17. Chapter 17 #2
"You sure?" he asks. Not the first time. His voice comes from just ahead of me, rougher than I'd heard it, stripped of that careful distance he wears like armor everywhere people can see.
I find his shape in the dimness and step closer. "Ask me again and I'll find something in here to hit you with."
His laugh surprises us both, a short exhale that isn't quite humor. Then his hand finds my jaw, fingers spanning my cheekbone, thumb pressing just beneath my ear where my pulse hammers against his skin. He holds me there like he's reading something in the beat of my blood.
"Last chance," he says, but his thumb moves, tracing down my throat, and I know we're past chances, past the version of himself he believes he has to be.
I reach up and pull his mouth to mine.
The kiss starts hungry, the kind of collision that comes from wanting too long and saying nothing, but he slows us down, his hand sliding to the back of my neck, angling my head where he wants me, tasting me like he had all night and planned to use it.
I feel the control in him, the restraint that holds him back even now, and I bite his lower lip just hard enough to make him groan against my mouth.
"Tana." My name comes out like a warning, like he's holding onto something that is slipping.
I push my hands under his shirt, finding the heat of his stomach, the muscle that tenses under my palms as I trace upward.
He's built like the ranch itself, solid from labor, scarred in places I feel with my fingertips.
When I find his nipple and roll it between my fingers, his whole body goes still.
Then his hands move, rough and certain, finding the hem of my own shirt and pulling it over my head in one motion.
The light catches me, and I feel the instinct to cover myself, but he's already looking, his gaze traveling down my throat, my collarbone, the lace of my bra that suddenly feels like too much and not enough.
"You're shaking," he says, and his hands follow his eyes, sliding down my arms, my ribs, settling at my waist where the tremor is real and visible.
"Just cold," I lie, and he smiles, that rare thing that changes his whole face, and bends to kiss the hollow of my throat.
His mouth is hot, wet, lingering where my pulse beats fastest, and I feel the shake in my own legs now, the weakness that comes from wanting this, from having it, from the fear underneath that I'm already too far in with a man who built walls for reasons I understood too well.
His hands move behind me, finding the clasp of my bra, and he pauses there, forehead pressed to my shoulder, breathing hard against my skin.
"Tana," he says again, lower this time, like saying my name is costing him something.
I answer by pulling him back down to me.
He catches my wrists, pins them to the wall above my head with one hand, and the other finally freed himself, pushing his jeans down just enough. I feel him then, hot and hard against my stomach, and the size of him makes me catch my breath, makes my hips roll instinctively, seeking.
"Look at me," he commands, and I do, finding his eyes in the dimness, the hazel dark with everything he held back, everything he's letting go. "You say stop, I stop. No matter when. No matter …"
I surge up and kiss him, tasting the words he couldn't stop needing to say, and feel him shift, angle, and then he is pushing into me, slow and relentless, filling me until my head falls back against the wood and my mouth opens on a sound I don't recognize.
He stops there, buried to the root, and I feel him shaking against me, the effort of holding still, of letting me adjust to the stretch of him.
"Okay?" The word's barely audible, grinding out between his teeth.
I wrap my legs around his waist, pulling him deeper, and moan when he hits the place that makes sparks behind my eyes.
"Move," I gasp, and he does, pulling back and driving in, finding a rhythm that started measured and fell apart within seconds, both of us too hungry, too long denied this collision.
The shed fills with sounds I will remember later …
the slap of skin, his breath harsh in my ear, the creak of the wall as he takes me harder, the broken way I say his name when he shifts his angle and sends pleasure ripping through me in waves.
His free hand moves between us, finds where we joined, and his thumb presses down with exactly the pressure I need, circling, driving me toward the edge I can already feel building, tightening, coiling low in my belly.
"Come for me," he growls against my throat, and the command in it, the raw possession, shatters what little control I have left.
I cry out, my body clamping down on him, pleasure breaking over me in long, pulsing waves that makes my vision blur, my legs tighten around him until I can feel every spasm, every aftershock rocking through me.
He keeps moving through it, chasing his own release now, and I feel the moment he goes over, hear the strangled sound he makes against my shoulder, the heat of him flooding into me as his whole body goes rigid, then shudders, then finally, slowly, goes still.
We stay like that, breathing hard, his forehead presses to mine, his hand still holding my wrists above my head though the grip has loosened.
I can feel his heart hammering against my chest, racing like he'd run miles, and the intimacy of that small vulnerability hits me harder than anything else, the proof that I'd shaken him.
"You're shaking," he says, echoing my earlier lie, and I feel him smile against my jaw, the curve of it unmistakable.
"Cold," I say again, and he laughs, a real sound this time. He lets my wrists go so he can step back and help me find my clothes in the dimness.
I look at him too long in the amber kitchen light, at the silver in his hair, at the way his face has softened now that he’s stopped fighting every feeling as it rises.
He catches me at it and keeps my gaze, and for a second it feels like the room has narrowed down to just that ...
him looking back, me not knowing what to do with how much it matters.
Then a dog sounds off somewhere out in the yard, and wind hits the main pasture gate hard enough to make it ring. The spell breaks. The ranch keeps going, same as ever, as if nothing here has shifted at all.
Rebel's hand finds my neck, his thumb tracing the line of my jaw in a gesture that feels almost tender, almost accidental, as if his body had moved without his permission. "Come back to the house," he say, his voice low, careful not to demand. "I'll feed you. You must be hungry."
I don't answer immediately.
I ease back far enough to look at him properly. He’s got that same stripped ...down expression he gets only when control has already failed him and he hasn’t yet rebuilt it. For one aching second, I can see the life I could walk into if I were reckless enough to mistake being wanted for being safe.
That’s the danger of this. Not just that I love him. That he can make a ruin look almost livable.
"I can’t," I say.
His hand stills. "Because of what happened in Fort Worth?"
The real answer crowds up all at once: the baby, Derek, the fact that every time I get close to saying it, the truth gets heavier and I feel myself shrink around it.
I only shake my head.
He studies my face long enough to hurt.
“You’re asking me to stand still for something you won’t name.”
“I know,” I say.
It barely makes it out.
I move before he can say anything else, because if I stay there under that look, I’m not sure I’ll leave at all. Outside, the air is cooler. By the time I reach the house, the relief has already burned off, and all that’s left is the reason I’m still thinking about going.
Not because I don’t want him.
Because I do, and Derek is still out there, and the baby is still a truth I haven’t managed to put in Rebel’s hands. Staying like this means lying to him a little longer and letting whatever is coming get closer while I pretend I still have time.
What I’ve been calling caution has started to rot. It wears patience on the outside, but underneath it’s already doing damage.
If I keep waiting, this won’t break clean. It’ll go by degrees, quietly enough that by the time either of us admits what it cost, the loss will already be behind us.