“It’s better every day,” she said quietly.
“May I take the bandage off?”
When she nodded, he peeled the tape as carefully as he could manage, then dropped it to the table and covered the wound with his hand. Of all the things he reckoned she’d gone through that week, the gunshot injury seemed like the wound to be healing the quickest.
She angled her chin up, inviting him to kiss her. He drew her lower lip into his mouth and suckled it, feeling her reach between them. She took a firm hold of his erection, and he nearly bit her lip, it felt so right. He reached behind her and unclasped her bra. She hunched her shoulders, relinquished her grip on him so he could free her arms from the straps.
Her breasts fit perfectly in his hands. But then, he already knew that. He knew how her nipples beaded when he rolled them between the pads of his thumb and index finger. He knew the weight of them, the silken texture, and the angle of her back arching when he pulled a hardened tip into his mouth.
He ran his hand down the curve of her spine, settling atop her panties.
He dropped to his knees, prostrate before her, and grazed her belly with his nose and lips and cheeks. She was so soft, so exquisite.
The panties were black and stretchy. Sitting back on his heels, he burrowed his face between her thighs. The panties were damp. Jutting between his legs, his cock pulsed and hardened at the proof of her desire. He pulled one edge aside and lapped at her smooth, wet outer folds. She tangled her hands in his hair. After one taste, he stopped. There would be time enough to bring her pleasure that night, but for now, he wanted to finish the job he’d started.
He peeled the damp panties away from her body and helped her step out of them.
Standing, he took her hand in his and led her to the shower. Time to wash it all away—the sweat, the smoke from the cigarettes he’d lit up before deciding that exercise was a more fit punishment for his sins, the dirt of Rachel’s workday. Her tears. The mistakes they’d both made. The carelessness with which they’d treated each other.
He kissed her—slowly, venerably—while the water warmed. When it had, they stepped in, a tangle of limbs. Angling so her wound was out of the stream of water, he held her, rocking her in a slow dance. She rested her head on his shoulder and buried her face in his neck. He washed her back like that, slid his soap-slick hands over her bottom and up her spine.
“Tip your head so I can get your hair.”
All he had was cheap dandruff shampoo. Shaking some into his hand, he remembered how, during their initial affair, she’d stocked girlie shampoo in his shower. After she’d ended things, he’d gone through the house with a trash can, erasing her from the surface of his life. The memory strung him so thin and raw, his eyes watered. He’d fought to forget about her, to make his feelings for her disappear. What a fool he’d been to think that was possible.
He worked his shampoo into her hair. Supporting her with his left arm around her waist, he tipped her back to rise. She took over the rinse job and he held on, his right hand exploring her breasts and ribs, watching the water and soap bubbles cascade over her creamy skin.
With a fresh round of suds on his hands, he reached one around to her backside and the other between her legs. She propped a leg on the edge of the tub and gasped in pleasure when he swirled his finger over her clit. He dipped lower and pushed two fingers inside her as the hand on her ass slid into the cleft, teasing her entrance there until she arched, pressing her hips back until he slipped his finger inside her. With a whimper of ecstasy, she fisted her hands in his hair and brought his lips to hers in a hard, wet kiss that told him exactly how much she loved what his hands were doing.
His cock was right there, so close to her wet heat that he could shove into her if he moved his hand. Arousing, the idea of claiming her body with his in that way, but he respected her too much not to use a condom. The more he thought about what that skin-on-skin friction would feel like, though, the faster his self-control began to fray, until his only choice was to ease his fingers away from her body and give himself the space to regroup.
She made a noise of protest, but took the hint, watching him duck his head under the water with dreamy, half lidded eyes. The next thing he knew, she was behind him, bar of soap in hand. Her mouth kissed along his spine, reaching higher until her teeth clamped onto his shoulder near his neck, a sensation so fantastic that he sucked a gulp of air in through his clenched teeth. Then she reached around to his front and took his cock and balls into her sudsy hands, driving his willpower to the brink of destruction.
All that stopped him from dropping her to the floor and unpacking their orgasms right then and there was the knowledge that in a few minutes—as soon as he wanted—he would have her on her back in his bed. The image gave him enough strength to clamp a trembling hand on her wrist to stop her. “Enough. I want you in my bed, in my mouth—right now.”
He made quick work of drying them both, as quick as he could, given that he couldn’t stop kissing her or watching the wicked fire dancing in her eyes. She must’ve felt the same because she never let go of the hold she had around his shoulders the whole way to his bed. They toppled together onto the duvet.
He spread her knees and dove into her swollen, wet flesh with his lips and tongue. Goddamn, she tasted good. Sweet and thick and uniquely Rachel. He got his fingers working again inside her body and, in no time, found a rhythm that turned her wild, quaking and whimpering and clutching at his ears.
He could’ve touched her like that forever, but she grew still and stroked his hair, whispering in a tremulous voice, “Get up here. I don’t want to come until you’re inside me.”
And damn if he’d ever deny her that.
Levering up on his elbows, he reached across her body into the nightstand for a condom. He was all thumbs trying to manage the rubber, dropping it twice before securing it over his erection. The whirlpool of emotions vying for space inside him made him clumsy and shaky. He tried to fool his mind by telling himself this was just Rachel. He’d fucked her brains out in his bed many times over, and had even made slow, fierce love to her on occasion, but this time with her felt different. Profound in a way that frightened him.
He pressed inside her in a slow drag of flesh-on-flesh that had his whole body tensing with pleasure. A sensation so rapturous, he couldn’t help but whisper her name. His own personal prayer. His everything. She met his gaze, her dark eyes shining as fiercely as his heart screamed. He found her arms behind his neck and brought them over her head, locking their hands together. And then his body took over. His hips surged and retreated as they rocked together in the dance they’d begun in the shower, a fluid union of heat and friction and wetness.
Vaughn had no idea what he was going to do to fix his life. No clue what the future held, but inside Rachel, in that moment, he didn’t feel like a failure. He felt strong and worthy, capable of anything. And when she found her release, holding tight to his hands, her body trembling and her breath a staccato of gasps against his neck, he felt indestructible.
He pushed up and back, kneeling, bringing her hips with him. When he came, he wanted to do so while looking at Rachel’s beautiful, sated body, framed in the glow of the bathroom light. With every thrust, he felt their vivid, eternal connection coursing through him. It shamed him that he’d thought he could break free of the hold she had on his heart, if only he tried hard enough. What a fool.
Taking her backside in his hands, he thrust harder, burying himself deep within her, feeling his balls tighten with impending release. At least tonight he’d cherished her the best he could. He’d been the man she deserved.
A final thrust and he came with a growl, holding fast to the only woman he’d ever loved. There would be no getting over her. He recognized that now. With everything else about his life destroyed, he knew as sure as the cruel sun would rise in the morning that the way he felt about Rachel was the only real part of himself he had left.
* * *
Rachel woke in sile
nt darkness.
She felt Vaughn’s absence before she opened her eyes. It whispered to her like the winter wind through a canyon, hollow and cold. This was the worst part of falling asleep in his bed—waking to the harsh reality that the fantasy of their togetherness was over. The next part was good-bye. A hundred good-byes they’d said to each other over the last sixteen months. A hundred good-byes, and each time, she vowed it would be the last.
Vaughn’s pillow smelled like him, spicy and male. Closing her eyes, she hugged it to her body and inhaled. Why did she keep putting herself through the hurt of having to say good-bye? It didn’t make sense why a woman would torture herself over a man who didn’t love her enough to fight for her.
Maybe because that’s what she’d expected of him. To treat her with as much careless disregard as her father had. She’d loved her dad with her whole heart. Loved Vaughn in a totally different way, but just as ardently. Didn’t seem to matter to men that she gave them the gift of her love. It was clear now that she’d never be anyone’s first priority but her own.
Then again, maybe she wasn’t giving Vaughn enough credit. Making love tonight had felt different than every other time they’d been together. Maybe he’d sensed it too. Even though she’d made terrible choices of whom to trust and what to believe—the fallout of her hopelessly flawed intuition—she owed it to Vaughn not to give up on him without giving him a chance to prove that her assessment of him was wrong.
She threw back the duvet and climbed from the bed.
The nearest fix for her nudity was in his closet. She fumbled with a hanger in the darkness, then pulled a white T-shirt over her head. From a drawer, she pulled on a pair of his boxer briefs. Like the shirt, the underwear was a loose fit, but good enough.
She padded from the room in search of him, following the smell of cigarette smoke toward the dark kitchen. He wasn’t in the kitchen, but the door to his backyard had been left ajar.
Dressed in sweatpants and a black T-shirt, he sat on the steps looking at the darkness, a cigarette between his lips. He didn’t turn to acknowledge her until she stood on the top step, breathing in the dense odor of burning tobacco. She wasn’t a fan of the smell, but it evoked a comforting familiarity she welcomed tonight.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey, yourself.” He made no move to snuff the cigarette. Maybe he was past caring what she thought.
She sat cross-legged on the small concrete landing, leaning against the side of the house so that she looked at him in profile. The night air was a tad cool on her legs, but not enough that she was uncomfortable.
He let out a slow stream of smoke into the black night. It danced, illuminated by the moon, before dissipating into the air. “I’m going to quit after this one.”
“That’d probably be for the best.”
He nodded and took another drag. The cigarette was nearly gone, with barely enough for him to pinch between his fingers. “I’ve got a half marathon in three weeks. The United New Mexico Law Enforcement Charity Run.”
“You run it every year?”
“Yup. Me and my deputies run as a team. It’s good fun, good press, that sort of thing. Last year was the first race since I’d quit smoking and, big surprise, it was my fastest time ever.” After a lingering inhale of the cigarette, he flicked it into a rusted coffee can, then handed her the rest of the pack. “Hide this from me, would you? Otherwise I’ll start right back up as soon as you leave.”
She tucked the pack in her lap. As soon as you leave.
There was her answer.
She hadn’t put it all together how desperately she’d wanted him to invite her to stay until he said that, but now the only thing she wanted more than to wake up with him in the morning, farm chores be damned, was for him to want her there.
Her heart aching something fierce, she brought her knees up and hugged them. “What happened to your family today? I heard talk at Smithy’s that your sister and parents were arrested, but all I heard were rumors.”
“That sounds about right for this town.” He shifted, twisting his fingers together as though, now that he was done smoking, he had no idea what to do with his hands. “My sister, Gwen, she has a disorder. Been cursed with it all her life. She steals things. From people’s houses, from her job or retail stores, all over the place. Used to be, the compulsion only seized her when she was nervous or scared. Last few years, though, she’s gotten worse.”
“That sounds like it would be tough on the whole family.”
“That’s the cold, hard truth. My folks, over the years they’ve been through way more than any parents should. I can’t tell you how frustrating it’s been for me to watch. I’ve done what I could to look out for Gwen. Wallace Meyer and I had an unspoken agreement that he’d look the other way with her shoplifting as long as I looked the other way with Junior’s, shall we say, hiccups with good citizenship.” He looked at her lap with hound dog eyes.
She set a hand on top of the cigarette pack. “Not on your life.”
He offered her a weak smile. “Fine. Be that way.”
“Was Gwen arrested for shoplifting today?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I mean, yes. But that’s not how the mess started. It started with Wallace Jr.’s trespassing and assault on your property.”
“You violated the unspoken agreement between yourself and Meyer when you arrested Junior, didn’t you?”
He scoffed. “Hell, no. Junior violated it the minute he brought rifles onto your land. That was no hiccup I could overlook. Even if I didn’t already have it out for Meyer, or if Junior had shot a stranger instead of the woman I—” He picked restlessly at his fingernails, scowling. “The details of who and what are immaterial. Junior’s guilty of assault with a deadly weapon, and no handshake agreement can save him from his crimes.”
“But Meyer didn’t see it that way.”
The statement roused a sardonic huff from Vaughn’s throat. “Meyer issued the order for his officers to search my parents’ house at the exact time I was transferring Junior from the hospital to the jail so I wouldn’t have the chance to interfere. The police found meth under my parents’ bed, weed in the cookie jar, and thousands of dollars of stolen goods in Gwen’s bedroom. I arrived at home in time to watch them cuff my mother and father and read them their rights.”
The despair Rachel felt that day came tumbling over her again. Vaughn’s foundation had been shaken as much as hers. More so, because unlike Rachel’s dad, his parents had been innocent victims. But she knew better than to show him sympathy for his experience. The kind of man she knew him to be, his only concern would be for his parents’ pain. “I’m so sorry they had to endure that.”
He scrubbed a hand over his nose and mouth. “The looks on their faces, of their hands cuffed behind their backs, will haunt me until the day I die. Nothing I ever do or say can make up for what I allowed to happen to them.”
She nearly argued that point, almost reminded him there was nothing he could’ve done. Then it hit her that she would’ve felt the exact same way. That she did, in fact, feel the same burden of guilt about what happened to her mother. Could it be that she was never actually capable of protecting her mother? Could that have been part of the illusion she’d bought into for too many years?
Her mother had spent many unsupervised hours in the house every day while Rachel worked on the farm. She was unsupervised all night long, as she and Rachel slept in different rooms on opposite sides of the house. Her mother could’ve overdosed without even leaving her room, if she’d had a mind to. How had Rachel managed to convince herself it had happened because she’d spent the night with Vaughn? Her guilt suddenly seemed ludicrous and self-indulgent.
Vaughn rubbed his throat. “Let me have that box, would you?”
Rousing from the trance of her epiphany, she fell forward, cigarette box in hand, and crawled behind him. She’d leave him as soon as she gathered the strength to do so, but for a few more minutes, she wanted to be near him. Resting
on her side, she tucked the cigarettes behind her, hooked her arm around his shoulders, and dropped her forehead to the back of his neck. “Don’t do that to yourself. If you give in again, it’ll only give you something else to regret.”
With a soft snort, he grazed his lips over her forearm. “That’s the story of my life, Rachel.”
Was he implying that he regretted giving in to her tonight? Probably, but she certainly wasn’t going to apologize about asking for what she needed. “Were the drugs found in your parents’ house planted by the police, do you think?”
He shook his head. “Gwen confessed to hiding them when she heard the police coming through the front door. She figured they only had a warrant to search her bedroom, not the whole house.”
“After she confessed, were the charges against your parents dismissed?”
“The drug charges, yes. But Meyer’s still sticking it to them on harboring and abetting a known criminal. A judge released them on their own recognizance a few hours ago and I drove them home. Their house was trashed during the search, so I offered to put them up in a hotel while I cleaned or hired someone to, but they were too stubborn to let me.”
“Will those lesser charges stick?”
“They’d better not,” he said. “I’ve got to somehow convince Meyer to drop them, but I have no idea how I’m going to manage that within the purview of the law.”
“What about Gwen?”
“Gwen needs to pay her dues and get clean. Prison might be the best place for her right now. I hooked her up with a top-notch defense attorney and she’ll be sentenced early next week. My folks are sad about it, but seem to be taking it in stride.”
They settled into silence. He stroked her arm absentmindedly while she kept her cheek pressed to his back, concentrating on the rise and fall of his lungs beneath his ribs, the muscles of his back shifting, the unyielding tension in his shoulders. Beneath the residual smell of smoke, she caught a hint of soap and sweat on his skin.
“Something happened to you today too,” he said.
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