by Maisey Yates
“I guarantee you I’m not buried balls deep in anything,” she said, keeping her tone deliberately dry.
“I’m just saying, I’m not sure that you’re in the best position to absolve me right now.”
“I’m not offering you absolution, you idiot. It’s not about that. It’s not about whether or not I can magically wave a wand and make you good or valuable or worthy, or whatever crap you’re thinking. It’s just that you’re not a bad man. You did a bad thing. For all I know you’ve done a lot of bad things. But the bottom line is that, when your family needed you, you came back. And you never had to look me up. Ever. You gave me money. You want to make sure that I can retain my business. If you are all bad, you never would have done that. And you know what? I’m a little offended by the characterization. Because that means you think I’m stupid enough to sleep with a very bad man just because he’s hot.”
He laughed and the sound scraped against her raw nerves. “Oh, honey, why do you think bad men get laid so much?” He leaned in, brushing his thumb over her nipple. “It’s because we know how to make this more important than anything else on earth.”
She shivered wiggling out of his hold. “Okay, maybe you’re not Saint Colton West, but you’re not a terrible person. And walking around claiming it like that? That’s just a shield. You’re using it to protect you, to make it so that if you do mess things up, you can take a step back and shrug your shoulders and say that you made sure everybody knew what an awful person you were so they can’t be surprised when you messed it all up. But that’s just crap. And it’s you being scared.”
He tightened his hold on her. “Are you calling me a coward?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“Baby, I used to ride bulls for money. I’m the furthest thing from a coward you’re going to find.”
“It’s not really all that impressive that a man who is unquestionably self-destructive is willing to throw himself on the back of thousand-pound animal and get thrown around an arena. You’re pretty badass physically because you don’t care about what happens to you. Not when it comes to that stuff. But, you’re afraid to deal with your family. Have been for the past seventeen years. In fact, sometimes I wonder a little bit if the only reason you’re dealing with me is that it’s a great distraction from them.”
He growled, rolling over so that he was on top of her, his hard length pressing against that tender place between her thighs. “Does this feel like a distraction to you?”
“I’m pretty distracted,” she said, her voice much more breathless than she would like it to be. She couldn’t hide from him. That was a problem. But with his hard body pushing her deep into the mattress, and all the delicious sensations it fired off inside her, she couldn’t bring herself to do much about it at the moment.
“You’re not just a distraction. You are the reason I decided I needed to change myself.”
“Not me,” she said, reaching up and touching the deep groove that bracketed his mouth. “The idea of me. But, you didn’t know me. I didn’t change anything. You were the one that made all the changes, Gage.”
“It was you,” he said, his voice rough.
She shifted, then gasped as the head of his cock came into contact with the sensitive bundle of nerves between her legs. She wanted to get away from him, but she wanted to stay close to him forever at the same time.
“I’m not your monument,” she said, “I’m not some wispy, white-clad virgin you can put up on a pedestal and worship. I’m not your patron saint of suffering. I’m not some kind of magical, mystical being. I’m just me. I’m a little bit broken, or maybe a lot. I’m not very nice. I’m a terrible friend. Kind of desperately screwed up. I can’t even fix my own life, Gage.” She closed her eyes, swallowing hard. “It would make me kind of mad if you thought I had fixed yours, when I hadn’t managed to put mine in working order.”
“I didn’t say I was fixed,” he said, his voice gruff. “I said I was changed. Before that accident happened I was headed straight to hell and I was bound and determined to take everyone around me along for the ride. I didn’t care who I hurt. Worse, I don’t even think I thought for one second that I might hurt someone, or that it would matter if I did.” He paused, then when he spoke again, his voice was thick. “I remember that night.”
“I don’t really want to talk about it.”
He slid his hands down her shoulders, past her elbows, down to her wrists. He wrapped his fingers around them, then lifted her arms up overhead, pinning them against the soft pillow. “We’re going to talk about it.”
She closed her eyes, turning her face away from him. Talking about it was always going to be hard. But talking about it like this when there were no walls between them, no clothes between them. Not even any space between them. That seemed impossible. “There’s nothing to talk about. I remember it too.”
“You hit a tree,” he said. “Your side of the car hit a tree. I stopped and I looked inside. And I saw this little girl… You were hurt. You were hurt so bad. And you were crying. I remembered that you weren’t supposed to move anybody after an accident.” She could feel the heaviness of those words, feel how much they cost him to speak. “You have no idea how much strength it took to call 911 instead of just opening the car up and grabbing hold of you. But I didn’t. Because I didn’t want to risk hurting you more. At least I knew that much. We waited for the paramedics to arrive, and we lied. We told him that we didn’t know what had happened. That we had just come upon the accident. It was such an easy thing to do. To lie about that experience. And then, my father found your mother and offered her money to keep the details quiet. I couldn’t forget you, Rebecca. I never did. It’s not absolution I’m seeking. It’s just a way to get that image out of my mind. You crying like that. Hurt like that. Because of me. I just didn’t want to be a man that could do that again. Not anymore. I wanted to change. I couldn’t stomach turning into a man like my father, who was so callous about all these things that it was about minimizing scandal and not about taking responsibility.”
“But you didn’t take responsibility,” she said, her tone gentle.
“No,” he said, “I ran. Because I figured I wasn’t really a good enough man to do anything else.”
“I don’t remember you,” she said, tracing his upper lip with the edge of her thumb. “I don’t remember much about that night at all. I remember just before we hit the tree. And everything after that is blank. Everything except waking up in the hospital. And then after that, I was just in pain. My leg, my skin. Every part of me hurt.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, his throat tight.
“I know. But I don’t want to know all of this about you. I want to know the other things. I want to fill in the rest.”
“Why?”
She laughed uneasily. “Because I can tell you, sure as anything, that the reason I’m sleeping with you isn’t because of what happened that night. It’s something else. It’s the way that you came back. It’s the way that you looked when you came back from seeing Sierra that night in the hospital. The way you look at me. There’s not another man in town who wanted me.”
“That isn’t true. That guy I pulled you away from on the dance floor the other night would have had you a thousand times by now.”
“Maybe. But, mostly because he feels sorry for me. Or because he wants to protect me from other guys, because he thinks I’m delicate. That’s not the same. It’s not the same as what we have. Tell me…” She blinked, trying to keep back the stream of tears that was threatening to come. “Are you with me because you feel sorry for me? Or is it because you want me?”
“I told myself it was because I felt sorry for you. Because you told me you were a virgin and that it was because of me. And that it was my responsibility to put it to rights.” It was his turn to laugh. “Any kind of lofty justification a man can apply to getting laid, I guess. But the fact is, I want you. I would never have come over here last night if that weren’t the case. If I were stronger t
han I was. I don’t see a future for us. And I don’t want to hurt you. But I’m still here. That has nothing to do with pity.”
“Did it ever occur to you that maybe this isn’t hurting me? That maybe this is exactly what I need?”
“I’m not staying. I can’t give you anything other than this.”
“I don’t want anything other than this. But for someone who’s never had it before, you have to understand that it’s a pretty big thing. That it’s something that makes me feel new. Different. Something that makes me feel like maybe I’m not so damaged after all.”
He kissed her then, deep and long. “Rebecca,” he said, “of the two of us, you’re definitely the least damaged.”
“Tell me everything else,” she said, sliding her fingers through his hair, studying the hard lines on his face. “After Texas, then what?”
She didn’t know what she was doing, building stronger bonds between herself and this man. All she knew was that she was starving for these details, to build a complete image of who he was, of who that night had made him. Of all that had transpired in the ensuing years.
And so, he told her. About leaving Texas and the rodeo behind, about driving a truck for a little while before he decided he hated it. About taking odd jobs on various ranches, and working construction. He had even done logging up in Alaska for a time. Basically, if the work was punishing, Gage West had done it. He was something entirely different than she had imagined him being.
But then, she was something entirely different than he imagined she was too.
*
IF GAGE HAD had his way he would have spent the entire day in bed with Rebecca. Sadly, there was work to do. Less sadly, since Rebecca was still holding on to the idea that she was working off her perceived debt, she accompanied him back to his barn.
He walked on ahead of her, listening to the sound of her uneven footsteps in the gravel behind him. Then he turned, and she stopped, shoving her hands deep into the pockets of her jacket, her cheeks turning pink. She was holding back a smile as best she could, and the fact that she had to fight a smile instead of a scowl in his presence did something to his chest.
“What?” she asked.
He lifted a shoulder. “Nothing.”
“Then why are you looking at me?” The smile tugged even harder at her lips, the motion pulling at the scar tissue at the corner of her eye. He frowned. And that immediately extinguished her grin.
Dammit.
“Because you’re beautiful,” he answered, a beat too late.
“Right. That’s why your expression contorted with horror for a second there.”
“It didn’t.”
“Yes it did. I know when I smile it makes the scars look worse.”
He let out a heavy sigh. “You know that has nothing to do with you. It has nothing to do with how they make you look. But how am I supposed to feel about them? It’s kind of a helluva thing. They don’t bother me in an aesthetic sense. But it bothers me that I did this to you.”
“You see the accident when you look at me.”
He nodded, pressing his palm against the side of the barn. “Can you honestly say you don’t see it when you look at me?”
“It’s getting a little bit more complicated than that. Yes, I think of the accident. I think of everything that happened. And then, I think about last night. And the first time. What happened in the truck… And it all gets confused.”
“There’s only one thing on earth that ever made me feel like life made sense. That ever made me feel like I made sense.”
“Are you going to try to give me a copy of the Watchtower?”
The unexpected bite of humor made him laugh. “Let’s ride.”
They went into the barn and saddled up the horses silently, then they started on the trail they had ridden on the first day she had come to work on the property. They were silent for the first mile or so up the trail then he heard Rebecca’s voice come from behind him. “Passing on your left.”
She and her horse maneuvered adeptly around him, taking the lead. He watched as she took the uphill portion of the trail with ease, her brown hair shimmering over her shoulders, falling to the middle of her back.
She was beautiful. And he had made a mess of things earlier. Typically, when he did anything other than running away from a problem, he only made it worse. Still, he was here. He wasn’t running. He was with her. So he supposed that he should try to make amends.
He urged his horse forward, closing some of the distance between them. “I meant what I said.”
“About riding horses being about the only thing that gives clarity? I could agree with you on that. Easily. We lived in the worst house ever. A small little shack kind of in the middle of nowhere. But we had a bit of property. After my mom left, Jonathan got me a horse. He was kind of a wretched little pony, and I was still recovering, so I couldn’t just go out and ride. But it was everything that I’d ever wanted. It was the only bit of happiness that I had during that time. Except for Jonathan.”
His chest tightened, his limbs suddenly feeling leaden. The picture that she painted of her childhood was so bleak. The gulf between what he’d had growing up and what she’d had was stark and severe. He wondered if anyone had ever told her how beautiful she was. If anyone had ever cherished her, or if the most she’d ever gotten was basic caregiving.
Obviously, her brother cared about her. Cared enough to work long hours, to use the money that he earned to get her a horse because he knew she was lonely and needed something like that in her life.
Still, he wanted to give her more. Because he had that luxury.
“That’s not what I meant,” he said, his voice rough. “You’re beautiful. That is why I was looking at you, whether you want to believe it or not.”
“But you still see the scars.”
“I could say that I didn’t, but it would be a lie. And I can’t say that they don’t affect me. Like I said, I take the blame for that. I can’t help but feel responsible. I can’t help but feel angry at myself when I look at them. But at the same time, they speak to your strength. And if I ignored them, it would be to ignore a big part of who you are. They aren’t a flaw, and they certainly are a weakness.”
“I feel differently about that at the end of the day when my muscles seize up. When the injuries that are just under the surface start to react.”
They broke through to the clearing, bringing them back to the vantage point they had gone to on that first day. The first day that pull between them had become impossible to ignore. She didn’t dismount, as though she were doing her best to keep distance between them, and as if staying on the back of the horse would accomplish that.
“I know. Can you just let me say something nice to you? I don’t actually think you want to have the same fight over and over. I don’t actually think that all I am to you is the man that caused the accident. Right now, I think the thing that makes you the most angry is that I’m challenging you.”
She laughed, turning to look at him. “You think I feel challenged by you complimenting me?”
He got off of his horse, walking toward her. “I think you’re most comfortable when nobody’s touching you. And I mean that in more than just the physical sense.” He walked up to her, placing his hand on her thigh, looking up at her. “I think you don’t want a man to tell you you’re beautiful. I think you want him to tell you there is something wrong with you so you can haul off and punch him in the face.”
Her entire face paled. Then she scowled. “You think you have me figured out?”
“Not even close. But I have figured a couple things out. You don’t want to be told you’re beautiful.” He let his hand drift from where it was on her thigh, up to her hip. “But you like to be kissed long and deep. You might not want to hear the words, but you don’t mind a man showing you.”
Her dark eyes looked nearly black, the color rising in her cheeks again. “You don’t…you don’t know that.”
Now he knew that she was jus
t challenging him because she wanted a fight. That was another thing about her he’d figured out. “I do know that,” he said, giving her exactly what she wanted. He moved his hand up a little bit further, skimming the underside of her breast with his thumb. “You like that too,” he said, his voice getting rough.
She let out a long, ragged breath. “Cheap shot, West. Very cheap.”
“Why? Because I’m irresistible?”
That made her smile again, and this time she didn’t try to hold it back. When she smiled like that, he had the sense that the sun had broken through the heavy gray mist that hung over the mountains.
“Look, until this week I was a virgin. I’m a pretty easy target.”
“Yeah,” he said, reaching up and grabbing hold of her chin. “You really have made things so easy on me.”
“I just mean, I’m about as hard up as they come. Twenty-eight years without sex is a long time.”
“Come here,” he said.
She didn’t make any move to get down off the horse, so he wrapped his arm around her waist and lifted her down from the horse. Her dark eyes widened and she tried to jerk away from him, but he held her steady. He looked at her, taking hold of her face, sliding his thumbs across her cheek. He traced the line of scar tissue that ran from the outside corner of her left eye down to her mouth.
“Beautiful,” he said, his stomach tight now, arousal welling up inside of him like a hot spring. He slid his thumb down, tracing the edge of her lower lip before leaning in and kissing her.
He deliberately kept it slow, every pass of his tongue going a little bit deeper. He cupped the back of her head, letting his fingers sink deep into her glossy, dark hair as he continued to ravish her mouth.
She whimpered, arching against him, and he moved his other hand from her face, letting his fingertips drift down the side of her neck to her shoulder and down her side to the curve of her waist where he flattened his palm and gripped her tight.