by Maisey Yates
“Oh right, after your fiancée left you at the altar, which most definitely happens to men who have everything on lockdown.”
Suddenly, she found herself being advanced on. She froze completely as Colton closed the distance between them, wrapping his arm around her waist and pulling her up against him. Her palms made contact with his bare chest, her heart lurching into her throat as his skin scorched hers.
He was hot, impossibly so. She felt as though he might burn her at the first touch. Incinerate her completely where she stood and turn her into a little ash pile formerly known as Lydia Carpenter.
That was ridiculous. He did not possess the power to change her, or to alter her molecular structure in any way.
Even if it seemed like, in this moment, he might.
“What are you doing?”
“Something we both want.”
Before she had a chance to protest, his lips crashed down on hers, claiming her fiercely, intensely.
She knew she should pull away. She knew that she should stop this. But the fact of the matter was, whether she knew she should or not, she didn’t want to. Because he was right, this was something they both wanted. This was something that she craved.
It didn’t make sense. But it was slick, and hot, and sweet, and she didn’t really care if sense was involved at all.
He angled his head, deepening the kiss, his tongue sliding against hers. And her knees buckled. Thankfully, he was holding on to her tightly or she would have slid right down onto the ground.
She slid her hands up to his shoulders, reveled in how muscular he was beneath her palms. She didn’t care if this was like any of the kisses they had shared before. She didn’t even try to reach back in her memory to see if she could remember. She didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything but this.
He grabbed hold of her hips, propelling her backward until her shoulder blades butted up against the wooden building just behind them. Her face was hot, flushed, her entire body starting to feel the same way.
She had kissed a few men, but none like this. No man had ever just grabbed hold of her and pushed her backward. No man had ever made her quite so aware of how feminine she was in contrast to how strong and masculine he was. No man had ever made her quite so acutely aware of the differences between men and women, and he was still dressed. Well, mostly.
She moved her hands over his bare skin, over the muscles on his back and down over his chest. She had never thought much one way or the other about chest hair. But she was thinking very positive thoughts about it right now. It was all a part of that contrast that she was enjoying so very much.
He rocked his hips against hers, bringing her into contact with the evidence of his arousal. He wanted her. He wanted this, as badly as she did. It didn’t matter that he thought she was annoying, and he most certainly did. He still wanted her.
He slid his hand down to her side, down farther, grabbing the hem of her skirt and pushing it upward. Then he gripped her leg, drawing it up over his hip, before repeating the motion with the other one, pressing her back yet more firmly against the wall as he kissed her harder, deeper.
Driven by some instinct she hadn’t realized that she had possessed, she rolled her hips against his hardened length, gasping as her sensitive bundle of nerves made perfect contact with him.
Blunt fingertips dug into her thigh, holding her more tightly to him as he continued to kiss her. He rocked against her, heightening the reckless heat that was raging between them.
She readjusted her hold on him, grabbing his shoulders, her fingernails digging into his skin. She wasn’t sure she cared. About anything. About what might happen in five minutes, ten minutes, three hours. The only thing that mattered was this.
She had expected she might flash back to Las Vegas, but she was too present. Too caught up in what was happening now. So sharp, so utterly consuming she could do nothing else but exist in it.
He nipped her bottom lip, then sucked it deeply between his own, and an arrow of pleasure shot down unerringly between her thighs. She gasped, letting her head fall back, and he angled his head, taking the opportunity to blaze a trail of kisses down her neck and her collarbone.
She had always thought that Colton West was arrogant. And it turned out he had a very arrogant mouth, and he knew how to use it. In this instance, she could only be grateful.
Because she did not know how to handle chemistry like this. And he, apparently, did.
Something about that thought brought the first invasion of reality prodding through the hazy veil that had drawn itself over her brain. Oh yes, he knew, and he had experienced it with her friend. Ex-friend. Whatever. It didn’t matter.
As if this betrayal was any worse than running for mayor against her father?
Okay, so it wasn’t really that that she cared about. It was comparisons. It was being found lacking.
She pushed against him, regretting it even as she extricated herself from his hold. “This is crazy,” she said.
He jumped back as though he’d been scalded, his chest heaving with the force of his breath. “Completely.”
She made the mistake of looking down. And when she did, she saw the outline of his inoffensive penis against the front of his jeans. Inoffensive indeed.
She looked back up, but, it was a little too late since he had already realized what she was doing. “It’s...it was nothing,” she said. Then she could have bitten her own tongue off because she had not intended to say that out loud.
“That was not nothing,” he said, which, all things considered was one of the least horrifying things he could say.
“But I’m going to pretend that it was,” she said.
“You think you can?”
“Alternate question—is there any world in which we shouldn’t?”
“Probably not,” he said, stepping away from her. “But that doesn’t mean it was nothing.”
“Fish,” she said, for some reason the image of the brown paper bag still sitting on the counter in the house floating up to the top of her mind.
“What?”
“I bought fish for dinner. It’s sitting on the counter.”
“Oh. That’s a strange anticlimax.”
“There are French fries, too,” she added, as if that was somehow going to make up for the fish.
“Well, okay then.”
“Don’t act so irritated. You know as well as I do that it’s a good thing I put a stop to this. Otherwise we would have...we would have... You know.”
“We would have had sex?”
“I don’t see any point in discussing it now. We came to our senses.”
This time, he was the one who looked down at the front of his own jeans. Heat lashed her cheeks. “Kind of,” he said.
“I’m sorry about...that.” It occurred to her then that she had never really had to apologize to a man for giving him an erection before. Mostly because she couldn’t remember being in this kind of situation.
Not that she’d never given a man an erection. Obviously she had. She’d had sex before. It was just, it had never been so fraught. She had never really tried to resist it before. There had been nothing to resist. Always before she had been in relationships. Relationships with very nice men—okay, two men spaced very far apart. And there had been a very steady timeline. And things happened with planning and a lot of discussion beforehand.
She had never been carried away on a wave of desire. Had never been remotely tempted to sleep with someone she wasn’t in a relationship with, much less someone she didn’t even like.
You’re married to him. That’s a relationship.
She wanted to beat that wicked little internal voice of hers. Because this was not a relationship. And falling back on the excuse that they were married was pretty thin. Considering they weren’t actually mar
ried. Well, they weren’t going to stay married.
“Don’t worry. It should remain inoffensive,” he said. “It won’t trouble you while you try to eat your dinner.”
“Good,” she said, refusing to smile, or to act like his words had bothered her in any way.
She realized then that her skirt was still hiked up partway, exposing way more of her thighs than she was comfortable with.
She tugged it back down, trying to look somehow like it was a calculated move. Like maybe it was even smooth, or kind of sexy rather than a belated realization executed clumsily.
“Well,” she said, trying to keep her tone arch. “I’m going to go back and eat dinner. So, maybe I’ll see you.”
“Yeah, I’ll be back in soon.”
But she knew that he wouldn’t. Because now he was going to start avoiding her again. Which was for the best. It really was. She should not feel crestfallen about it. Or disappointed in any way. She needed him to ignore her. She needed one of them to be sane, since she had clearly lost her mind.
“Great,” she said, turning and walking away.
She had a feeling she knew now why she kept her well-worn paths. And she was more than a little determined to keep to them again in the future. No more detours for her. None at all.
* * *
BY THE TIME Colton walked into Ace’s his mood was somewhere way past foul. He had not gone in to eat fish and chips with Lydia, because if he had done that he would have ended up laying her over the counter and finishing what they had started down there by the woodshed. Common sense and questionable breath be damned.
So instead, he was here probably looking as vile as he felt. Which would be great for the rumor mill. Actually, he hadn’t thought about the rumor mill until he’d walked in and seen every eye in the place pinned to him.
He chose to ignore them. He walked over to the bar and sat down on one of the stools, pounding the top of it. “Bartender, who does a man have to shoot to get a little service around here?”
His brother-in-law turned to face him, a broad smile on his face. “There has not been a single shooting in this establishment since the 1800s. And you know it.”
As much as Colton had questioned his sister’s association with Ace initially, he couldn’t deny that the other man was actually a great match for Sierra.
“Not down at the brewery today?” he asked, talking about Ace’s new venture down by the waterfront.
“Some days I just like to get back to basics. Anyway, if I was never here anymore we would have to change the name.”
“Good point.”
“I hear congratulations are in order,” Ace said, putting a glass beneath the tap and filling it up. He slid the beer across the counter, and Colton grabbed hold of it.
“Congratulations and a beer is all I get?”
“Sorry, I didn’t realize marriage was a hard drinking occasion.”
“If marriage isn’t, then what is?”
His brother-in-law regarded him closely. “Right. Well, you start with the beer. I would hate to have to call your wife and have her come pick you up. We don’t want her to find out too much about you this early into things.”
“True enough,” he replied.
“I sense there’s a story here. And I would really like to hear it.”
“I didn’t offer to tell it.”
“I noticed. But, I’m asking. My bartender hat is on, not the married-to-your-sister hat.”
Colton frowned. “If that’s your way of asking for explicit details I’m going to decline.”
“No,” Ace said, “you got left at the altar. I think that’s a pretty good story.”
“Good is not the word I would use.”
“But you ended up married to the right woman.”
“Yeah,” Colton said, “so I did.”
Footsteps alerted him to someone else walking up to the bar and he turned, recognition hitting him like a blow to the jaw. This was not what he needed right now.
“Colton, this isn’t your usual hangout.”
Colton couldn’t say anything for a moment. He was too preoccupied looking at the person in front of him. He didn’t normally examine another man’s features, but when they look so much like your own it was difficult not to.
“Jack,” he said, looking at his half brother.
The two of them had barely spoken since they had found out that they were half siblings. Really, there wasn’t much to talk about. It didn’t change much. It didn’t change anything. Not really. Jack, for his part, hadn’t gone spreading it all around, but it was pretty much an open secret at this point.
“Yeah,” he said. “Do you mind if we talk?”
Colton bristled. “We’re talking right now.”
“That isn’t what I mean. I want to go outside and talk for a minute.”
“If you want to punch me in my face, Jack, why don’t you just do it here?”
“I don’t have any interest in punching you. Well, I don’t have any interest in punching you anymore. I might have a couple of years ago.”
Colton would have honestly preferred a fistfight to a conversation, at least tonight. But he couldn’t very well deny his half brother’s request for a conversation without looking like a dick. Not that he really minded looking like a dick.
But doing the right thing was ingrained in him. If it hadn’t been, when Lydia pushed him earlier outside the woodshed he might have just pulled her closer. Might have rolled his hips into hers once more. She wouldn’t have protested. Not again. Not when she wanted it just as badly as he did.
But no. He did the right thing.
He was starting to hate that.
“Fine.” He stood up, then turned back to look at Ace. “Don’t let anyone roofie my beer.”
Ace didn’t say anything; he just stared at the two of them, as did everyone else in the room, while they walked out to the front of the bar. It was damn cold outside, especially right here by the water. And he hadn’t brought a jacket because he’d been in too much of a hurry to get well away from Lydia.
“Okay, what’s up, Monaghan?”
“Sierra is due soon,” Jack said, “which I only know because Kate is due soon. And I understand why you didn’t come to our wedding. Hell, I didn’t go to yours.”
“Well, no one did,” Colton retorted.
“The other one,” he said.
“Right. Okay then.”
“It’s just...my kid and Sierra’s kid are going to be cousins. Any kids you have...same thing. I don’t know what our relationship is going to be. I don’t blame you for having reservations about me. And I think I’m well within my rights to have them about you. I understand why your parents are never going to welcome me with open arms. Your dad is never going to be grandpa to my son. And I get that. I don’t like it, but I get it. The thing is, I don’t think I want him cut off from the rest of the family.”
Jack’s words hit Colton hard. He’d never really considered the long-reaching familial connection they had. Or what it would mean for their children.
Of course, God knew when he would be having children now. He and Natalie had had a two-year plan. She had been more than ready to start a family with him, after they had been married an appropriate length of time. But where did that leave him now? All of this put him at least four years away from having children. Which meant he would be... No. He wasn’t going to do the math on that.
But he didn’t know how he hadn’t really considered any of this before. He was going to be an uncle to Jack’s children. And either they got it together and dealt with each other, or Jack was right. Those kids would continue to be cut off from a huge part of their family.
“It’s one thing for us,” Jack continued. “I mean, we’re in our thirties. We’ve made what we could out of what w
e got. But I want better for our kids. I want better for my son. The Garretts are a great family. They were a family to me when I didn’t have one. And I know they’d be more than enough family for my and Kate’s baby. But this is in our control. So let’s just do better.”
Colton didn’t really want to do better. Not right now. He had done all that he could for one day. Hell, maybe for one lifetime. He felt stretched and pushed, and all he wanted to do was walk away from this right now. Go straight back home, lose himself in something. Lydia’s arms would be his preference, but that had pretty much been ruled out for the day.
And she was right—they shouldn’t touch each other. There was no future in it. He didn’t have casual sex. And he most especially didn’t have this kind of casual sex. The kind that was loaded and difficult to deal with.
Still, it didn’t change the fact that he wanted it.
It also didn’t change the fact that he had to deal with this. Even if he didn’t feel like it. Damn responsibilities. There was never any end to them.
And there was something strange about standing there, looking at someone who looked so much like him. A brother.
He hadn’t seen his other brother, the one he had been raised with, in seventeen years. And then there was Jack. Which was strange, because Colton had spent so many years feeling like he was the only one. The last man standing in the West family. At least, in his generation. But there was Jack.
Jack, who had their father’s eyes. Colton’s eyes. Jack, who was so obviously Nathan West’s son once you knew what to look for.
“Yeah,” Colton said finally. “I agree. And I’m...I’m happy for you. The baby. And Kate.”
“They’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“And here I thought that was me.”
Jack smiled. “I guess we’ll find out.”
He stuck out his hand and Colton just looked at it. Finally, he extended his own, shaking it. “All right. I guess...I guess we’re going to do this.”
“Right. Well,” Jack said. “I guess I’ll see you around.”
“Yeah.”
Okay, at least one interaction had gone well tonight. As for Lydia...well, he would just continue to avoid her. Eventually, his body would chill out.