man loved me.
So, what was he so afraid of?
“You love me?”
It was like he couldn’t get close enough, the way his hands trapped my waist, the way he buried himself in my neck, the way he couldn’t tolerate the buttons of my shirt for more than a few seconds.
“Of course I love you. How could I not? You make me better. You make me want to be better. But goddamn it, I don’t know if I can.”
You make me better. Was that all I was to him? A tool for his improvement? A way to polish the tarnish from his reputation or maybe his soul?
I pushed on his chest. “Stop. Look at me.”
To my surprise, he obeyed. I didn’t think Brendan Black could obey anyone.
I took his chin and stroked his face. “Listen to me now.”
A muscle in his jaw ticked, but he remained silent.
“You don’t need me to make you better. You don’t need me to do anything but love you. And I do. I love you just like you love me. Exactly as you are.”
The fear in his eyes ebbed but didn’t totally disappear. “Even with my black heart?”
I pulled him down so that his forehead touched mine. “Your heart has never been anything but full of color to me.”
Several breaths passed as he seemed to digest my words. Then he kissed me again. Soon we were pawing at each other’s clothes, stripping them away until we were both shirtless and breathless in each other’s arms.
“Never done this before.” He licked down my chest, then buried his face between my breasts with a satisfied sigh.
“Not with anyone. But Christ, angel, it feels like…” He stood up again, then took one of my hands and guided it down to the steely length evident through his pants. “Sometimes it feels like you own me.”
Heat flooded my cheeks, but I didn’t pull away. Instead, I squeezed and stroked, enjoyed the tortured expression as his eyes fluttered closed.
“Please,” he whispered. “I’m yours. Do you understand?”
I wondered later if it was the first time Brendan had ever begged.
He’d never felt this way before?
Well, neither had I.
This wasn’t just lust between us, though God knew we had plenty of that. This was something deeper. Brendan said he was mine, and I wanted to melt into him like butter into bread.
My legs parted as I tugged at his belt, then undid his trousers. His breath grew ragged, his jaw clenched, but he didn’t stop me when I pulled down the zipper, slipped my hand around his erection, and pulled him free.
He caught my wrist. “Wait, angel.” It sounded like it took everything for him to say it. “I need to protect you.”
I shivered. Who but him had ever needed to guard my safety, my happiness, like it was his own?
He fished a square of foil from his pocket and pressed it into my hand, then waited as I rolled it over him with shaking hands.
“Come here,” I said. “I want you.”
“You have me, angel. Every fuckin’ inch.”
His eyes held mine as he pushed inside. The stretch seared, then melted into fullness that just about broke me.
“How do you feel this good?” he mumbled as he seated himself fully. “How do you always feel this fuckin’ good?”
I couldn’t reply. I clung to him, barely able to remember my own name, let alone answer questions like that.
He began to move, full of the praise I needed, telling me I was so good for taking him like I did, how tight I was, how perfect.
He was measured but uncertain, like an apple balanced on a knife’s edge. “You need it, baby? You need it like this?”
“Yes. Harder.”
But he wouldn’t let himself break. Not yet.
I took a handful of his thick, dark hair and tugged. “Tell me what you want. Tell me what you need to let go.”
He froze, then, to my surprise, laughed, a harsh bark of a thing.
“What do I need? What do I want, angel?” His thrusts turned slightly frantic, like just the question threatened his composure. “I want the impossible. I want everything.”
Sweat dripped from his brow as he took another frenzied kiss, and the salty essence of him lingered on my tongue.
He was delicious.
“I want to stay here. On this farm. Wherever you are. In a home I never had.”
Whatever I’d been expecting him to say, it wasn’t that. Certainly not with his accent as thick as it had ever been, caught up with his emotions.
“I want to come home to you covered in flour, smelling like sugar, with food on the stove and my ring on your finger. Fuck.” With another punishing thrust, he was deeper than ever.
“I want to fuck you in every meadow on this place, and then I want to strip you down on this counter and lick every inch of your body for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, just because I can. Because you’d be mine to feast on whenever I fuckin’ want. ”
He yanked me closer, slowing his movements but practically tunneling inside me.
“I want to rip this condom off and fill you so good you’ll be pregnant in seconds. I want to fuck a baby into you every hour of every day just so I know you’ll always belong to me.”
His eyes turned black, daring me to look away.
Instead, I came.
“brENDAN!”
My body seized, and he followed me over the edge on a howl, both of us clinging to each other like we might float away with the dust motes.
When the world came back to us, it was with a distant whistle of wind through the maples and the sweet song of a bird, far from home, but somehow happy just where it was.
But just when I was about to kiss this beautiful man and present him my own confession—that he could have all those things, if only he had the guts to ask me for real—Brendan spoke again.
“I want the impossible,” he whispered against my temple. “And maybe I want it that much more because I know I can never have it for real.”
I didn’t move for a long time. Didn’t dare turn my face, lest he see the tears threatening to spill. I was too afraid of what he’d read there.
Too afraid to ask him why, exactly, he thought he could never have the dreams that maybe we both shared.
Or else too afraid to ask why I wasn’t enough.