Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Her feet had stopped movin'.
I noticed it the same moment the DJ moved on to ticket prices, her whole body goin' statue-still against mine, hand rigid in my grip. I pulled back just enough to look at her face.
She wasn't lookin' at me. Wasn't lookin' at anything, really. Just starin' at some fixed point past my shoulder with an expression I'd never seen on her before. Not the armor. Not the viper. Somethin' underneath both of those things. Somethin' blank and lifeless.
"Hey." I dipped my head, tryin' to find her eyes. "You okay?"
"Fine." Clipped. Automatic.
"Calvin—"
She kissed me.
Not like last night or this mornin'. Nothing like just a few hours ago when I'd shown up unannounced.
This was different—fast and purposeful, both hands fistin' in my shirt, walking me backward before I'd registered we were movin'.
The back of my knees hit the old wooden bench along the barn wall, and I sat down hard.
"Hey, what—"
She was already reachin' for my belt.
"Calvin." I caught her hands. "Hold on a second. What just hap—"
She looked up at me then and whatever I was about to say dissolved completely. Her eyes were dark and intent and givin' nothing away. The armor was back. Fully fitted, not a gap in sight.
"Do you want me to stop?" she asked.
The question landed flat. Practical. Like she was askin' if I wanted cream in my coffee.
That was what snagged in my chest, even as my brain was losin' the thread entirely.
The flatness of it. Two minutes ago, she'd had her cheek against my chest and her eyes closed and her whole body soft and easy in a way I was startin' to understand she didn't let herself be very often.
Now she was lookin' at me like I was somethin' to be managed.
I didn't know what had just happened.
But she was watchin' me with that careful, neutral expression. Her hands were on my belt and I was a man, not a saint.
"No," I said.
She held my gaze for a beat. Then she reached up, unthreaded my belt, slow and deliberate. She looped it around my wrists before securin' them behind my back with a practiced efficiency that should've surprised me more than it did.
"Calvin—"
"Shh."
She swung a leg over my lap and settled her weight against me and every coherent thought I had left scattered like startled birds.
My lips reached for her face—needed her mouth, needed that connection that had been there every other time—but she turned her head and my lips caught her cheek instead. I tried again and she dipped her chin, fingers pressin' into my shoulders, a wordless and absolute refusal.
Okay. Alright.
I kissed her throat instead, just below her jaw, and felt her pulse jumpin' there. Fast. She was affected, despite whatever she was pretendin'. I dragged my lips down the side of her neck, scrapin' my teeth lightly against her skin, and felt the shiver move through her before she could stop it.
She moved against me and the sound that came out of me was disturbing, but I was well past carin' about that.
I wanted my hands. Wanted them on her hips, her waist, her face—wanted to tip her chin up and make her look at me the way she had every time before this. But my wrists were cinched behind my back. All I could do was sit there and take what she was giving me and try to remember how to breathe.
She set a torturous rhythm, the movin' against me through too many layers of denim. I groaned against her throat.
"Calvin." Her name came out rough. Desperate, if I was bein' honest. "Baby, look at me."
Nothin'. Just the weight of her body against mine and her face turned down and away, hair curtaining whatever was happening in her expression.
I turned my face into her neck and just held on.
She smelled like barn and summer and the faint ghost of shampoo from this morning's shower and underneath all of it, her. Just her. That dark, warm scent that had been livin' in the back of my brain since the first night she walked into The BP and looked at me like she could eat me alive.
My hips tried to roll up into hers of their own accord and she ground down harder, pinning me, controllin' the pace with an iron grip that would've made me laugh under literally any other circumstances.
I mouthed at her pulse point, her collarbone, the curve of her shoulder where her tank top had slipped. Anywhere she'd let me. Takin' whatever scraps she was willing to give because the alternative was nothin', and I couldn't stand nothin' right now.
"Look at me," I said again, quieter this time. Not a demand. Almost a plea. "Calvin, please."
Her rhythm faltered for just a half second.
Then her fingers dug deeper into my shoulders, and she moved faster, putting my beggin' to an end.
The heat of her was unbearable. The friction of it.
The smell of her hair in my face and the sound of her breathing going ragged above me and the fact that I couldn't touch her, couldn't pull her closer, couldn't do a goddamn thing but sit there with my wrists bound behind my back while she took exactly what she needed and gave me nothin' in return but the maddening, relentless roll of her hips.
I was already embarrassingly close because she knew exactly what she was doin' and my body didn't care one bit about the alarm bells goin' off in the back of my head.
She came quietly, which was somehow worse than if she'd screamed. Just that sharp exhale I'd learned by heart, the clench of her fingers, her hips stutterin' once and going still.
And I—
Well.
I'd like to say I held it together.
I did not hold it together.
The specific combination of her weight and her heat and the friction and the wanting and the fact that she'd been movin' against me like that for the better part of ten minutes without lettin' me touch her or kiss her or even look at her meant that I followed her over the edge about four seconds later with a muffled curse and my face buried in her hair and absolutely zero dignity left to speak of.
We sat there for a moment, both breathin' hard.
I pressed my lips to her temple. The only place I could reach.
She pulled back slightly at the contact. Not a flinch. Just… withdrawal. Incremental and intentional.
Then she climbed off my lap, smoothed her shirt down, and walked out of the barn without a word. Didn't look back. Didn't slow down.
A minute later I heard her truck turn over. Then the spray of gravel under tires, fadin' down the drive until there was nothing left but the cicadas and the horses and the music from the radio still playin' in the tack room.
I sat on the bench with my wrists still looped in my own belt and the distinct, humiliating evidence of the last ten minutes coolin' in my jeans and stared at the middle distance.
The song on the radio changed to somethin' upbeat and completely inappropriate for the situation.
Maribel looked at me from across the aisle with what I could only describe as pity.
"Do not judge me," I told her.
The barn door swung open.
"Hey, Brody—" Slim stopped dead in the doorway. Tommy walked into the back of him.
"The fuck?" Tommy said, peerin' around Slim's shoulder.
They took in the scene. My wrists looped in my belt. My jeans. My expression, which I can only imagine was somewhere between wrecked and bewildered.
Slim curled his lips between his teeth.
Tommy looked at the ceiling.
"Jesus fucking Christ," I said. "Will one of you please help me?"
Slim lost it first. Doubled over, one hand braced on the door frame, wheezin' like a busted accordion. Tommy lasted about three more seconds before he went the same way, both of them absolutely useless to me and everyone else on this earth.
"You know what," I said. "Forget it."
I worked my wrists free, stood, did what needed doin' to restore some semblance of my dignity, and walked past both of them with my head held as high as a man in my situation could reasonably manage.
Which, for the record, was not very high.
"Not a word," I said on my way out.
Their laughter followed me all the way to my truck.