Chapter 16
He is my husband, and I have him. He is in my bed every night. Why do I still feel that something is missing between us? If he asked, I would tell him I loved him. But I fear the answer he would give if I asked him the same.
P erry probably shouldn’t be driving. She was crying. She was shaking.
What had happened out in the alley had been …
exhilarating. Terrifying. It was like a dream, but not in a fun way.
It felt bizarre and distorted. Because she had always imagined that if she and Carson ever crossed the line in their friendship, it would be sweet.
But this had been so angry. And he had been so raw. The things he had said to her …
She’d been so turned on, and so angry. And then he had walked away from her without saying anything.
Did he think he got control of everything because he had woken up sometime today and decided he wanted her?
She pulled up to the cabin and wiped her eyes. Cursed as she walked across the gravel.
She wasn’t foolish enough to think that he wasn’t going to follow her. He was. But she had wanted to have a small implosion first. Because what was she supposed to say?
I love you, and it’s ruining my life?
She couldn’t do that. Carson cared about her. A lot. She didn’t question that. She could not bear the thought that he would try to give her something he didn’t actually want to give.
She walked into the little cabin, the one that he had shared with his wife when he’d first brought her back to Rustler Mountain.
She had been the best woman in his wedding. She had stood at the altar beside him while he waited for another woman. That was a sick sort of self-torture. She would never forget that memory.
This was awful. This was actually her worst nightmare.
Because they were in a horrible in-between place—they could no longer just be friends, or pretend that the subject had never come up.
They’d crossed that precarious line you walked when you were friends with somebody you could potentially be attracted to.
Now they had to figure out how to navigate this perilous new territory.
Because she also knew that it wasn’t going to be true love forever.
He’d already chosen someone else.
She was never going to be able to get over that.
She hadn’t fully realized it until that moment.
She’d been right in front of him, and he hadn’t chosen her.
So she did love him, in a fashion. But she could never live with him knowing that he had wanted a life with someone different. That she was the consolation prize.
For a moment, she had thought tonight might change something.
But all his talk about love really meant was that he had given whatever love he had to a different woman.
Even if he thought it wasn’t a deep enough well of love.
Even if he thought it was limited in some fashion, it didn’t especially matter.
It was all he had to give. And he hadn’t given it to her.
She heard his tires on the gravel.
She didn’t even feel angry. Not anymore.
Just sad. Sorry for herself. For the woman she was and the girl she’d been.
He didn’t knock. He just opened her front door as if he had the right.
And the air changed. The feeling inside her shifted.
It was as though reality fell away. They were back in the alley, but they were also here.
They were standing by the edge of Outlaw Lake.
He moved toward her, purpose on his face. “Are you still mad at me?”
She wasn’t an idiot. She knew the right answer to that question. He’d given it to her in the alley.
“No,” she said, lying through her teeth.
He nodded and moved nearer to her. He cupped her cheek, never looking away from her, never breaking eye contact. He moved his thumb along her cheekbone. And she closed her eyes. Then opened them, because she couldn’t bear to miss a moment of this.
This moment that was either self-indulgence or self-immolation, she couldn’t be sure which. Either way, it was too late to turn back. She had said she wanted him. She had screamed it to him in the street. She had thrown her shoe at him.
At this point, turning away would be like going swimming, and then refusing to stand outside because it had started to rain. They were already wet.
He lowered his head and let out a breath. She took it in. His mouth hadn’t even touched hers, but she had shared air with him. It was a deep, shattering intimacy that made her heart beat so hard it hurt. That made her ache between her legs.
She tilted her chin, just as he moved to claim her mouth.
She couldn’t even remember the kiss she’d gotten from a different man only a half hour ago. Carson obliterated it. He obliterated everything.
Her good intentions. Her years of restraint.
She was kissing Carson Wilder, and he was kissing her.
Just yesterday she’d experienced the life-altering revelation that he was attracted to her. And this was yet another world-ending moment. Another complete and total shift of her reality.
His mouth was firm and hot, it was home, and it was something else entirely. Because he was Carson, but he was a stranger. She had never kissed him before. She had never watched him kiss a woman, not like this. Not with sexual intent.
She gave thanks for that. Because this felt like a unique experience.
He cupped her face with hands that were large and rough.
She felt so safe. And imperiled all at once.
He angled his head, parting her lips, sliding his tongue against hers, and she let out a sigh.
It turned into a moan as he sifted his fingers through her hair, then moved them down her back, down to cup her ass.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, arched against him.
They needed to talk. But they’d spent twenty-five years talking. Avoiding this moment. And somehow, they had been brought here anyway.
Somehow, this was where they had ended up.
“I was never supposed to do this,” he said against her mouth, and it prompted questions in her that she would have to ask later.
Because she couldn’t ask them now. All she could do was whimper as he kissed her like he never wanted to do anything else.
As he kissed her like he had never wanted anyone else.
He made her ache. But she was smart enough to know that it was just this moment. It was just this.
It wasn’t just sex, because that was impossible. Because she was Perry, and he was Carson.
“My pirate princess,” he whispered in her ear, and she thought she was going to come then and there.
“ Oh ,” she said, an inarticulate noise of need.
“I want you,” he said, his eyes so intense. They were blazing with hunger.
She had never seen him look at anybody like that.
“Why?”
She wanted to punch herself in the face. She didn’t need to introduce talking. Not to this. They had done all their talking. They didn’t need any more.
“I don’t know when it started,” he said. “And I realize that is a really stupid thing to say.”
She couldn’t speak. The words wouldn’t come.
“I just know that I do. It’s like breathing. I didn’t decide to do it. I didn’t think about it. Suddenly, I’m just aware of it. And now I can’t do a damn thing but focus on it.”
It was actually the best thing he could’ve said. His need wasn’t sudden. It wasn’t because she was leaving. It wasn’t even just because she had kissed somebody else. It wasn’t a lie.
“I want you too,” she whispered.
He cupped her face again and lowered his head, kissing her deeper, longer. It was the best kiss of her life.
She had always known. She had always known that his mouth would fit against hers perfectly. It wasn’t weird that it was happening now. It seemed absurd that it never had before.
It was more intimate than any kiss she had ever received. Because of course she had kissed men in the past, some that she knew, and ones she didn’t know so well. But she didn’t know anybody like Carson. He held a piece of her soul, always.
He was the very first and always. Maybe not the first to touch her, but the one who had made her understand why you might want to be touched. Why pressing your mouth against another person’s wasn’t gross.
No. Not at all. It was everything.
They stood there in the living room, kissing. Her arms around his neck, his roaming over her body.
And then she tugged the front of his shirt. Just a little. Just slightly in the direction of her bedroom. And she found herself being picked up. Like he was the pirate captain to his pirate princess, and he was going to make her walk the plank.
Except she wouldn’t tumble into the water this time. It would be into bed. With him. With Carson.
She started to shiver.
“Are you okay?” he asked against her mouth as he set her down, her one bare foot cold against the floor.
“Yes,” she said.
“Nervous?”
She laughed. “No.”
He growled and brought her close again, kissing her.
She kicked her remaining shoe off. He took off his.
Suddenly, that tight little dress she had put on earlier felt like a burden.
She had known that dress had one purpose.
To be taken off by a man. She simply hadn’t imagined that it would be this man.
Not tonight, anyway. She had imagined him taking her dress off a hundred times.
Until she had stopped letting herself do that.
He was the foundational text of her sexual fantasies.
There was no getting away from that. She didn’t even want to.
She wanted to savor every moment. Every touch.
She wanted to watch him watch her. She wanted to have the full experience of him desiring her.
Because it had been a revelation yesterday when she had realized that he wanted her too. She wanted to hang on to that. She wanted to fully experience it.