by Imani King
"Dallas," I responded standoffishly, because I didn't have a single clue what to say. He was wearing a t-shirt and jeans and he looked so damn good. I swallowed my emotions, berating myself internally. This is what got you into trouble in the first place.
"I need to talk to you."
I almost laughed. He needed to talk to me? He didn't have any idea what that might actually mean.
"Yeah?" I asked. "What about? I'm really tired. I just got off work and –"
"I wouldn't have come down here and waited to see you if it wasn't important, Tia. I'm not asking you for anything, there are just some things I want to say to you and since you blocked me on your phone I didn't know what else to do. I've been doing a lot of thinking lately and I – yeah, will you just hear me out?"
The word 'no' was on the tip of my tongue. And the fact that I didn't really have a whole lot of real reasons to be angry at Dallas somehow didn't matter as much as it should have. I was angry at him. Why? Because I'd let myself get too invested, too hopeful. That was my fault, not his. Still, part of me wanted him to pay for hurting me.
"Uh –"
"Tia, please. I promise you I'm not going to ask you to do anything you don't want to do. But – this is important to me. I need to say these things. And after I do, if you want me to stay out of your life, I will. You have my word."
"OK then," I shrugged, feigning a lightness of tone that didn't reflect what was in my heart. "What is it?"
"Can we go somewhere? Not here, I mean? I don't want to do this in a parking lot."
I unlocked the car. "I don't want to go to your house, Dallas. And we can't go to John and Jenny's, they think you're a dick."
Dallas smiled sadly. "I know. Everyone does."
"You get that that's your fault, though, right?" I asked, looking up at him sharply. "When you act like a jerk, Dallas, people think you're a jerk. That's how it works."
He nodded. "Yeah, that is how it works. I'm not feeling sorry for myself, if that's what you think. Not about that, anyway. The good citizens of River Bend have every reason to think I'm a grade-A asshole."
"So you do feel sorry for yourself?"
"I – Tia, can we please not do this here?"
"Well where should we go?"
Dallas was standing quite close to me. Close enough for me to be able to smell the scent of hay and outdoors on his skin.
"Why can't we just go to my place? There's no one there, if that's what you're worried about."
I couldn't look at him. I had to stay in control. "No, it's not that. I don't want to go to your place because I – I don't trust myself."
He took a step towards me when I said that and I held my hand up, inches from his chest. "No. Don't do that. This is exactly why I don't want to go to your place."
"You're right. I'm sorry, you're right Tia. It's difficult to be around you, you know? I'm so, uh, it's so – never mind. It doesn't matter. I know somewhere we can go. Do you want to drive?"
"Well it is my car."
Dallas laughed. "It is. OK, it's not far. Just go left on Old Ware Road."
So we got into the car and I followed his directions, pretending all the while that the simple fact of being next to him was having no effect on me. About ten minutes later we got to a natural rock outcropping in the hills that surrounded River Bend, overlooking the town itself.
"Oh!" I said, surprised at the view. "This is nice. Is this a park or something?"
"Nah, it's just somewhere I bring Beau sometimes, when he needs to have his energy burned off. I thought you might like to see River Bend from a new perspective – and no one's going to bother us up here. Maybe a hungry bear or two, but no people."
I turned to him, worried. "What? Bears?"
He chuckled. "Nothing to worry about, Tia, I'm kidding. I mean, there are bears in these woods, but they don't come down this close to town too often. And we're in a car. Don't look so petrified, city slicker."
It felt so natural to be with him. I didn't want it to feel like that. I wanted it to be awkward and uncomfortable, so I didn't have to second guess any of my assumptions. We looked out over the town, surrounded on all sides by dark wilderness.
"So," I said, a couple of minutes later. "I really am tired, Dallas. What is it you wanted to say?"
He leaned back in his seat and looked out the window, sighing. "Honestly, Tia, I don't even know where to begin. I guess the most important thing is, I have a problem. And everything else, everything I've done, everything that's happened to me and how I've handled it, all kind of centers on this problem."
"Oh," I said, very quietly. "Yeah. The baby."
"It's not the baby – I don't want to get ahead of myself here, but it turns out no one even knows if he's mine. Maybe his own mother doesn't know. I will know, soon. But he isn't the problem. You are."
"I –" I stuttered, hurt. "I'm the problem?" If Dallas thought I was a problem then, he didn't even know the half of it. I held my tongue, though, knowing it wasn't the right time to say anything.
"Yes," he said, turning to face me. "You are the problem. You are the biggest problem I've had for a long time, Tia Kinsley. That's why I moved out here to Montana – to avoid problems. And ever since I met you, I'm starting to wonder if that might have been really stupid, or maybe just badly misguided."
"What do you mean?" I asked, confused. "I don't know what you're –"
"I can't do it," Dallas said, shaking his head. "I just can't do it, Tia. I can't keep pretending I don't feel what I feel for you. That's what I mean, when I say you're a problem. You are. Because I thought I could just give up on humanity. I thought that was the rational thing to do, after seeing the things I've seen. It made sense, you know? At the time? But you're good. You're a good person, you're beautiful and warm and funny and smart and I've spent weeks doing everything I can to forget you. And I can't. That's the plain truth."
Dallas Corbett wasn't the only person in River Bend who had spent weeks trying to convince themselves that they didn't feel the things they did. And what he was saying was, I realized, everything I wanted to hear. But he didn't know. He didn't know I was pregnant with his baby. And having feelings for someone isn't the same thing as wanting to raise a child with them. Before I could say anything, though, he continued.
"It's like I said back in the parking lot – you don't owe me anything. I'm not asking you for anything. I just wanted you to know. I don't want to be an old man sitting out on my porch and thinking 'what if.' If you want me to leave you alone, I'll leave you –"
"Dallas –"
We reached for each other at the same time. There was nothing, in that moment, that I wanted more than the touch of his hands and the feeling of his mouth on mine. There was nothing that mattered more than being close to him. When he pulled me onto his lap and held me tight against his body it felt like drinking a cold glass of water after wandering a parched desert for weeks.
"I missed you," I whispered, pressing my face into his warm neck. "Dallas, I missed you so much."
"Me too," he replied, through the kisses he was trailing down my cheek. "Jesus, Tia, me too."
We were desperate for each other, out of breath and tearing clumsily at our clothes within seconds. When he managed to pull my shirt off over my head, yank my bra down and bury his face in my breasts, I didn't bother trying to suppress the high-pitched sighs escaping my throat.
"I need you," I murmured, already lost to reason and rational thought. "Dallas, please..."
He looked up at me, then. "You have no idea what that does to me, do you? To hear you saying my name like that? You don't know, Tia. You don't know..."
The car was small and Dallas was big. There wasn't enough room to maneuver. He reached down beside the seat, trying to find the handle. Suddenly, the seat shot backwards, hard enough to send me crashing into him. I giggled, but only briefly, because his hands were on my hips, pulling at my pants, shoving them down my thighs. There was that power I'd sensed in him before, the need that jus
t drove me completely crazy. I couldn't think, I couldn't do anything except respond to him.
I bent forward and opened my mouth, sliding my tongue over his as he fumbled with his belt. There was a feeling of emptiness, of a void inside me – physical, yes, but emotional, too, and psychological. And he was the only person on earth who could fill it. I looked down when he pulled his thick, glistening cock out of his pants, and actually felt my own mind veer away from itself.
"Oh Dallas," I gasped, seeing what I'd done to him, aching for him. He grasped one of my hips and pulled me into position. I liked that, I liked being put where he wanted me to be. And then I felt him against my opening and looked up again.
"Tia," he breathed, closing his eyes tightly and then opening them again. Neither of us could wait. I lowered myself onto his sweet length, crying out his name. Nothing had ever felt so good in my life. I didn't stop, either. I kept going until he was all the way inside and I couldn't speak or breathe.
"Baby," Dallas moaned. "Oh Tia, you feel so good, baby. You're perfect. You're –"
His voice dissolved as I raised myself up and then down again, riding him. It felt like that first time again – fevered, uncontrollable. I couldn't slow down and I couldn't get enough of him. Every time he thrust up into me it felt better and better, until I could feel the first little tickles of orgasm in my core.
"Dallas," I squeaked, digging my fingers, hard, into his chest. "You're going to make me – Dallas, I'm going to –"
And then he stopped me. He was so much stronger than me, it was nothing for him to simply grab my hips and prevent me from moving.
"Not yet," he growled, kissing my neck. "Not yet, Tia. I'm not finished with you yet."
When I managed to focus on his face I saw that he was smiling. "What?" I asked. "Dallas. Please, I need to..."
He pulled me, very slowly, back down onto him. "What do you need, Tia? Do you need to come? Is that what you need?"
"Yes," I gasped, trying and failing to move faster again.
"Do you have any idea how hot that is?" he asked, holding me down on his cock. "That makes me want to come. I could fill you up right now, Tia. Right this second. Is that what you –"
"Yes," I pleaded. "Yes. Dallas, please come inside me. I want you to come inside me. I want –"
With a groan, he loosened his grip, allowing me to move again. "I know what you want," he breathed, cupping my breasts in his hands. "You're going to get it, baby. Fuck, Tia. Ohhh..."
I wrapped my arms around him when I felt myself getting close, needing to be as near to him as possible. "Oh my God," I whispered as the pleasure built inside me."Oh my God, Dallas."
'Come for me," he panted, quickening his thrusts. "Tia –"
I threw my head back and screamed his name when the white hot bliss exploded out through my body and the feeling of being full of him sent me right over the edge. And as soon as I was there, Dallas was, too, driving himself up into me and locking my body to his as he came.
"I love that," I told him, smiling because I couldn't help it, because coming that hard just made it impossible to feel anything but a kind of warm, overwhelming affection. "I love making you come."
I didn't even have the energy to crawl off him, so instead I stayed where I was on his lap, snuggling up against his chest as we both caught our breath.
A few minutes later he laughed. "Well, that went better than I expected."
"Yeah," I said, still not fully back in the real world yet. "I don't think I can even be around you without, uh –"
"Without fucking my brains out?"
I smiled."Yeah, that."
He opened the door a few minutes later and we hopped out to pull our clothes back into place – it was almost winter by then and the nights were chilly. Before I could walk back around to the driver's side, Dallas caught my wrist.
"Come back to my place. Stay the night."
I wanted to stay the night with him. More than anything. But the truth was, we hadn't really talked about very much, because neither of us had been able to control ourselves. He saw me hesitating.
"I'm not just asking so I can fuck you again, Tia, if that's what you think. I actually kind of didn't even get started. You know, with everything I wanted to tell you. And I still want to have that conversation. Are you working in the morning?"
"No," I replied. "I'm working in the afternoon, though – same shift as today."
"Come back with me, then."
I wasn't hesitating because I didn't want to go with him. I was hesitating because I did. It was like we'd both suffered a momentary bout of lust-driven insanity, and now reality was forcing itself back into our temporary bubble.
In the end, I went. I couldn't say no. I don't know what kind of girl would have had the strength to say no to a night in Dallas Corbett's arms, but it wasn't me. When we got back to his cabin Beau came bounding down the front stairs to lick my hands and run circles around me.
"Look at him," Dallas chuckled. "He's almost as happy to see you as I was."
Fourteen
Dallas
I wanted to make her come again before turning in for the night, but Tia fell asleep when I was in the shower and I didn't have the heart to wake her up. In the morning, she was still zonked out beside me so I got dressed quietly and slipped downstairs to make scrambled eggs for breakfast.
Something about having her in the house just felt right. Making breakfast for her felt right, like every other breakfast I'd ever made was now, in hindsight, missing something. And even as I felt my heart almost full to the brim with Tia Kinsley, I was slightly pissed off at myself for letting things get so out of hand the night before. I hadn't yet had the chance to tell her the things I needed to. How was I going to get her to take me seriously if I couldn't keep my hands off her for long enough to actually say what had to be said?
She came downstairs just as the eggs were finished, looking completely irresistible in one of my t-shirts and nothing else.
"Goddamnit," I said, kissing the top of her head. "How am I supposed to get anything done around here with you looking like that?"
She grinned. "You've got bigger problems than I thought if me first thing in the morning is enough to distract you, Dallas."
Tia didn't know. She didn't know how absolutely amazing she was. It was probably for the best, I could only imagine the trail of broken male hearts she'd leave behind her if she did.
"Are those from the hens?" she asked, sitting down at the table. "Your hens, I mean?"
"Sure are. There's no way I'm feeding you supermarket eggs, babe."
"Babe," she repeated, looking up at me. "I like that. I think I like it way too much."
I sat down across from her, studying her face. Oddly, she looked sad. That didn't make sense. I must have been reading her wrong. Why would she be sad?
"You good?" I asked as she tucked into her scrambled eggs.
"Yeah," she sighed. "I think so. In some ways I'm very good – and I think you know why. But we still need to talk."
"We do," I agreed. "I need to get the animals fed and checked and all that, but after that, yes, we still need to talk."
"It's too easy, isn't it?" she asked. "It's too easy for us to get naked and let everything else slip away."
I nodded ruefully. "You're damn right it is. And as much as I love getting you naked, sooner or later we have to deal with everything."
We finished our eggs and headed out to the fields. When we got to the cattle pasture and I opened the gate, Tia slipped her hand into mine. She was nervous about the steers, I could feel it in her tight grip, and she was looking to me to take care of her. It's like she said during breakfast – I shouldn't have loved it as much as I did, but there was no controlling how she just made me feel like a man.
She watched me hauling bales of hay, offering at one point to carry one herself.
"They're heavier than they look," I warned, stepping back and grinning as she tried, and failed, to lift one.
"Well maybe
I can drag it?"
"Nah, the cattle get stressed if their breakfast is late. And I can't have some city girl upsetting my livestock."
It took her a few moments to realize I was joking, whereupon she snatched a handful of loose hay off the bale and threw it at me. "Shut up! I thought you were serious!"
I ducked, laughing, and hoisted the hay up onto my shoulder. It took a couple of hours to get everything done, but it was different with Tia there. It wasn't 'chores.' The way she watched me, not quite hiding how impressed she was, made me feel cocky as hell. On the way back to the cabin she slipped her fingers through mine again and leaned in against my arm.
"I like watching you work, Dallas."
My cock stirred in my pants. I tried to ignore it. "Yeah, I can see that."
She looked up at me, her brown eyes full of longing. How had it come to be that it no longer felt possible to live – to go about my days, to run the ranch – without that look in my life?
"What?" she asked, noting the consternation on my face.
"Oh, nothing."
"No, Dallas – what?"
We walked into the cabin and I pulled my sweaty shirt off over my head. "I need a shower. Give me five minutes, OK?"
Tia nodded, but I could see she was disappointed not to get an answer. So I stepped back into the room for a few seconds. "It was just that look in your eyes. It does things to me, Tia. Things I didn't think could be done to me anymore."
I ducked out quickly, knowing that if I spent so much as five more seconds with her, all our plans to talk like grown-ups were going to fly right out the window.
When I re-emerged a short while later, smelling a little less like hay and barnyard, she was standing over the stove.
"Don't get excited," she warned, "it's just some zucchini and beans. Better than canned soup, though – right?"
I walked up behind her, gently pulled her hair out of the way and kissed the back of her neck. "You're gorgeous."
She tilted her head to the side and smiled. We were standing very close, but our bodies weren't actually touching yet. I felt her pausing, refusing to lean back against me – because we both knew what was going to happen if she did.