Time.
A proper goodbye.
The one I never had.
The one we never had.
Chapter Twelve
Hannah…
I have never wanted anyone the way I want this man. If I have ever questioned the truth in that statement—and I did, of course—I don’t now. The taste of him, the feel of him next to me, his hands sliding up my back, molding me close, is fire while the past is ice, and that somehow only makes me need that heat all the more. I don’t hold back. I need this. I need him. No, my body needs him. Because that’s what this is. Sex. It has to be sex because sex is all there is for us. I will not love this man again.
I tug at his T-shirt and press my hands beneath it, the feel of hot, hard muscle beneath my hands, almost punishing, he feels so good.
“Take it off,” I order, letting the purse on my shoulder fall to the ground.
He doesn’t argue. He pulls his shirt over his head, and before it hits the ground, before I can study the stallion etched on his arm, his hand is under my hair, at my neck, dragging my lips to his. “I didn’t think I’d ever kiss you again,” he says, “and that was torture.”
And yet he didn’t come for me. That’s my thought. “Don’t talk, Roarke,” I order because I’m angry again. I’m hurt again. I need to stop thinking. I push to my toes and press my lips to his, and when his hand comes down on the back of my head, when his tongue presses to mine again, it’s heaven. It’s relief and fire and passion. It’s forgetting. It’s memories. I can’t explain what kissing him feels like, but I just need more of it, of him.
“I missed the hell out of you, woman,” he murmurs against my mouth, ignoring my command for silence, but his tongue strokes deep, and that counteraction to his words drives everything else away.
I make the decision right then that I’m not going to fight wanting Roarke. I want him. I have always wanted him. He’s right. I ran, and denial is what will make me run again. I’m done with that. I’m not hiding from this or him anymore. I’m not giving him that power. I want. He wants. That’s as real as it gets. That’s as honest as we ever were or ever will be again. I don’t hold back. I sink into the kiss. I let my hands slide over the hard lines of his body.
He catches the hem of my blouse and tugs it upward. I don’t even think about stopping him. It’s over my head and gone in a blink, but I’m focused on him and him on me. His gaze rakes over the swell of my breasts beneath black lace, my skin heating, sex clenching. Already his fingers are snapping open the front hook of my bra and skimming it off my shoulders. “God, woman,” he whispers, his lips brushing my neck, finding my ear. “You’re beautiful,” he adds, and no man saying those words to me has ever mattered, but they do now. They do with Roarke. He’s always mattered, too much. He’s always mattered too much, as proven by the power I gave him to hurt me.
I can’t do that again; I won’t. His hand is on my breast, and I cover it with my own as if that somehow makes me in control, but there’s an explosion of my senses that rules my body right now. And Roarke is the reason for that explosion. As if proving that to be true, his teeth nip my bottom lip, and no sooner do I yelp than he’s licking the offended lip, then cupping my backside and lifting me.
My legs wrap around his waist, heels falling to the ground, fingers diving in the long silk of his dark hair. My fingers have always loved his hair, and why wouldn’t they? I spent years of my life fantasizing about doing just this before that summer when I finally could, when we finally stopped fighting what was between us.
Roarke settles me on my back on the bed, the mattress caving with the weight of our bodies together, the sweet weight of his body on mine. I can’t breathe and yet, somehow, I can finally breathe again. His lips press to mine again, his kiss deep, drugging, consuming, and I both hate and love him. My fingers remain in his hair, and I’m rough, tugging, pulling, that anger inside me burning a hiss of energy through me.
I catch his leg with my leg and arch into him. His hand slides under my backside, molding me to him, the thick ridge of his erection pressed to my belly. I moan, and his lips are gone, his mouth traveling down my body to my neck, my shoulder, and my nipple. My leg falls from his leg. His hands find my hips, his mouth, my belly.
Roarke’s eyes collide with mine, and Lord help me, I feel him inside and out; I feel him all over. My heart squeezes with emotions I don’t want to feel. “Why are you still dressed?” I demand, trying to return to someplace safe, someplace that’s just sex. He kisses my belly again, and then he’s unbuttoning my pants, the zipper following. His hands, God his hands that have not touched me like this in so long, slide under my waistband, and he carries them down my bare legs. I’m panty-less, a habit I developed in L.A., where panty lines were sins that might get you fired. His mouth finds my sex, kissing my clit before he gives me a lick. I arch into the gone-too-quickly touch of his tongue. He’s gone, too, now, dragging my pants down my hips and legs.
He tosses them aside, and I sit up. He’s already pulling off his boots. My eyes go to the stallion on his arm—Mercury—the horse that was his everything growing up, the half sleeve that is so a part of this man, and yet I’ve only seen it once, the night I left him. He got it that day. I was with him.
I shut my eyes, trying to block out the past, but my mind starts to replay that day. He lost Mercury the month before. That tattoo was a way to heal. I drew it. I created the image. I was always sketching him and his horse. And I was his best friend. At least, I thought I was, but—
“Hannah,” he says softly.
The minute he says my name, I rotate and scoot to the edge of the bed. This is crazy. It isn’t giving me back control. It’s cutting open a wound to let it bleed out again.
I stand up, and he’s there, in front of me, completely naked, thick and hard at my hip, his fingers splayed between my shoulder blades, his other hand in my hair.
“Don’t do this,” he orders softly. “Don’t make this about then. This is now.”
I’m angry again, damn him. “Why aren’t you kissing me?”
“Hannah—”
“Kiss me or let me get dressed,” I whisper fiercely.
He kisses me, and when our tongues touch this time, I’m not the only one angry. He is, too. I taste it, lying there on my tongue, and this infuriates me. What does he have to be angry about? But just as sure as I taste that anger, there’s a desperate quality to him, a possessive need that is so raw and real that I can’t deny it or him. That’s my trigger. That’s the pop of restraint that is no more.
Suddenly, we’re wild, kissing, touching. We’ve been lost. We’re found right here, this night, and it doesn’t matter what that means or where this goes. There is just now. I don’t even remember how we got down on the bed or how our legs got wrapped together, the thick ridge of his erection pressed between my thighs. We don’t talk about birth control. He’s the only person in this world who knows that I can’t have kids. For just a moment, that stirs up thoughts again, about talks of adopting, about that small window of time when I wanted so many things. But he presses inside me, stretching me, filling me, and this moment is all there is. The new wave of wildness between us.
We kiss. We touch. We arch into each other. We have these moments where our lips part, but we just breathe together. Then we unleash again. I don’t want it to end, but his hands and his body and—I can’t stop the burn that builds, the edge that becomes a ball of tension. He drives into me, pulling me against him, arching my hips against his, and with a swipe of his tongue for added effect, I tumble into orgasm. I bury my face in Roarke’s shoulder and the wave of pleasure trembles through me.
He cups my butt and my head, and with another thrust, he lets out a guttural moan, one that I feel like a vibration throughout my entire body. He quakes into his release, and for a few moments that feel eternal and yet so very fast, the world doesn’t exist. There is just the two of us. Every imperfect mome
nt evaporates. There is just how perfect we are right now.
We collapse into each other, and we don’t move. We just hold each other, but the longer we lie there, the more reality seeps back into the picture, the more I don’t know what to do next. How does one act after sex with your ex-fiancé? It all seemed so simple when my pre-sex bravado was in place, but it’s not easy to find your bravado while naked.
It’s Roarke who moves, pulling back to look at me, stroking hair from my face, and there’s such tenderness in his touch, in his eyes, that my chest tightens with emotion. “I’ve missed you,” he whispers, which is everything I want and everything I don’t want from him.
“It’s not that simple,” I say. “This isn’t—”
His cellphone rings, and he grimaces, his forehead touching mine. “You know—”
“That your patients matter. Yes. They matter to me, too.” It’s an easy statement to make. I know how much the animals mean to him. It’s part of what makes him a special human being. It’s part of what made me love him. It’s part of what still makes me like him as a person. “Take the call.”
“I’ll be fast,” he says, kissing my temple and then pulling out of me to roll away.
I grab the tissues on the nightstand and manage to wrap a throw blanket around me when I hear Roarke say, “Banamine, Trental, and Amoxicillin. I’ll be there as soon as possible. Call me in an hour with an update.”
He has to leave. There it is. This is over. It’s that easy. He disconnects his phone and grabs his underwear, pulling it on before grabbing his pants. “I have a horse I’m caring for, for a high-profile customer, that is showing signs of placentitis. She might lose her pregnancy. I need to get back.”
“Of course,” I say, hugging the blanket to me. “I spent a lot of time hanging out with you and your father, helping with the animals. I know what that is. You know I do.”
He closes the space between us, his hands coming down on my arms. “Come with me. I need you to come with me. I’ve got a vet student at the ranch. She’s administering drugs. We have time to go by your place.”
“You don’t need to risk an extra hour, which is what that would take. You need to go. Save that foal and its mama.”
“Come with me.”
“You need to get dressed and leave. I’ll be there the day after tomorrow, with holiday cheer to spread.”
“Hannah—”
“You need to leave.”
“I don’t want to leave. We didn’t talk at all.”
“We didn’t need to talk. This wasn’t about talking. We’re not going back. We just—we needed this out of our system.”
He studies me a long moment, his jaw hardening. “Are you serious right now, Han?”
“Yes. Clearly we needed to do this. We did. And we worked off all the anger and steam. We can work together. I’m not angry. I’m not going to act like you’re my enemy. That horse reminds me that I actually like you.”
“You like me.”
“Yes. You’re a good guy and—”
His hands fall away. “A good guy.” His tone is crisp and hard. “A good guy.” He scrubs his jaw and turns away. He doesn’t say anything else. He grabs his boots, sits down with his back to me, his impressive shoulders and arms flexing beneath the stallion tattoo as he pulls them on. I just stand there. I don’t move. I don’t speak. I want to go with him. That’s how stupid I am. I want us to be what we once were, no matter how big of a lie that perfect couple turned out to be.
He stands up and walks toward the living area, which is the first time I even realize we’re in a suite. He disappears around the corner, I assume to grab his shirt. I hold my breath, waiting for what he will do next, and I’m shocked when I hear the door open and close.
I walk forward into the living area and stare at the empty room. I walk to the closet by the door, and there’s no bag there. He left. He’s gone. The burn in my eyes and chest promise an eruption. I turn away, afraid he’ll come back in and see what’s about to happen. Hurrying forward, I dart into the bedroom, then the bathroom, and shut the door. I lean on the wooden surface and wait and wait. I wait some more. He doesn’t come back, and now I’m naked but for a blanket, in a hotel room, where I just had sex with Roarke. I slowly sink to the floor, where I do what I swore I would never do for that man. I cry.
Chapter Thirteen
Roarke…
I had to get out of that hotel room before I told Hannah everything, and that would be a mistake. If it wasn’t a mistake, I’d have told her before now. So I do what I can’t do in Sweetwater.
I go to Whataburger.
I mean, how the hell else do you deal with being kicked to the curb by the only woman you’ve ever loved? It doesn’t matter that I just ate. I order a burger, onion rings, and a strawberry shake, and then I hit the highway. If I tell Hannah I didn’t cheat, I have to tell her about a vicious battle between our families that left her father determined to keep us apart at all costs, including framing me for cheating. And since Jason’s father was involved with it all, too, telling Hannah means telling him, and Jason doesn’t need to hear this shit about a father he’s recently lost. And it’s not like telling the story saves me with Hannah. Either she’ll hate my family or her own. There’s no win for me in this because there’s no win for her.
I lost her years ago.
I won’t get her back now.
No matter how much I love her.
As insane as it is, it’s because I love her that I won’t tell her that I didn’t cheat on her. It’s because I love her that I let her go, but now that she’s back, saving her might just kill me.
…
Hannah…
I don’t stay in the hotel room. Funny how sex with your ex, followed by tears, will wipe out the effects of wine, especially when it wasn’t that much wine. Instead, I grab an Uber to take me to my car and do what I couldn’t do in L.A. I climb in my car and drive to Whataburger, where I order a burger, onion rings, and a strawberry shake. With my feel-good order in hand, I hit the highway and drive toward Dallas. I start eating and do so heartily, hungrier than I realized. The truth is, other than the brownie at the restaurant, I didn’t eat much today. Besides, every self-respecting Texan knows that emotional distress is made better by Whataburger. I concentrate on every bite and use my onion rings as an escape from any other thought. I will not replay any kiss, touch, or intimate moment with Roarke. I will eat Whataburger. There is only Whataburger seducing me right here, right now. It’s a strategy that works for about ten onion rings and a bite of the burger.
Then it’s all over. The mental hammering begins; the revisiting of my time with Roarke takes over. I replay it all, every minute with him in that hotel room, and when I arrive at my loft-style apartment, it’s with an empty bag, a full stomach, and a heavy heart. I undress and fall into bed. I don’t cry again. That’s the thing about Whataburger and emotions. It fills you up and weighs you down. I need to sleep, and somehow, I do, which I only know as fact because I shut my eyes to darkness and wake to sunlight trying to burn holes in my retinas. There is also a sound.
I jolt and sit up, looking around the bedroom that is only a bed and not much more, to realize that sound is my phone that has now stopped ringing. I grab it from the nightstand to find Linda’s name on my caller ID. Swinging my legs over the edge of the bed, I punch redial. “How are you?” I ask the minute she answers.
“Going home tomorrow,” she says. “Dying anyway. I need Starbucks. I need it like I need my next breath.”
I laugh. “I’ll come bring you Starbucks. I need to talk to you anyway. Wait. What about being diabetic? Can you have Starbucks?”
“Shut up,” she says. “Bring the damn coffee or die. And what do you need to talk about? Did something go wrong?”
“No,” I say quickly. “No. Nothing is wrong, but I want to talk to you about that job I booked. I’ll t
ell you all about it over Starbucks. I’ll get sugar-free syrup.”
“Don’t be a bitch. If you walk in here with sugar-free—”
I hang up. She’s getting sugar-free. I’m about to set down my phone when it hits me to change my L.A. number to a Texas number. The way my L.A. boss made me change my Texas number to an L.A. number. I’d resisted. I’d known that once my Texas number changed, Roarke could no longer call me. In the end, my new L.A. number brought me relief, regret, and finally, peace. Relief that I could stop waiting for Roarke to call. Regret that I wouldn’t know if he finally did. Peace that I’d finally stopped waiting on him. That had been four months after I’d moved. Four months that had been all about waiting for Roarke, not living for me. Last night wasn’t a return to the past. It wasn’t about him. It was about me. I did what I said I would do. He walked out, but he did so knowing that this time, I just needed closure.
Why doesn’t it feel like that’s what I have?
I hurry to the shower, and I swear, as I step under the warm water, I can still smell Roarke’s cologne, and I hate the regret I feel as it fades into perfumed body wash. An hour later, I’m in the used piece of junk Ford Taurus I bought when I got to town, dressed in jeans, a tank top, and sneakers, with boots on my mind; I need a pair before I head to the ranch tomorrow. I force myself to think about shopping, and that leads me to the budget for this project. I’m just arriving at the hospital when Jessica calls.
“Hey, you,” she says. “How are you?”
“Good,” I say, pulling into a parking spot and killing my engine. “My mind is swimming with holiday ideas. I actually think I might put on a few holiday tunes on my way to Sweetwater tomorrow.”
“And jingle all the way here?” We both laugh, and she murmurs, “Oh God. That was a bad joke.”
“It was pretty bad, but I still liked it.”
“Good. We’re going to get along well then. I’ll fall on my face. You can laugh.”
“Or we’ll fall together and laugh together.”
Tangled Up in Christmas Page 7