Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
CAL
I was caught between a rock and a hard place. No pun intended. I squirmed in the saddle, trying to give my crotch more room to breathe.
The natural canter of the horse meant we continued to bounce against each other. If I had the horse book it back to the ranch, then at least we would get home quicker and end this torture. But going fast meant less chance of controlling our body contact. Yet if we took a leisurely ride, my body would probably explode from all the building pressure.
And it wasn’t just pressure in my pants that was building. This was just pressure on top of already mounting pressure. The pressure to stay one step ahead of my dad meant fighting a constant headache. I could feel in my bones that all we’d experienced thus far was equivalent to a predator baiting his prey, and the shitstorm was about to blow into town. The distraction of Sabrina in my lap was one I didn’t need.
My hands were on the reins, bringing my arms to circle around her, my forearms rested on both my thighs and part of hers. My hands were close to her knees. And though I was touching her, I wanted to really touch her. My hands itched to rediscover her curves and valleys. Christ, I missed her. And for all the times I’d internet searched her or heard stories from Jace and gotten those pangs of longing, they were nothing like what I was feeling at the moment.
Total gut punch.
Back then, I’d reasoned that as long as there was space between us, and our last time together had been that awful breakup, she was safe from me and my family, and I was able to balance my wants and must dos.
But hell, must do had taken on a whole new meaning. As in, I must do anything to keep her near me. I must do anything to protect her. And my favorite—I must do her.
She looked over her shoulder, her lips turned down.
“What?” I checked my appendages to make sure they hadn’t gotten a mind of their own and started feeling her up. Nope, all good.
She leaned back and turned a little so I could hear her better. “I thought your dad would come at me about my career, not my dad. I’m still kinda reeling, to be honest.” She straightened and faced forward.
I leaned toward her. “I don’t know what you want me to say. You won’t let me apologize.”
Her ponytail was near my cheek—I was that close—and I drew in this new warm scent of her. She was sultry and mysterious, and as much as I knew her, I also knew I didn’t know her at all. This was a new Sabrina, and I liked it. Is her favorite kissing spot still right behind the earlobe? If I turned my head ever so slightly toward her, I could brush…
I ground my teeth together. Brush nothing. I needed a cold shower and a punch in the nose. This was Sabrina, and she didn’t deserve mixed signals.
“He knows I’ll do everything to protect you.” I hadn’t meant to say it. Something about the slow canter, our synced rhythm, and her being technically in my arms had short-circuited my brain, and I’d forgotten there were things I didn’t want her to know.
She gave me a curious look over her shoulder. “That’s stupid. Our breakup was ugly, and we haven’t seen each other in over ten years. Why would he even think that?”
Pressing my lips together to keep any other revealing statements from flowing out, I looked over her shoulder, not meeting her eyes.
“Cal?” She shifted so she could turn more, and now her sweet ass was rubbing against my thigh.
Why did we have to travel so far from the ranch? I wondered if it might be worth walking the rest of the way.
“Calvin!” she snapped.
“What?” I gave her eyes a quick drive-by, hoping she’d take that as enough eye contact.
Sabrina grunted in frustration, then as if performing acrobatics on a horse, shuffled in her seat, swung her legs around, and before I knew it, she had turned herself around to face me, riding backward.
“What are you doing?” I asked. This was not going to go well. I could feel that in my gut. We were either going to fight or do something far more stupid.
“What are you not telling me?” She narrowed her eyes.
“Not telling you about what?” I was going have to play the long game here and hope she gave up.
She shook her head. “You forget that I know you, Cal. So don’t think I’m going to play the deliberately obtuse game with you. Why would your father assume you would protect me? It’s been a decade. We haven’t seen each other, or even spoken one word to each other, in years.”
Her new position put her closer. Her legs were over the tops of my thighs, and I could see down her shirt… if I wanted. She was that close. Does it not bother her to be like this? Is she not acutely aware of the attraction that remains between us? She’d told the reporters it was restrained passion, and to me, that had been a perfect summation. Walking away from her had been an exercise in restraint. Sitting here, touching her, watching her—it was all restraint. It was enough to break a man.
She gripped the side of the saddle and looked ridiculous bopping up and down in rhythm with the horse’s canter, a scowl on her face. My arms were still around her, holding the reins, our canter slow and lazy. Seducing us. Or maybe that was just me.
But this situation needed a quick shift, and I was the man to do it. Her position gave me an idea. In hindsight, it might not have been a good one.
I leaned in and closed my arms around her.
“What are you doing?” She bent back, her hands grabbing my biceps.
“What are you doing?” I made a point of staring at her from top to lap, to draw her attention to all the ways our bodies were touching.
Her eyes went wide.
“Maybe you should turn back around,” I said.
“Maybe you should answer my question.” She met my arched brow with one of her own.
“What question?” I smirked.
SAbrINA
The man was exasperating. That seemed to be a running theme with Cal Beckett 2.0. My Cal, college Cal, had been tactfully honest, which I had found refreshing.
That was why I’d turned around in the saddle. For a moment there, he was my Cal. The feel of him behind me was as familiar to me as if it were my own body. I’d watched his hands loosely hold the reins, and I knew those hands. Knew the scar across the knuckles of his three middle fingers on his left hand, from an accident he’d had as a child. I knew the feel of the scar when our hands were entwined. And for a moment, I forgot where I was, or maybe I just lost the last ten years because so much was familiar, and it felt so good. Familiarity was comfort, and I sorely missed it.
Then I mentioned my father, and all the loneliness of the years washed over me. My mother had died when I was three, and though I had her parents, they passed when I was a teen, leaving me with just my dad—until I met Cal. With him, I saw more. I saw a growing family, and I hoped and wished and crossed my fingers because, dear Lord, I wanted that. I dreamed of so many wants with Cal that I felt greedy, but I never once thought I was asking for too much. Until it was all taken away. Cal left. My dad died. My uterus betrayed me. And I was… alone. Really, truly, deeply without.
And then Cal had said his dad had targeted me because he knew Cal would protect me. Why would a man who walked away protect me? And why would his dad think he would do that?
I caught his eye and held it. “You keep saying stuff about protecting me. You can’t protect me from what your dad and his cohorts plan to do. You can’t protect me from the press or whatever. And it’s not your job to protect me. You gave up that right in Vegas.”
He was the first to break eye contact as he looked over my shoulder, a stubborn set to his jaw, the muscle in his cheek popping. He was trying to find the right words. I knew him. I knew how to interpret that look.
He cleared his throat. “Whether you see me as a friend or not, I will always protect you. It’s what I do. Just because we couldn’t be together anymore didn’t mean I stopped caring for you.”
“If you still care for me, then tell me why we broke up in Vegas.”
He shook his head. “I’m not sure it matters anymore.”
“What if it matters to me?”
“Reenie?” He sounded aggrieved.
I reached out and touched the scar that ran under his chin and toward his jawline. “Remember when you got this? We went to the Caribbean for spring break.”
His eyes flicked to mine, skimmed past my lips, then looked away. “Your dad was there at a tournament.”
I gave a small smile. “Yeah, he was kicking ass, chalking up the wins.” He’d won enough to pay my tuition for the next year, had I needed it, but my grandparents had funded my college.
A smile teased at Cal’s lips. “Watching him play was amazing. And we ran into some others from school down there, and one was a girl Jace liked. Remember that?”
I barked out a laugh and nodded. “I wasn’t legal drinking age, so you kept ordering me virgin drinks, then swapping a few of them with Jace’s. He didn’t know—he was so caught up in that girl.”
He nodded, a smile fully on his face. Lord, he was beautiful when he smiled. “But you told him she liked the guy that was in their group, and he liked her. They just hadn’t found the courage to take the next step yet. Even then, you could read people. You were a matchmaker, and you didn’t even know it.”
I had always been really good setting up couples. I just sucked at it when it came to me.
“And we swam with the dolphin, and afterward, I was ready to switch my degree to marine biology just so I could swim with dolphins for a living,” I said.
Cal tipped his head back and laughed. “You were obsessed with that dolphin. You said Capri-Sun was your spirit animal.” His voice was deep with a hint of scratchiness yet smooth and comforting as well.
My heart was bulging with happiness from the memory. My head was calling me a fool for going down memory lane.
“Capricious,” I said, committing to being a fool. “His name was Capricious.”
He met my gaze, the corners of his eyes crinkling with pleasure. “That’s right. I don’t know why I can’t remember that.”
“Because you were jealous,” I said, recalling all the fake fights we’d had about me and the dolphin.
He searched my face for a beat, then wiped a hand across his scar. “I was only jealous of how much of your time that dolphin was taking. You went to the dolphin, and Jace and I went to the Jet Skis and acted like fools. Racing and being stupid guys. That Jet Ski bucked me off like a bull does a rider.”
I followed his fingers across his scar. “Who knew water could cut like this?”
He grabbed my hand in his, and we held each other’s gaze. “What are we doing here?” Cal asked, his eyes flicking to the space between us.
“What do you mean?” The shift in conversation had me confused.
“Sitting like this? What do you want from me with this?” His voice was raw.
“I want the truth. I want to know why you keep me in the dark about that night.”
He transferred the reins to one hand, then slid the other down my back and stopped at the top of my butt. He looked up and met my gaze, his eyes shadowed by his Stetson, but I saw a flash of something, remorse maybe, in his gray eyes. Then he jerked me toward him until I was practically sitting on top of him. Driven by reflex, I gasped at the sudden closeness and clutched his shoulders to steady myself. There wasn’t a hint of daylight between our bodies.
“Sitting like that makes me want to do this.” He clutched me tighter. “And this.” His head dipped low, putting his mouth close to my neck. His hot breath warmed the spot behind my ear.
Because my body was a traitorous bitch, I shifted to give him access and so his Stetson wouldn’t bump me and come off. I dug my fingers into his shoulders as my heart thudded loudly in my ears.
“But I can’t do this,” he whispered. “That wouldn’t be right. Because what would follow? A fling?” He shook his head. “I couldn’t live with that. Not a relationship—I don’t want one. That means when we’re done with this job, we go back to our lives. The one where you’re not in mine and I’m not in yours because our time together has passed.”
Like a bucket of cold water had been dumped on my head, I came back to reality. I pushed away from him and did the same swivel in the saddle I’d done before, putting my back to him. We rode the rest of the way in silence.