Chapter 8 #2
I manage to emit part of a laugh that sounds nothing like one. “No. Did you really expect that?”
Her lips purse. “True. But… I mean, I can hurry things along.”
I blink as she reaches for her phone, taking a large drag of wine from the glass in her other hand. Her multiskilling distracts me for a critical moment. I lunge over her, sending the phone skittering across the couch.
“Don’t you dare!” I cry. “I’m not some hussy out to pick up your rich brother, Win.”
Considering that Winnie put me in this frame of mind in the first place… Gah. I shake my head, frustrated. I am most definitely not made for people. But the fact that Cord hasn’t called bothers me.
You can always call him.
The tiny voice inside my head bounces side to side and. Won’t. Shut. Up.
Winnie laughs. “I know that, silly. But from the way the girls chase after him at these events, he must be something special.”
“He is.” Sobering, I sit back, nursing my glass.
“Ooh, girl, I’d feel for you. But he’s my brother, so ew. And I get liberties.” Winnie scoops up her phone, firing off a quick text before I can protest.
“You can’t be serious,” I mutter weakly. “What did I do to deserve this?”
Winnie snorts. “You never got the chance. I married Brad straight after school and made my own mess.” Her usual smile droops at the mention of her ex.
All Cord issues forgiven, I snuggle closer. “Hallmark Channel?” I suggest, ever hopeful.
“No way. GOT reruns?”
“Ahh, the gore. Nopity.”
Finally, Winnie talks me into Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, though I make a strong case for the Colin Firth 1995 version. She drifts off about halfway through, and I trudge on alone.
After a while, my senses dull to the messy scenes, but the female characters remind me too much of my own state.
I flick the movie off. In her bedroom, Sally snores as loudly as her mother.
Living in a townhouse hasn’t been my natural state for years, though I’m grateful for a place to crash.
Even so, the warmth in the close four walls is stifling.
Any building is too crowded after the open air of the forests and months of sleeping on the ground.
Grabbing my wolf blanket that’s growing frayed at one end—not a bad thing, I prefer that it sees some use than none at all—I slip out the front door to sit on the stoop.
The cold night breeze is a poor replacement for frigid mountain air, but right now, I’ll take it.
My back pocket buzzes. I extract my phone with no small degree of awkwardness, unwilling to move too much in my huddle of warmth.
A single-word message flashes on the screen.
CORD
Cold?
Dark leather boots appear at the edge of my vision. I look up into Cord’s face. Shadows hide his eyes.
“Not really.” I tilt my head to one side, assessing him, and pat the top step, offering a tiny corner of my blanket. “Share?”
“The cold doesn’t bother me anymore.” He perches on the step beside me, sliding his arm around the outside of the blanket to draw me into his side.
“Mm-hmm.” I don’t really object to the contact, despite the questions roiling inside me, each desperate to launch out of me first. I fidget with the ear of the wolf crocheted into the blanket, flicking the soft threads back and forth.
Cord is silent for a moment, his arm stiff at my back before he blows out a long breath. “I haven’t thought about much apart from you,” he admits, running his other hand over his short hair.
I smile into my hands. “You’ve been a distraction to me, too, ranch boy. My stats suck when I can’t focus.”
“Winnie said she spoke to you.” Cord’s back goes rigid. “Said she told you about my habit.” He spits the last word with distaste. At himself, maybe.
I shrug, trying to be the woman we apparently both want me to be. “It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine.” His arm tightens around me.
“I’m going back to Alaska.”
“You’re nothing like them.”
We speak at the same time, and it takes me a second to decipher what I heard. Cord beats me to it.
“You’re heading to Alaska?” His fingers trace a pattern over my shoulder.
I resume fidgeting, wishing it were as therapeutic as I pretend it is. Dammit, I still can’t focus around him. “Maybe. I don’t know. A grant might have come through. It’s not confirmed yet, but it would let me complete the research I cut short last month.”
“I see.” Cord stares out at the street, every inch of him that’s pressed to me hard and unyielding.
And intimidating as all hell.
I hadn’t realized that’s how Cordell Rand must appear to the rest of Montana until right now. What Winnie talked about. Now? He’s scary as fuck.
My motormouth kicks in with its regular people-based defensive mechanism.
An often unused one, as wolves don’t make me half as nervous as the man seated beside me.
“Anyway. Nothing is confirmed, but the research trip might be a long-term thing and would mean being out there for long stretches. For now, I’m uploading my data for my article.
” I blather on when he probably can’t care less.
“The pups haven’t reached maturity yet and I’m keen to go back and…
” I keep talking. Eventually, I’ll run out of crap to blab about and stop.
The whole time, Cord sits rock-still beside me, the usual warmth of him gone.
“You’re determined to go back?” His voice dissipates into a brittle silence that hangs in the air between us.
I open and shut my mouth, resembling a guppy for a few heartbeats, before managing to make reasonable sounds. “I don’t really have any plans, Cord. I might not even get the grant. But if I do… Well, it’s what I do—it’s what I’ve been working on for years now. And I wasn’t sure about—”
“Us,” he finishes for me. “My sister scared you, didn’t she?”
I bite my lip. “Yes? I wasn’t sure if I’d see you again.”
“You don’t need to be afraid, Lanie.” His voice drops as he twists to face me, his hands gliding beneath the blanket. Sensation hums through me at his touch. “Are you scared of something temporary or something permanent?”
Cord searches my face, one hand coasting up my spine to tangle in my hair.
I lean into his touch, enjoying the way the gentle tug on the strands feels.
I haven’t bothered to maintain the curls since our hike at Valiant Peak.
My hair hangs messily to my waist, untamed and pooling around our blanket-covered legs.
“I’m not sure,” I confess, trying to remember the question. “Both, maybe?” It’s a night for bald truths. “I guess… I want to see what might happen.”
Cord strokes the back of my neck with the pads of callused fingers, sending little shocks of pleasure along my shoulders as he pulls me into him.
His mouth comes down hard on my lips. He offers me no gentle introduction this time, just three days of absence and hunger communicated in a direct line between us.
Tonight’s kisses are rougher than how he touched me in his kitchen, more possessive.
I lean into him, welcoming the easy distraction as I rediscover the sculpted planes of his shoulders.
A deep growl rumbles in his chest. Strong arms scoop me over his lap to straddle him.
The blanket topples to the edge of the step, but I don’t pause to grab for it.
The heat absent a moment before returns in force.
I should stop, but I can’t, or don’t want to.
A laugh born of Cord’s personal brand of crazy bubbles within me as I slide over him to find how our bodies work together.
The solid press of him between my legs leaves me panting against his mouth.
“I’m sorry I scared you, Lanie.” His kisses soften as I draw back, tracing the lines of his face with my thumbs.
“Things… can’t always be planned,” I breathe. Which, kind of strangely, is how I prefer life. Unplanned. Uncaged.
Free.
“That terrifies me.”
I study his eyes but appreciate his honesty.
The cool blue deepens in the night to a fathomless sapphire that flares impossibly dark as he returns my blatant assessment.
Cord’s life seems to be organized by a calendar, everything scheduled so tightly.
Me? Mine is no more than a perpetual, chaotic tangle with no end in sight.
In my version, there’s no overall game, no winner’s trophy for reaching a goal.
Just… living through each day. Learning. Not stopping.
Perhaps opposites do attract, after all. The corners of my mouth quirk. “Let me terrify you into becoming impulsive.”
“Granted.” That blue flash in his eyes returns, his quick answer a bolt of pure desire that twists through me, or maybe it’s his fingers tangling in my hair as he presses our bodies together.
His mouth crashes against mine again, hard and unforgiving.
Work-roughened hands graze my ribs, trace the curve of my ass.
Cord doesn’t ask permission, sliding his tongue between my lips to search out mine.
I arch into him with a soft moan at the intrusion, letting my hands knot at the front of his shirt.
“Damn, girl. Pack something. Come home with me.” His kisses travel down my throat, thumbs grazing the swells of my breasts. His breath comes fast, whether from the impromptu offer or need, I can’t tell. “Stay with me.”
I can’t think. I sure as hell can’t breathe.
“Lanie?”
“Cord,” I start, but my voice comes out strangled, like some poor dying beast. I try again. “You said you weren’t impulsive.”
“I’m not. I’ve wanted you in my house since the last time you were there.”
His confession floors me. “I can’t just move in with you.”
Cord laughs against my skin. Pleasure shoots from my belly to between my thighs at the sound, heat pooling there where I ache for his touch. His hands wander to my hips, squeezing as though he understands exactly what just happened inside me. “Impulsive, remember? Plus, I have wolves.”
“That’s a hook.” Maybe I can study his pack while I wait and see what happens with the grant…
This man is all the wrong sorts of temptation.
Worse. He knows it. Cord doesn’t seem to have the same limits as everyone else.
That makes him both sexy as all get out and dangerous as hell.
I suck in a shuddering breath as his touch tours my body, discovering sensitive parts all over me.
Parts I didn’t know about. “I can’t think when you do that. ”
“Good. Come with me.”
“Cord. I can’t,” I protest. “I’ve had wine tonight. I need to think.”
“Stop thinking.” His mouth finds mine again, but this time his kisses are the slow sort.
Stop thinking is the last thing I should do but with Cord, it’s easy.
My anxiety drifts away, replaced by the memory of the man who defended against cruelty and harm with a cold passion that day at Valiant Peak.
And in his arms I simply…stop. I take the peace offering and settle into his arms, allowing my protests to fade into the background.
For now.
The door opens just after sunrise to reveal Winnie’s tired and surprised face at finding us tucked beneath my blanket and Cord’s jacket like little icicles, still talking. She takes one look and shuts the door with a bang.
“Oops,” I mutter.
“She’ll recover. But damn, I’m sore.” Cord shifts, tucking me deeper into his side.
“That’s what we get for sitting on a doorstep for half the night. I feel like a teenager again.” My lips tingle as I raise my fingers to touch swollen skin. Cord tracks the motion, his gaze suddenly laser-focused.
“You don’t kiss like a teenager.” His mouth touches the corner of mine and then grazes along my throat. He straightens as the door opens. Two mugs of coffee emerge and are set down before the door slams shut with another bang.
“I’m leaving in fifteen minutes. Put some clothes on!” Winnie yells through the door, loud enough for half the street to hear.
I grimace as her voice echoes along the quiet alleyway between the close-set town houses at this hour. “We’d be ice cubes if we were naked.”
“Mmm.” Cord stares at his mug skeptically and takes a tentative sip. “Devils be damned. That’s fucking terrible.”
I snort into his shoulder. “Welcome to the world of us plebs, you great snob. Instant gets better.”
“Like hell it does.” Cord rises, collecting the blanket, and holds out his hand. “It’s wet. Sorry.”
“We’ll be lucky if we don’t both get sick from this.”
“Yeah.” Cord stares at me as he hauls me upright. “I meant what I said last night. Come with me. Or come out to the ranch on your own. But stay with me.”
The charged ambiance of last night returns in force. “I’ve never done anything like this before, Cord.” I suck my tender bottom lip between my teeth.
His intense gaze follows the movement. “Me either. But someone recently told me to be more impulsive,” he murmurs, brushing his lips across my temple.
And I thought you said you’d been planning this, you rancher stalker.
“That’s a pretty big jump,” I hedge.
“That house has been empty too long. Help me fill it, Lanie.” Cord downs his coffee and presses his mouth against mine in a tender gesture that leaves my heart thundering. “Please.”
Even with Winnie’s warning ringing in my head, I can’t say no, because I don’t want to say no to this man. But I can’t fess up to my friend, either. So I say nothing as she fusses around and finally leaves for work, casting a speculative glance at us both.
Then I take the coward’s way out and write her a note, ignoring my head telling me I should listen to her warning. Because, just for once, I don’t want to do the logical thing.
And Cord’s kisses as he says goodbye afterward on the doorstep are the addictive sort.
Even if doing what he asks is the worst idea of my entire month.