Oh yes. I’m a huge gentleman.
“Jackson King, I swear to God—”
Chuckling, I wink at her and open my door, forcing her to step back if she doesn’t want to get slammed. By the door, that is. “Just joking, peach.”
“You call me that one more time and I’ll keep shoving that entire carton of peaches over there down your throat until you choke on them, you fucking monster.”
My hand flies over my chest. “What a wonderful way to go that would be, sucking on a delicious Larson peach.”
Rory wags a finger at me shakily, face bright red, eyes bulging. “You … you …”
I lean down so I can whisper in her ear, “I meant the fruit, Rory. You have a dirty mind.” She sputters at me, but before she can reply, I say, “Or maybe I do want to suck you.”
“No, you don’t. You never did.”
Now that’s an interesting little remark. I’ll have to dig into that later. Preferably when my cock’s already inside her and she’s too out of her mind with pleasure to give me anything but the truth. Or maybe I’ll wait until after I’ve fucked her brains out. The jury’s still out on that one.
“Rory Larson, I assure you very, very much, that I want nothing more than to taste your peach.”
She blinks, falls silent, looks away. Have I unnerved her? Wonders never cease; at this rate, I’ll be inside her before the night is out. I’d been planning a bit before pushing the subject, but perhaps this little discussion has given me the perfect opportunity.
I reach out and gently touch her arm. She glances at me then quickly looks away when she notices my suddenly serious expression. “Rory, come on. Is it truly so hard to believe that I’d want to pick up where we left off, all those years ago?”
“I’m not discussing this with you,” she snaps, stalking toward the Gator she has parked next to the nearest barn.
I follow her, adrenaline coursing through me at the thought that we might finally, a decade later, discuss my only regret, my only frustration. “Really? So we’re not going to discuss the night you left me naked, cock throbbing in my dorm room?”
She pauses, back still to me. I nearly make it toward her when she whirls around, glaring at me. “Oh, poor baby. So sorry you didn’t get the orgasm you were expecting. Thank God I figured it out before I slept with you. Fucking you would have been the biggest regret of my life.”
I flinch but hide my expression before she can notice it. I knew Rory hated me, but the pure venom in her tone still shocks me. “What did you figure out? What could be so horrible you’d just leave me without one goddamn word?”
“Like you don’t know,” Rory snarls, lips curling in an impressive sneer.
“No. I really don’t.” And it must be the bald honesty of my tone because her sneer falls and now she only stares at me in confusion, suspicion. We continue this little standoff for one long, significant moment before she hardens her expression and then turns again, continuing her way to the vehicle.
“I didn’t bring you here to rehash old shit. It’s not important. The only thing I want to discuss is you changing your terrible offer for this farm.”
Frustration surges through me, but I shove it down. I’m going to get to the bottom of why she ditched me in my dorm room senior year, even if it fucking kills me. But apparently, it’s one step forward, three steps back. At least she let me broach the topic. At this rate, we’ll be in the ground for three decades by the time we finally get to the bottom of what happened in college.
Rory pulls the Gator’s keys from a pocket, but I pluck them from her before she can climb into the ATV’s driver seat. I’m real stealthy about it, too, because she gasps in discovering I’m so close behind her.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
I smirk at her. “Come on, peach. Are you really going to deprive a man of playing with such a toy?”
“My Gator is not a toy! And don’t call me peach!”
I just jingle the keys at her. “This way, you can point out every pretty inch of your overpriced farm and not worry about driving into a tree in the process.”
Her eyes narrow at me as she considers this dubious piece of logic. I have to admit, I’m rather impressed myself with it. Finally, she shrugs and then climbs through the driver’s side to the passenger seat. It displays such a delectable view of her ass that I have to wonder if she did it purposely.
“Are you planning to move it telepathically, or are you going to get in and drive?”
She doesn’t need to tell me twice. I climb in and then we’re speeding off toward the back of the property where Rory directs me. As we speed through row after row of peach trees, I notice the place is deserted. I think of our own peach farm, buzzing with tens of workers all madly scrambling to harvest the ripe fruit in these critical weeks of summer.
“Where is everyone?”
“They’re in the southwest corner. The freeze ended earlier there last winter so that quadrant ripened before the rest of the property. I thought you read what we sent over? That was in the info packet from my agent.”
It was, now that I think of it, but the trees here look ripe as well. “Seems like you could be picking here as well.”
“I am aware of when a peach is ripe, Jackson.”
Her name on my lips sends an ache straight to my cock, even if it’s muttered in a pissy tone. I shift uncomfortably on the seat, willing away the unwanted erection. While I’d love to sink my cock into her, she’s too pissed at me right now for that to be even a remote good idea, so a raging case of blue balls is kind of the precise opposite of what I need right now.
I remain silent as we drive through the property. Rory talks constantly, telling me about yields and acreage and trees. I’ll be honest and admit I don’t listen that closely; all of this shit was in the packet, and I grew up next to this farm my entire childhood. Rory’s parents and mine always had each other over, discussing this same shit. Even if I no longer work on our farm, I still remember it.
But it gives me more than ample opportunity to watch her, to study the way the light makes her brunette hair shine. To notice the pride and excitement in her voice as she discusses the farm, even if she happens to hate her company. And suddenly, something occurs to me. Something really, truly, stupidly obvious occurs to me.
“Rory, why are you selling?”
Chapter Three
Rory doesn’t respond for so long that I begin to wonder if she even heard my question. I open my mouth to reply, but she cuts me off with a little shake of her head. She’s just figuring out how she wants to respond.
If she even will.
Why should Rory tell me a goddamn thing? She already hates me. No way is she going to want to give me any ammunition against her in this real estate deal. Not that I would do something like that, but I’m not going to be able to convince her to the contrary.
“I’m not interested in sharing that.”
“Rory …”
“I have no desire to get into the specifics with you. No doubt you’d find a way to use it against me.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” I say, and then, because at the end of the day, I’m a dick, I add, “Although I was under the impression you were trying to convince me to give you a better offer.”
She practically snarls at me. I have a hard time caring; if it succeeds in getting me the answers I really fucking need, then I’ll resort to needling her. We remain silent, each trying to outlast the other, but I at least have the driving to distract me. Rory has to just sit there.
Eventually, she can’t take it anymore. Rory heaves an exasperated sigh, then says, “Okay, fine, I’ll tell you. I don’t actually want to sell.”
I do a double take. “What? Then why the fuck are we even here?”
“I don’t want to sell, but my siblings do.”
Oh. Fuck.
My silence actually spurs her to continue. “Lex is a junior at Georgia Tech this fall. Her scholarship ran out last semester and she doesn’t want to take
out a bunch of loans. And Andrew wants to open a CrossFit gym or something. In either case, they’re just not interested in the farm.”
“But it’s been in your family for three generations, right?” I ask, frowning.
She shrugs, and while it’s a casual gesture, her expression is anything but. “Apparently, there isn’t going to be a fourth. Dad’s will bequeathed the farm to the three of us equally. If two of us don’t want it, well, I’m outvoted. Our family needs the money. Being land rich but cash poor isn’t as noble as it’s made out to be.”
My frown deepens; nowhere at all in this explanation has Rory stated her plans for the future. “And what do you want to do?”
Rory reflexively glances over at me. My hands tighten on the steering wheel when I notice her pained expression before she quickly hides it. “What do you mean?”
“When you’ve sold, what are you planning to do?”
She shrugs again. And I know. I am absolutely certain that she has no fucking clue what’s next for her after her family’s farm is sold. “I haven’t thought that far ahead. I’m just trying to get everything ready for the sale.”
“You’d stay right here, working this farm, if it was up to you, wouldn’t you, Rory?”
Her shoulders slump as she stares out at the rows and rows of beautiful peach trees streaming past. “Yeah. I would.”
And it’s the simple sadness of that statement that has me wanting to punch something. To rage against what I have no ability, no right, to fix. “I’m sorry, Rory,” I say quietly, because that’s really all I can say.
“I don’t want your pity,” she snaps. I don’t reply, knowing it’s her way of putting distance between us, so she can continue thinking I’m a monster. It’s easier—maybe even necessary—for her to think that of me.
But I don’t want her to believe I pity her. I admire her for putting her family before her own desires. Lord knows I’m a selfish bastard. Why else did I come here, except to finally scratch the twenty-seven-year-old Rory itch? My motives haven’t exactly been pure in this situation.
Rory’s unknowingly given me exactly what she brought me here to get: a reason to up my offer. While I still don’t believe the farm is worth the price she claims it’s worth, I don’t really want to lowball her either, not when I know it’s going to go directly to her siblings and she doesn’t even want to sell in the first place.
But my responsibility is to my brother. Rory’s situation is shitty, but I’m not going to make my brother pay more just so that I feel better about Rory being forced to sell. And my brother’s a real bastard; if Axel ever found out I made him overpay in an effort to convince Rory to fuck me, he’d skin me alive faster than you can say “Hello, Clarice.”
I’m going to have to find some honest, justifiable reason for upping the offer. And I’m still going to have to pretend to Rory that I have no intention of doing so, because if I don’t, she’s going to see right through me and know I’m doing it out of concern for her. Which will piss her right off. And then I can kiss any fucking goodbye.
I never said I was completely altruistic, did I? A man has needs. This way, everyone wins.
Rory has me stop when we reach the northeast corner, the area of the Larson property that abuts ours. I guide the Gator to a stop and then pull the key out of the ignition. Rory doesn’t immediately snag it from my fingers, so I tuck it in a pocket instead. We stare at the peach trees, which drop off to reveal a giant empty field.
Rory motions toward the field. “This, right here, is why your offer is terrible. There are another forty acres in this field that could easily increase the total peach production of this farm by thirty percent or even be used for a new crop to diversify. Hell, you could raise a small herd of livestock, if you wanted. There’s space. Dad talked about it for years, but we never—well, we never got a chance to do anything about it.”
She’s not mentioning the fact that before their father died, Greg Larson spent nearly a decade in pain from a back injury he sustained falling off one of the ladders during the harvest. All of the Larson plans slowed down after that.
“In any case, the present value of those future profits is easily another $500,000. That’s why you need to up your offer. Your client is getting a shitload of pristine land that he can use however he wants. It’s not accurately reflected in the offer. I didn’t see any value for it specifically at all in the offer you sent over.”
I sigh, scrubbing a hand over my face. Rory’s right—in theory. This land is valuable, just not as valuable as she believes. What Rory doesn’t know is that this land runs right next to the portion of our property that we haven’t gotten a single crop to produce on for years. There’s something wrong with the soil; the acidity content is too high and there isn’t enough drainage. The roots can’t get a solid hold and the plants keep dying. The main reason Axel wants this property so badly is because he needs to increase his yield to keep up with rising costs and he hasn’t been able to manage that because a large chunk of our property has become unusable.
But I don’t want to tell Rory any of that. I have no intention of making her even more upset than she already is about the sale of her farm. Wouldn’t it be better to preserve the memory of it for after she sells? For her to always think that if things had been different, if she’d been able to keep the farm, Rory might have made it even better than her father had by using this land?
Surely that’s kinder, right?
It has to be. I make some noncommittal noise and nod vaguely toward the field. It’s not the reaction Rory is hoping for; she stomps a foot slightly and folds her arms over her chest, staring at me with determination.
“Well? This field is proof that your offer should be higher.”
I practically groan. Of course she’s going to press this. “Well, it could be. But for most people, additional land isn’t worth much. My client is looking for more of a turnkey investment. He doesn’t want to spend a bunch of time and money building up a new crop; he needs immediate results.”
Rory’s eyes narrow as she turns to fully face me. Her gaze sweeps down and back up my form. I try to convince myself it doesn’t make my dick harden because that would be pathetic. “And who exactly is your client, by the way?”
“You don’t already know?” I say, trying to deflect.
“You know I don’t. You’ve only ever referred to your client as just that—your client. Who is this guy?”
Like hell, I’m going to tell her it’s my brother. No way would Rory tolerate the reality that her beloved family farm got bought out by my dick of a brother. I don’t need that kind of drama in my life.
Christ, the only thing I want is to fuck Rory Larson. I don’t want any of this extra shit, this extra guilt. I still don’t have a fucking clue what I did to her in college—and she won’t fucking tell me—but while I’d like to turn the page sexually and act on this fire between us, I don’t want the additional responsibility of dealing with all these problems.
My brother’s. Rory’s. Hell, my perpetual erection whenever I’m around her. The situation is getting out of hand.
“Look, my client is irrelevant to you. You don’t need to know him to get your higher offer. What you need is to convince me. And I know it’s not what you want to hear, but I just haven’t seen anything to convince me of the fact that I should change my offer.”
Rory’s eyes narrow, face twisting in a silent snarl. She looks like she wants to devour me or destroy me. I hope it’s the former.
“The property should speak for itself, you dick.”
“Yeah, it is speaking. Real loud and clear. And what it’s saying is ‘I’m not worth a penny over $1.5 million.’ Okay? I know you hate me—”
“I don’t hate you, Jackson. Oh, I did. Sure. But I haven’t for years. No, I don’t hate you. I don’t give a single fuck about you.”
Chapter Four
Her words, uttered almost inaudibly, cut through me more cleanly than any tirade ever could. For it’s the complete
lack of heat, the quiet certainty with which she utters them that tells me they aren’t a lie. Rory doesn’t hate me.
She doesn’t care about me at all.
Isn’t that what they say about love? The opposite of love isn’t hate; it’s indifference. A complete and total lack of caring. I could walk past her on a crowded street and she wouldn’t register me more than any other stranger streaming past.
My head believes what she’s saying, but my heart doesn’t. Or maybe it’s my cock, refusing to believe it has so little allure for this woman I can’t get out of my mind. So little attraction, temptation. And that’s a real ball-buster, because I could walk through five thousand people in a crowd and still instantly notice her. Still want her.
Dammit. I glare down at her, trying to school my expression into a cold, hard expression of unfeeling badassery, but results may vary, apparently, because she remains unmoved. Rory’s chin lifts under my gaze, like she’s doubling down on her own feelings—or lack thereof—toward me. Something flashes across her face, something significant, but it’s gone far too quickly for me to identify it.
“Well, now that we’ve established the fact that you care so little about me, perhaps we can get on with the business of me shooting down your proposal for a higher offer,” I say through gritted teeth. Rory’s arms fall from where she’s folded them over her chest.
I know what it sounds like. It seems like I just told her I won’t up the offer unless she likes me, even a little. That certainly isn’t my intention, but I’m a stupid shit and don’t always evaluate the intelligence of what I plan to utter before I speak. Maybe some subconscious part of me needs her so strongly that I do mean the words.
Or perhaps, when confronted with an adversary, I will always push back, just so I’m never the first to back down. I don’t know. The only thing my male brain deigns to acknowledge is that her words have pissed me right the hell off.
I can actually hear the sound of Rory’s teeth grinding as she turns and heads back for the Gator. This time, she holds her hand out silently for the keys. There will be no driving for me this time. And that’s fine, because I feel like stewing unencumbered by the responsibility of preventing us from crashing into one of the trees my brother needs to buy intact.
Monster (King Brothers #1) Page 2