Twenty.
Rhett
It’s barely past seven when Shea lets herself into my kitchen with two to-go cups from Cup O’Joe and a smile that has my cock stirring without warning. “Mornin’, beautiful,” I say, taking the cup she offers me and placing a kiss on her lips. “Levi’s already gone up to the resort. Tyler?”
“Morning.” She smiles. “He’s doing online classes until eleven.
I told him we’d pick him up for lunch and shoot some town footage after.
It’s supposed to be a gorgeous day.” She sets her coffee down on the counter and steps into me, her hands sliding up my bare chest. I’m in nothing but a pair of grey sweats. “Which means we have some…free time.”
I set my cup down. “That so.”
“Mhm.” Her fingers trace the waistband of my sweats, and those big brown eyes flick up to mine, dark and full of intent.
This woman.
I don’t answer with words. I fist her hair, tip her head back and kiss her, slow and deep, walking her backward through my house until her spine meets my bedroom door. She laughs against my mouth, breathless, and I swallow the sound as I reach behind her, twist the knob, and back us both inside.
She tugs my sweats down my hips. And I strip her blouse over her head, toss it, and get my hands on her. I lay her back on my bed, and fuck, the sight of her. I strip the rest of her leggings and underwear and toss them to the side.
I settle between her thighs, but she’s already reaching for me. “Rhett,” she whimpers.
“Lie back, baby,” I press a kiss to the inside of her knee, her thigh, working my way up.
She shivers, her hands in my hair. And when I finally get my mouth on her, she arches clean off the bed with a gasp.
I take my time, knowing exactly how she likes it.
Flat, firm strokes of my tongue, the way she needs me to circle her clit before I seal my lips around it and suck.
I know the sound she makes right before she loses it, that high broken little cry, and I chase it, my hands locked over her hips to hold her still while I work her.
“Oh—Oh, god, right there, don’t stop.” Her thighs tremble and I groan against her, the taste of her driving me out of my mind. The need to feel her come on my tongue is overwhelming. My cock aching. “Rhett…”
I don’t let up. She goes tight and then she shatters, crying out my name, her back bowing off the bed as she comes against my mouth. I stay with her, gentling, lapping at her creamy cunt until she’s boneless and gasping, tugging weakly at my hair.
“Come here,” she pants. “I need you. Now.”
I grin and kiss my way up her body. I settle my hips between her thighs as she reaches between us. Her hand wraps around me, guiding me to where she’s slick and ready. I groan as the head of my cock drags through her heat. Fuckin’ hell.
I push into her, slowly at first, then snap my hips, burying myself deep. She moans. Bare, warm, tight, her body stretches to take me. “That’s it, baby,” I breathe. “Take all of me.”
I brace on my forearms, cage her in, and start to move. Hard rolls of my hips have her clutching at my back, her nails biting into me. But there’s no rush this morning. I want to feel every second of it. Her lips part, her eyelids flutter closed.
I’ve never wanted anything the way I want this woman.
“Look at me,” I growl, thrusting deep inside her.
Her eyes flutter open, find mine, and hold. And the intimacy of her gazing up at me while I move… It hits harder than anything physical could.
“You feel so good,” she whispers, her hands sliding up over my shoulders. “Rhett, I—”
Something rises up in her, but she stops herself, and my heart pounds against my ribs because I think I know what it is.
And I want it so fucking bad I can taste it.
But she doesn’t say it. She pulls me down and kisses me instead, hungry and searching as she rolls her hips up to meet mine.
Then she plants a hand on my chest and pushes.
I let her flip us, going onto my back with her straddling me, my cock still clutched in her hot embrace.
“Goddamn,” I groan, my hands gripping her hips.
She braces her palms on my chest and rises up, then sinks back down, taking me to the hilt.
And the sight of her above me—head tipped back, curls wild, riding me slow in the morning light—is something I’d frame if I could.
She sets her own rhythm, unhurried, chasing exactly what she needs, and I let her.
I slide my hands up her thighs, her waist, up to cup her breasts, and she moans, grinding down harder against me.
“That’s it, beautiful,” I rasp. “Just like that. Fuck me.”
“Oh, Rhett.” She rolls her hips as her walls start to pulse around me.
I reach between us and press my thumb to her clit, circling in time with the roll of her hips. She cries out, her rhythm going ragged. “Come on. Come for me.”
She shatters a second time, clenching around me so hard I nearly go with her. Her nails dig into my chest as she rides it out. Watching her fall apart on top of me, flushed and wild and fucking mine, it drags me right to the edge…
“Shea, baby, I’m gonna—”
She leans down, kisses me hard, and breathes against my lips, “Inside. I want to feel it. All of you.”
That’s all it takes. I grip her hips and drive up into her once, twice, and then I’m coming with a growl torn out of my chest. Buried deep, my whole body goes tight beneath her as I empty into her and she holds my cock through every last shudder.
For a long moment neither of us moves. She’s collapsed against my chest, both of us breathing hard, my arms wrapped around her.
She lifts her head, chin propped on my sternum, and smiles down at me and my chest goes so full I can barely stand it. There’s a whole speech sitting behind my teeth. Stay. Marry me. Let me keep you. Three words, even. But I bite them back, because it’s too soon and I don’t want to spook her.
“What?” she asks, catching me staring.
“Nothing.” I tuck a curl behind her ear. “Just admiring the view.”
She smiles, kisses my chest, and settles back down against me, and I let myself believe, just for a minute, that we’ve got all the time in the world.
Shea’s in my passenger seat with her coffee in hand, wearing my flannel over her own clothes because she ‘got cold’ and I didn’t argue because I like the sight of her in it too much.
The heater’s going, the morning’s cold and bright, the maple trees that line the street have long since gone bare.
We take the drive over to the Hargrove place in no particular hurry to be anywhere but next to each other.
“Okay, walk me through today,” I say. “What’s left?”
“Mm.” She sips her coffee, ticking it off on her fingers the way she does.
“Fireplace is done. Floors are refinished and cured. Kitchen’s in, the ensuite’s plumbed and tiled, Levi hung the last of the cabinet doors Thursday.
” She’s grinning now, that excited-hands-flying energy building.
“Honestly, babe, it’s finishing touches time.
Trim paint. Fixtures. The light over the island.
A few staging pieces I’ve got coming from Bozeman. ”
I grin at her giddiness. “We’ll shoot the final walkthrough footage this week, then. Get you your pilot episode.”
She goes quiet for a second. “I couldn’t have done it without you. You know that, right? Any of it.”
“You’d have figured it out.”
“I mean it, Rhett.” Her hand covers mine on her knee. “You didn’t just save my house. You…” She stops, the same way she did this morning. “You gave me a lot more than a restoration project.”
Say it, I think, I’m right here, baby.
But she just laces her fingers through mine and looks back out the window, and I let her have it, because we’ve got time. We’ve got weeks. And after this morning, I’ve stopped believing she’s really going to get on that plane at all.
Which is exactly the kind of thought a man has right before the rug is ripped out from under him.
Because as I approach the Hargrove place, there’s a car in the driveway that doesn’t belong. Long, black, rental-lot clean, parked crooked across the gravel like whoever drove it didn’t care much for the surrounding yardwork.
Shea goes rigid beside me.
“That’s—” she starts, all the warmth drained clean out of her. “Rhett, that’s a rental.” She’s already fumbling for the door handle before I’ve fully stopped the truck. “That’s my father’s preferred rental.”
The front door of the house we’ve been renovating for the past two months swings open and I catch my first glimpse of who I can only assume is Daniel Winton.
He steps out onto the porch like he owns it.
Crisp grey suit that I’d venture to say costs more than the very truck I’m driving with shoes that shine cleaner than this same truck.
I kill the engine. Shea’s already out of the truck, coffee abandoned in the cupholder, moving toward the porch like she’s being pulled on a wire.
I get out slower. Take stock.
Daniel Winton is not a big man—shorter than me by a head, lean, expensive—but he stands like he’s never once in his life been told no.
Silver at the temples, an expensive coat over his shoulders, a gold watch throwing light off his wrist. And behind him, hovering in the doorway of the house Shea put her heart into, is a woman with kind eyes and an anxious mouth who has to be the stepmother.
And beside her. Tyler.
Ah, hell.
The kid’s got his hood up. Earbuds in. Shoulders curled, phone out, eyes down—every inch of the sullen teen I first met. The armor’s back on, bolted down tight. Shea did a lot of work cracking that kid open. And it took his mother and Daniel minutes to weld him shut.
I don’t like the guy already, and he hasn’t said a word.
“Dad.” Shea’s voice is overly bright, and my brow furrows. It sounds a lot like the one I heard on the jobsite weeks ago. “You’re back early. We weren’t expecting you until—”
“Clearly.” Daniel’s gaze slides off her and lands on me. Up, down, taking in my work-worn boots, the truck with my logo on the door, and I get the feeling he’s dismissed me all in the same breath. “And you must be the contractor.”
Why the fuck did he say it like that?
My hackles rise, but I keep my voice even, my face as neutral as I can. “Rhett Montgomery.” I offer a hand. “You’ve got a hell of a daughter, Mr. Winton. She’s done incredible work on this place.”
He doesn’t shake my hand. He briefly glances at it with the distaste of a man who stepped in a cowpie. I drop my hand.
“I know exactly what my daughter’s been doing,” he says.
“And with whom.” His eyes cut to Shea, then back to me, and there’s nothing warm anywhere in them.
“You’ve been a busy man, Mr. Montgomery.
My renovation up the mountain. My daughter.
My property here.” A thin, humorless smile.
“That’s a great deal of Winton business you’ve gotten yourself into for a small-town handyman. ”
The unspoken threat lands exactly how and where he means it to.
Shea steps in front of me. “Stop it, now,” she hisses. “This is my house, my money that went into this. Who I spend my time with is none of your business.”
Her father huffs, gaze cutting to his daughter. “Isn’t it, though? When you stay at my resort all expenses paid, I do believe, it is my business, young lady.”
“That’s enough.” Shea’s voice cracks like a whip.
I take a step forward. “Sir, with respect, you’ve got it all wrong. I took that resort contract months before I ever met Shea. Levi and I earned that job on our own. I’d never—”
“I didn’t ask you to speak,” Daniel spits, then turns to his daughter.
Something in my chest goes white-hot. I open my mouth—
“Rhett.” Shea’s hand is on my arm.
I look down at her, and her face has changed. Pale and desperate, her eyes pleading. She doesn’t want me to fight for her, I realize. Not here. Not against her father.
“Please,” she says. “You should go. Let me handle this.”
I glare at her father standing smug on the porch steps. “No. I’m not leaving you.”
“Please.” Her fingers dig into my arm, and her voice drops even lower, cracking at the edges. “You being here makes it worse. You don’t know him, Rhett. I do. Please. For me. Go. I’ll call you later.”
Every instinct I have is screaming to plant my boots and not move an inch, to stand between her and that cold bastard in the expensive coat. But she’s asking, begging me, and I realize the hardest goddamn thing I can do for her right now is the thing I want to do the least.
Leave.
“All right,” I say. I cup her jaw, just once, my thumb brushing her cheek. I ignore Daniel Winton entirely as I lean in and press my forehead to hers. “You call me and I’m here. I don’t care what he says. You understand?”
She nods against me as a tear spills free.
I kiss her cheek and take a step back. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done—turning my back on her. I walk to my truck while her father watches me with a satisfaction I’d love nothing more than to knock clean off his smug face.
Beyond him, I catch Tyler’s eye for a half second. I give him a nod, trying to reassure him, too, that everything is going to work out. But he looks away.
Yeah. Me, too, kid.
I climb in my truck, start the engine, and I drive away, leaving the woman I love to face down the one man in the world I can’t restore for her.
I make it exactly to the stop sign at the end of the street before I pull over, put it in park, and sit here gripping the steering wheel, waiting for her phone call.