by Bella Andre
And then, he was pushing into her, his hips cradled between her thighs, until he was throbbing against her core.
His eyes were dark and hot as he held himself there above her, perfectly still.
“Sweet Ginger,” he whispered before kissing her softly. Tenderly. “I—”
He didn’t say anything more, but he didn’t need to. She could feel how much he cared in the way he kissed her, in the way he was so careful with her, even when he thought he was being rough.
“I know,” she said, and then his mouth was on hers again and they were flying. And afterward as she lay there on the floor beneath him, so perfectly complete, she knew that even if he never actually spoke the word love aloud, at least in that one moment with her on her bedroom floor, he’d felt it.
That night as they ate dinner out on the porch, she had to ask. “How did it go with your father?”
“He wants to help with the cabin.”
“Really? Is that the only reason he gave you for coming here?”
Connor was silent for a long moment. “Sam called him. Told him the news. He was worried.”
The news. That was all he would say about the phone call that had changed his life.
“What did you tell him?”
He lifted his beer, drank from it before answering. “Same thing I’ve been telling everyone.”
“That you’re fine.”
“Yup.”
Ginger bit her tongue in an effort to keep her mouth shut. But after what had just happened upstairs she felt so close to him, cared way too much to keep listening to the same lie over and over.
“Has anyone believed you yet?”
“Say that again.”
His words were cold. Hard. But she couldn’t back down. Not this time.
“You keep saying you’re fine. But you and I both know it isn’t true. You’re not. You couldn’t be. Not yet. Not when everything you ever wanted was just ripped away from you.”
“Jesus,” Connor said, slamming his bottle down on the table so hard a crack appeared in the spot it hit. “What the fuck is wrong with all of you? You’d think it was a crime to look on the bright side. Isn’t that what I’m supposed to be doing? See how the world is my fucking oyster now? Now that firefighting isn’t tying me down, isn’t taking up every goddamned second of my life, shouldn’t I be seeing the endless possibilities?”
“Yes, Connor. Yes to all of that. But that doesn’t mean you can’t mourn first, let it all out. Even if it’s only for five minutes.”
“Don’t you get it?” He shoved away from the table. “I could travel the world, see the seven goddamned wonders. Just keep going until I feel like turning around and starting over.”
“But that’s not what you want,” she challenged him again.
“How the fuck do you know what I want?”
She pushed her chair back, went to him, took his hands in hers. “Because I know you. I know who you really are. And I want to help you. Please let me help you, Connor.”
“Fine. You want to help me? I’ll show you exactly how you can help. The only way you can help.”
He spun her around and shoved her into the logs behind them, pinned her hard against the wall with her wrists gripped tightly in his hands above her head. He was breathing hard and she gasped in stunned surprise at his rough handling of her.
“I know you don’t mean that,” she got out a second before he covered her lips with his in a kiss so rough she tasted blood. She wasn’t sure if it was his or hers, and the twisted truth was that as his mouth devoured hers, she didn’t really care. Not when all she wanted was to keep tangling her tongue against his. Not when she would gladly take her next breath from his lungs.
But a second later he was wrenching his mouth away from hers and tightening his grip on her wrists, hard enough now that she cried out. She could feel rage rolling off him in waves, almost as if he were even angrier now because she hadn’t run from him.
He shoved his thigh between hers, hard enough that a slick of fear ran through her. She tried to pull away from him, yank her wrists from his tight grip, but he only held on tighter.
“Talk to me, Connor,” she begged.
“You think you know what I want,” he said, his words harsh, utterly at odds with the soft swoosh of waves on the shore. “You’re wrong. This is what I want. All I want.”
She felt him drop a hand from her wrists, but instead of letting her loose, he ripped off her sundress in one quick movement.
She couldn’t see his eyes clearly in the dark, only the shadows beneath his cheekbones, the planes of his face that were so beautiful to her. It was all happening too fast for her to find any words to make him stop—too fast to even know if that’s what she wanted—and then he was covering one of her breasts with his palm, squeezing her roughly, branding her with the intense heat that always poured off his body.
Her body reacted instantly to his touch, opening to let him in, moisture quickly coating her thin panties, the top of his thigh.
“Connor,” she groaned as she instinctively rubbed herself against him, seeking the pleasure she knew was waiting in his arms, even now. And then his hand was between her legs.
Her hips instinctively bucked up into his fingers, seeking more, but even as he thrust two fingers into her, even as she responded to his touch as she always had, she was struck with the sense that he was stuck in the space between reality and a nightmare. Just like that night up in his room when she’d run in to help him and he’d pulled her hard against him.
And just like then, her fear left as quickly as it had come. Because even out on this rough and ragged edge, she knew he’d never deliberately hurt her.
How could she possibly be afraid of him, when at his core Connor was the most decent, most heroic man she’d ever known?
One word from her and he’d stop.
But she didn’t want him to.
“This is who I am now,” he said, the words raw as they exited his throat, his mouth moving at her neck, sucking, biting at the same time. He let go of her wrists with his other hand and moved it to her breasts, rolling an erect nipple between his thumb and forefinger, making her gasp again with another shock of pure pleasure. “This is who I’ve become. And now that you’ve seen the real me, it’s time to make your choice.”
“You can try to convince me a hundred times,” she managed to get out with the little air she had left in her lungs, “and I’ll never believe you.”
But instead of calming him, her words seemed to send him even closer to the edge as his fingers dove in, then out of her, his thumb pressing against her clitoris, his palm gripping her breast. And then tremors were taking over her body, her body tightening around his fingers, her eyes closing, her head falling back against a log.
As she came, her orgasm going on for what seemed like hours, he whispered into her ear, “It’s your choice, babe. Take me just like this. Or leave me the hell alone.”
Through the blur of desire, she could see what he was doing, that he was trying to use sex as a weapon. Trying to break her with it, pushing at her boundaries to see if he could get her to run.
And maybe if she hadn’t been running for so many years, if she wasn’t so damn tired of going in circles and getting absolutely nowhere, she might have let him scare her off.
Didn’t he know she’d already made her choice? That she’d choose him every time? Not just because of the way her body spiraled out of control whenever he touched her. But because loving Connor was what her heart knew to be the most true emotion she’d ever felt.
She’d never thought to announce her feelings to him in this way, up against the wall, trapped in his heat, his overwhelming strength, but now she saw that this was how things with Connor had been from the beginning.
Wild.
Unexpected.
Frightening.
But beautiful and utterly precious all at the same time.
“I love you, Connor.”
The relief at finally confessing w
hat she felt, at accepting it fully herself, was so sweet, she had to say it again.
“I love you with everything I am.”
“No.” His eyes were dark. Wild. “You don’t. You can’t.”
“I do. I can.”
She reached up to his face with both hands, made him look at her. “So if this is what you want from me, if this is what you need to break through to the other side, then take it from me. I’m giving myself to you freely.”
He closed his eyes, still fighting a war within himself, the same war he’d been fighting for two years.
“Did you hear me, Connor? I’ve made my choice. To give myself to you. Because I love you.”
And then, beneath his eyelashes, she saw a tear emerge, his teeth, his jaw clenched against it even as it fell in a slow trail over his cheekbone, down into the hollow, then onto his mouth.
She moved her lips to his, tasted the salt there.
“Take me, Connor,” she whispered against his mouth. “I’m yours.”
Darkness was swallowing him up, pulling him down, all the way under as Ginger’s words—I love you, Connor—swirled around in his brain, wrapping themselves around his chest, the hollow place inside where his heart should be.
She couldn’t love him. There was nothing there to love. He was just a shell now. An empty shell. He tried to claw his way back to the top, but he’d never faced a threat so big, not even from the fire that had scorched his skin.
He felt wetness beneath her fingertips as she gently touched his face. He hadn’t cried on the mountain, hadn’t cried in the hospital, hadn’t cried after the phone call. Hadn’t cried until he’d shoved Ginger into the wall, made her come apart for him, beneath his fingers, then heard her say—
The wrenching pain in his chest was so intense, he wrapped his hands harder around her hips, digging his fingers into her softness.
“Ginger.”
He heard the violence in her name, looked into her eyes, saw the love in them, and knew he needed to stop. Step away. Leave her alone. Before he did something he’d never forgive himself for.
And still, all he could say was, “I can’t let you go.”
“You don’t have to, Connor. I’ve already told you.”
He’d never fought so hard, and yet, second by second, he went down farther, into the black hole at the heart of the undertow.
No fire had ever scared him like this, overwhelmed him so completely. His passion for Ginger, the unending desire that grew every second he spent with her, every time he touched her, was the most intense force he’d ever encountered.
“I should never have touched you. I should have left you alone. You need to run from me. As fast as you can.”
He was as hollow as a rotten log, crumbling on the outside, nothing but air at his core.
“I shouldn’t do this. What I’m about to do.”
It was the only warning he had in him. All he could do was hope that she was strong enough to save them both, smart enough to run like hell.
But instead of running, instead of pushing him away, he felt her fingers ripping at his pants just as he’d ripped her clothes away.
He forced out the words, “No, Ginger,” even as he silently pleaded, Yes. Please don’t leave me now.
And then, as if she could hear his unspoken prayer, she was saying, “I’m not going anywhere,” and her legs opened wider, her calves coming around his hips. He felt her hand move down to her panties to pull them aside a split second before she thrust her heels against his ass, driving him inside.
“Let go,” she whispered against his forehead. “Just let go.”
And then she was wrapping her legs tighter around his waist to ride him just as hard as he rode her, taking him in deeper than she ever had before. But as he roared his release, it was the beating of her heart against his chest that he felt most.
“I’ll move out tonight.”
Her legs were still wrapped around his waist, her arms around his neck, sweat dripping between their half-naked bodies. And he was an asshole who had just done something he never thought he could be capable of. He’d hurt her, had heard her cry out in pain as he shoved her against the wall. And he still hadn’t stopped. Couldn’t have stopped.
Abruptly, she untangled herself from him. Pushed him away. And that was when he saw the bruises on her wrists, clear even in the dim lights of the porch.
Bruises. From his hands.
“I hear everything you say,” she said. “Even the things you don’t say. Especially those. But you haven’t heard a goddamned thing I’ve said, have you?”
She was the only reason he’d been able to hold the pieces together at all, and in return he’d stolen from her sweetness.
In return he’d hurt her.
“I forced you, Ginger. I made you fuck me. Here. Like that.”
He felt lost without her pressed against him, a man on a island with nothing left to hold on to. He looked at her ruined dress on the floor, pulled up his jeans with shaking hands.
“I was an animal.”
A sound of rage erupted from her throat. “Yes, you wanted to make it fucking. You wanted to take what’s between us and make it ugly and worthless, but you couldn’t do it. Don’t you see that, Connor? You couldn’t do it.”
“I made you come. I put my hands on you and controlled you.”
She grabbed his hands, stuck one hard to her breasts, shoved the other between her legs.
“You think you can make me come just by putting your hands on me? Just by rubbing yourself against me? Am I coming now? No!”
She shoved his hands off, whirled away, her skin flushed with anger.
“If you’d been hurting me, if you had really been trying to control me, I wouldn’t have come apart like that. I’m in love with you, Connor, but that doesn’t mean I’m some puppet you’re holding the strings to.”
“Your wrists. I did that to your wrists.”
She stopped abruptly and looked at her arms. “I’ve always bruised easily,” she said dismissively, before glaring back at him. “Are you hearing a word of what I’m saying? I love you. Just the way you are. All I want is for you to talk to me. To let me in.”
He was trying to take her words in, was trying to process the force of her emotion, everything she was offering him, but as soon as he’d heard the word love again, it hit him, a sucker punch in the center of his gut: there was only one thing worse than losing the use of his hands, only one thing worse than losing his entire identity as a firefighter.
Letting himself love Ginger … and losing her too.
Because now that everything he’d been absolutely sure of for thirty years had gone up in smoke, all he knew for certain was that everything good eventually slipped from his hands.
It was the only truth he knew. The only thing he could be certain of anymore.
Her frustration echoed out from the porch, out to the beach, the water lapping at the shore.
“I’ve never thought you were a coward, Connor. Never. But if you leave tonight, I’ll know that you are. You might have proved yourself to be a hero a hundred times in a wildfire. Well, this is your chance to prove it to me.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
IT WAS a rough night.
Andrew had never needed much sleep—as a litigator, he was often up late into the night poring over briefs, only to wake at dawn to defend his client—but he’d woken up disoriented and confused in the Inn’s small cottage bedroom. Making a cup of coffee in the automatic coffee-maker on the kitchen counter, he stood by the window and stared out at the water.
The night before he’d spent hours sitting in the dark on the porch of his cottage on the shores of Blue Mountain Lake. After running his credit card and handing him a large, old-fashioned key, Rebecca, the pretty innkeeper, had said, “I’m afraid our restaurant here is booked up for the night already, but if you’re hungry, I can highly recommend the Blue Mountain Diner. Isabel does a fantastic job with the food there.”
Although he was star
ved, he didn’t think Isabel would appreciate seeing him show up at her restaurant tonight. Or any other night.
Noting the fruit and cookies on the sideboard in the sitting room, he said, “Thanks, but I’ll make do just fine with this spread.”
Looking unconvinced, she’d said, “You know what, how about I pop my head into the kitchen and see if the cook can whip up something simple for you and send it down to the cottage in about an hour?”
It was the nicest anyone had been to Andrew all day, apart from Ginger. But he wasn’t under any misapprehensions as to why she was being so wonderful. It wasn’t because he was a great guy. It wasn’t because he deserved her kindness.
Rebecca simply didn’t know him.
And being nice was her job.
He’d sat in an Adirondack chair, staring out at the lake, watching the sailboats and speedboats and kayaks go by, but not really seeing any of them.
All night long, the only thing he could see was the hatred on his son’s face, on Isabel’s face as each of them listed off all the ways he’d hurt them, all the ways he’d failed.
But he couldn’t hide out in the cottage forever. And strangely, for all the discord of the previous day, for the first time in years, he felt like he was home.
Thirty years he’d gone without seeing this place. Thirty years he’d stayed away from his mistakes. Or thought he had, anyway. But Blue Mountain Lake was a part of his soul that couldn’t simply be thrown away or forgotten.
He’d been a summer baby, born at the small hospital forty-five minutes away. He wondered if his old crib was still in the Poplar Cove attic, or if his parents had gotten rid of it as soon as Connor had outgrown it? Every summer as a kid they’d come to the lake, an extended family that included his grandparents as well. He’d grown up playing on the beach, swimming in the sometimes chilly waters, sailing on whitecaps, roasting marshmallows on sticks. He’d been so certain about the way his life would unfold.
He’d planned to build boats. Handmade sailboats. To sail around the world with a beautiful woman at his side.
He moved away from the cottage window, pouring himself a cup of coffee. It was too late. He’d wasted too much goddamned time being a martyr, spent the best years of his life trying to impress the wrong people.