Chapter 22 #2
And watching her come undone, feeling her shake apart with my name on her lips, her face open and unguarded and so trusting it splits me wide, I lose it.
I don’t mean to. I’m thirty-five years old and I haven’t lost control in years.
But she’s still pulsing around my fingers, still rocking through the aftershocks.
Every shudder rippling through her rolls her hips forward and grinds her down against the front of my jeans where I’m almost painfully hard.
My cock’s pinned between her thigh and the denim of my jeans.
The material is already damp from her orgasm, and every time she shifts I get friction I can’t stop.
Then she makes this sound. This small, broken, satisfied sigh against my neck.
And that’s what does it. My hips jerk against her helplessly and I bury my face in her hair and come so hard my vision goes white.
For a long moment, neither of us moves. We just breathe, with her legs still locked around me, and my hands still on her.
With my face still lying into the curve of her neck.
With the porch light buzzing above us and the whole empty valley spread out behind us and neither of us caring about a damn bit of it.
Then Daisy starts laughing.
A quiet, breathless, disbelieving laugh that shakes through her ribs and into mine.
And I can’t help it. I laugh too. Rough and low and stunned, because I just made Daisy Monroe come against her own front door and then came in my pants like a teenager while the whole of Blackstone Creek slept, and it’s the most honest thing that’s ever happened to me.
“Did you just—” she starts.
“Don’t.”
She pulls back, and her face is luminous. Flushed and glowing and smiling at me like I’m something worth looking at. “Wyatt Hartley.”
“I said don’t.”
“That’s the hottest thing that’s ever happened to me.”
I drop my head against her shoulder and groan, but I’m still laughing, and her fingers are running through my hair, and for thirty perfect seconds the world is exactly right.
“Alright.” I set her down gently. Her legs wobble and I steady her, both hands on her waist. “Let’s get you inside before I lose what’s left of my dignity.”
She grins up at me. Wild-haired and bright-eyed and so thoroughly ruined I can barely stand it.
“I think your dignity left about two minutes ago.”
“Appreciate that.”
She turns toward the door, still laughing, and digs her key from her bag. Fits it in the lock and pushes it open.
And the laughter just stops.
I see it over her shoulder. The lamp knocked sideways, casting a sick angle of light across the floor. Drawers pulled open. Papers scattered. The couch cushions slashed and tossed. Her laptop gone from the desk.
Daisy goes rigid under my hands.
Every nerve in my body that was loose and warm thirty seconds ago fires at once. I pull her behind me, one arm barring her from the doorway, and scan the room for signs of an intruder.
“Don’t move.” My voice goes cold. “Stay right here.”
“Wyatt—”
“Right here, Daisy.”
I step inside and clear it fast. Bathroom. Behind the shower curtain. Under the bed. Nobody. Whoever did this is gone.
“Wyatt?” Her voice from the porch. Small in a way Daisy Monroe’s voice should never be.
“It’s clear.” I come back to the door. She’s standing exactly where I left her, arms crossed over her chest, shivering. I can’t tell if it’s the temperature or the shock.
I pull my jacket off and put it around her shoulders. She grabs the lapels and tugs it closed.
“Don’t touch anything. I need to call the sheriff.”
She nods. Doesn’t speak. Just looks around at the destruction of the cabin.
I call the sheriff’s office. Get the night deputy, a kid named Travis who sounds half asleep despite the hour. I tell him what we found, tell him I’m taking Daisy up to the main house, and to meet me there. Then I hang up before he can ask questions I’m not interested in answering.
Her heels are somewhere on the porch. I scoop her up before she can step off into the gravel, one arm under her knees, the other around her back. She doesn’t argue. That’s how I know she’s rattled. Daisy Monroe argues about everything.
She curls into my chest and I carry her to the truck, setting her in the passenger seat. Her fingers let go of my shirt slowly, like they forgot how.
Neither of us speaks on the short drive to the main house, and my jaw is locked so hard my teeth ache.
The house is dark when we pull up. Empty.
My siblings are still at the rodeo. I come around to her side, open the door, and lift her out before her bare feet can touch the ground.
She wraps her arms around my neck and I carry her through the back door, past the mudroom and the kitchen, up the stairs that creak under my boots.
My room is at the end of the hall. I push the door open with my shoulder and set her down gently. Her bare feet find the dark wood floor and she stands there in the middle of my room, completely swamped by my jacket over her shoulders.
She looks lost. I’ve never seen Daisy look lost.
I fish out an old, soft shirt, too big by a mile, and hand it to her. She takes it with a wobbly smile that sends a pang through my chest.
“I’m goin’ to check the house.” She swallows before nodding up at me. “Lock the door behind me.”
I clear every room as quickly as I can and as meticulously as possible. There’s nothing out of place, and no one to be found. Only then do I wash up, cursing myself soundly as I fish out clean underwear from the laundry.
By the time I’m set to rights and back in the kitchen, gravel crunches under tires outside. I open the front door and meet Deputy Travis on the porch.
“Cabin’s down the track.” I keep my voice low. “Place tossed, laptop’s gone. She’ll have a full list tomorrow.”
He nods, writing it down on a notepad. “I’ll seal the scene tonight. Torres’ll come by in the morning for prints and a full statement.”
“Appreciate it, Deputy.”
He’s already turning back to the cruiser. The Hartleys aren’t strangers to him, and he knows when to back off tonight.
I watch the cruiser pull out and turn down the track toward the cabin, then I lock the door behind me, and take the stairs two at a time.
When I knock on my door, it takes her a second. Then the lock turns. She’s changed. The black dress is in a pile on the floor and my shirt hangs past her thighs. I hand her a glass of water I grabbed from the kitchen.
She crawls into my bed and pulls the covers to her chin and looks at me with those big brown eyes.
“Are you going to stand there all night?”
I should. I should sit in the chair by the window and keep watch.
Instead I pull off my boots. My belt. Lie down on top of the covers beside her. She rolls into me immediately, her forehead against my chest, her hand fisting in my shirt, and I wrap my arm around her and stare at the ceiling.
Her breathing evens out in minutes. She falls asleep curled against my ribs, trusting me completely, and I don’t deserve a single bit of it.
Because I’m lying here in the dark and none of it makes sense.
I was with her all night. Right beside her at that dinner.
Right up against her on that porch. She was never out of my sight, not for a second, and it still wasn’t enough.
Someone walked into that cabin and tore it apart and I didn’t see it coming.
Didn’t think to check. Didn’t think about anything except stealing kisses I have no right to.
I think about Dad. About Tom. About how I was supposed to ride with them that morning and didn’t. Fifteen minutes, twenty max. I’ve done the math a thousand times.
And now his daughter is asleep in my bed, and I wasn’t paying attention again.
If Tom could see me right now, he’d put me through the wall. And goddammit, I’d let him.
Fuck.
The guilt doesn’t come all at once. It builds in layers while Daisy sleeps, each one heavier than the last.
She’s Tom’s daughter.
She’s nine years younger than me.
She trusted me with her safety and I failed.
I lie still and let it stack up because that’s what I do. I take the hit and file it away in the place where I keep every failure I’ve ever committed, and I use it to build the next wall.
By the time I hear the front door open downstairs, boots in the mudroom, Colt’s low laugh and June shushing him, I’ve made the decision.
This stops.
Whatever it was becoming on that porch, it ends here. Not because it wasn’t real. Because it was.
And real is exactly what makes it dangerous.
Real is how people get hurt on my watch while I’m busy wanting something I was never supposed to have.
Daisy shifts in her sleep, pressing closer. Her fingers curl tighter in my shirt and she murmurs something I can’t make out, and the tenderness that rolls through me is so sharp it feels like an open wound.
I don’t sleep. I watch the ceiling go from black to gray to pale, and I hold her the entire time because I’m not strong enough to let go yet.
One night.
I’ll give myself this one night of knowing what it feels like to have her breathing against my chest. And in the morning, I’ll do the right thing.