by Katee Robert
He did.
He waited while she worked it out, her dark eyes unreadable. Finally, Hope turned away. “I understand what you’re saying, but you’re wrong. Even if you weren’t—which you are—you’re still doing this for the wrong reasons, Daniel. You know it, and I know it.”
Wanting to fix things wasn’t the wrong reason. She might not agree with him, but that was just the way it was. All he knew was that she had to be here, to be where he could keep an eye on her and keep her safe as she got farther along in her pregnancy. “Stay.” He didn’t care if he had to move heaven and hell and everything in between, he wasn’t about to let her out of his sight any more than necessary. His theoretical comments weren’t all that theoretical. She might be trying to cover it up, but he could see that she favored her injured leg, and that meant her chances of falling were higher than average, especially once she started getting big.
Daniel went still, the image of Hope with a large stomach filling his head. Seeing her big with his baby.
Fuck, I like that picture.
Right now, the most important thing was getting her to agree to stay in town at all. From there, he’d work on getting her into his home. He looked around. He didn’t even know if he could call this house a home. It had never bothered him before—it was a place that kept the heat out in the summer and the cold out in the winter and the critters out while he slept. It had never felt lacking until now, with the woman he’d always thought he’d end up with standing there, looking as out of place as an angel in a dive bar.
It might not be the house he’d always promised that he’d build her, but he could spiff this place up into something better than it currently was.
He just needed her to agree to stay. “Give us a chance to iron this out—a couple days. Stay through the week, and then we’ll talk.”
Her mouth dropped open. “What are you going to do, lock me up in the basement until I agree with you?”
That didn’t sound like too terrible a plan, but he had a better idea. Daniel stalked toward her, knowing he was out of control and not caring. “I might do that. Or I might go over the list of perks again.” He braced his hands on the counter on either side of her.
Her gaze rested on his mouth. “Your perks sound a whole lot like strings attached.”
“Aw, darling, they might be exactly that.” He leaned in, not quite touching her, but close enough that he could feel the warmth of her body and the way her breath shook. “But I can guarantee that you won’t be worried about anything but the way my cock feels inside you.”
She narrowed her eyes. “When did you get so damn pushy?”
He knew she was constantly doing a before and after comparison of him. Hell, he didn’t even blame her. He was doing the same damn thing. When he was twenty-one, he’d been happy and carefree and so full of life it actually hurt to look back on that time. Now? Now he was half the man he used to be, and he wasn’t about to start changing. He didn’t deserve happiness, and he sure as fuck didn’t deserve Hope, but if the universe was stupid enough to give him another shot with her, he wasn’t a good enough man to walk away.
Deserving her or not, Hope was his. She just had to come to terms with it.
He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, letting his fingers linger there. Everything else had changed, but he still knew exactly how to touch her to elicit a response. “When I find something worth fighting for.”
“That’s your problem.” She turned and looked him directly in the eye. “I was always worth fighting for.”
He went still, the truth of her statement like a kick to the chest. “It wasn’t right back then.”
“Or maybe you were just too focused on sinking yourself into misery as fast as you could to realize the good you still had in your life.” She saw too much. She always had. Back when she’d been a teenager, she’d been kind enough to back off before she revealed the fault line inside a person and forced them to face it. Apparently she wasn’t too kind anymore. Hope pressed her lips into an unforgiving line—as unforgiving as the look in her eye. “John died in that car crash—not me. Except you didn’t seem to understand that, because you were mourning my freaking leg as if that was all I was worth to you. A whole body.” She pushed against his chest, not hard enough to move him, but hard enough to prove her point. “I hated you for a really long time.”
“I deserved your hate.” It was the simple truth. He’d taken everything from her. He’d hated himself for that, so it only made sense that she’d feel the same way.
Hope shook her head. “You’re as much an idiot now as you were then.”
And then she kissed him.
It caught him a little off guard—he hadn’t expected her to be the one to make the first move, especially after the way the scene in the bathroom had gone down—but Daniel wasted no time taking control. He kissed down her neck, sliding his hands beneath her shirt and skating them up her body to cup her breasts. They filled his palms, familiar and yet not, all at the same time. He cursed. “Darling, the things you do to me.” He nipped her collarbone. “I’m going to taste you, so if you’re going to change your mind, now’s the time to do it.”
Her only response was to shove her yoga pants down to her knees.
He lifted her onto the counter and disentangled her right leg from the pants so he could spread her fully. He stroked her thighs, pausing when his fingers met the scar. It brought up so many conflicting feelings in him. It was his fault that she had the damn thing, but that didn’t mean he thought of her as less, the way she seemed to think. She was as beautiful now as she’d been at eighteen, and more confident despite her injury. Or maybe because of it. He had no idea.
All he knew was that at some point he was going to have to get up close and personal with her healed injury, and he was going to have to tread very, very carefully to avoid burning what was left of the bridge between him and Hope.
“If you apologize, I might actually kick you.”
That snapped him out of it. As much as he wanted Hope, he had an ulterior motive for pushing her now. All getting distracted by her leg was going to do was fuck up his chance of convincing her to stay, in his house and in his bed. He jerked her to the edge of the counter, spreading her thighs wider. “Don’t scream. You’ll upset Ollie.”
And then he did what he’d been fantasizing about ever since he walked out of her life. Daniel dipped his head and gave her center one long lick. She tasted better than he remembered, her body already shaking for him, so he used his thumbs to part her folds and licked her again, reacquainting himself with every inch of her.
“Oh.”
He looked up her body to find her head thrown back and her chest rising and falling with each harsh breath. “Take off your shirt.”
Hope wasted no time obeying, dragging the material over her head and tossing it away. And then there was nothing hiding her body from his gaze. He licked her again, savoring the way she shook. A tattoo curling around the bottom of her ribs caught his eye, but he was too distracted to read it.
He was tired of teasing her. He wanted to feel her orgasm again, to know she was coming apart at the seams because of him. Daniel sucked her clit into his mouth, stroking the sensitive little nub with the flat of his tongue the way she’d always loved. Sure enough, before he had a chance to truly savor her, Hope cried out his name and shuddered, her thighs squeezing his head as she came. He gentled his touches, licks turning to kisses, turning to the slightest brushing of his lips against her. Only when she stopped shaking did he raise his head. “Stay, at least until we figure out what we’re doing.”
“You are…I don’t even have words to describe what you are.” She blinked and ran a hand over her face. “Is this how every argument is going to go?”
Hell, yes—at least if he had his way. Daniel dragged his cheek against her thigh. “You kissed me first.”
“I was just trying to shut you up.”
He laughed against her skin, not quite willing to let her go yet. “We
ll, that’s one way to go about it.”
Her smile died as she pushed him gently back and slid off the counter. “This doesn’t solve anything. You know that, right? You can’t just sex me into submission.” She wrestled her pants back on, and he mourned the loss. Things were so much simpler when they were talking with their bodies instead of their words. No matter which way he lined things up, they were different people than they’d been when they dated. So much had changed since then, the terrain changed until he barely recognized the world around him.
But he knew her body.
He’d never stop knowing what made her hot and drove her crazy.
And he sure as fuck wasn’t above using that to get what he wanted.
Chapter Eight
Hope climbed out of Daniel’s truck and looked up and down the street. There were people around, but none of them seemed to be paying too much attention. That wouldn’t last, but at least she had a slight reprieve to catch her breath.
In theory.
The truth was she didn’t know what the hell was going on. One minute she’d been independent and asserting her need to create some distance between herself and Daniel, and the next his head had been between her legs. It was never like that with him before. It had been soft and sweet.
There was nothing soft and sweet about the man coming around the front of the truck to glare at her. He pointed. “I was coming to get your door.”
“Either develop Superman abilities or come to terms with the fact that I can get my own damn door.” She knew she was being rude, but she didn’t care. She’d spent almost half her life taking care of herself without a man—without him—around, and she wasn’t about to turn into a wilting flower just because he decided to walk back into her life.
Technically I walked back into his life.
And seduced him.
And messed up birth control.
And got pregnant.
It was kind of hard to maintain the moral high ground in this situation, but when it came to him sweeping in and taking over her life, it just wasn’t going to happen. The sooner he figured that out, the better.
To end the conversation, she turned toward the storefront. The place looked exactly like it had when she was in high school. It was crazy. So much had changed—she had changed—and yet Devil’s Falls was practically the same. It made it hard to differentiate between the past and present, too easy to fall back into the old rhythms she and Daniel had had. I can’t. The minute she dropped her guard completely, he was going to have her quitting her job, moving in, and the man would probably go so far as to propose because he thought that it was the right thing to do.
Once upon a time, she’d wanted to marry Daniel Rodriguez. But not now. Not like this. Not when he was operating under some misguided belief that he was going to do right by her.
She moved away from him and into the store. The whole point of coming into town was to get some of the stuff she needed for the night—mainly food. She might be leaving in the morning, but she still had to eat in the meantime. She didn’t know how he lived on the grand total of three items in his kitchen, but she wasn’t about to start smearing mayonnaise on saltine crackers.
Hope froze, her stomach lurching. Mental note—don’t think about gross food combinations if you want to be able to eat breakfast.
The woman at the counter looked up from the magazine she was idly paging through and gave a shriek fit to wake the dead. “Holy crap, Hope Moore, is that you?”
It took precious seconds to place the blonde, and by then she had hopped over the counter and was coming at Hope, arms spread for a hug. “Jessica Stroup?”
“The one and only.” She engulfed Hope in a hug that popped her back. “It’s been a million years! Why on earth are you back in this little shithole?”
She and Jessica had been on the cheerleading team back in high school, and the other woman had always had big dreams about heading west to L.A. and getting into modeling or acting. She was certainly beautiful enough for it. Hope smiled. “Visiting some old friends.”
Jessica peered around her, her blue eyes going wide when Daniel pushed through the door. “Old friends indeed. We’re going to have to go share a drink at the Joint and catch up. I know the bar isn’t as fancy as the places you must be used to in Dallas, but it’s what we have up here.” She grinned. “You look a little frazzled, and I know I’m talking a mile a minute, so I’m just going to write down my number and you can give me a call. We don’t have to drink. We can totally go for coffee or something. I’m off at three. Have you heard that Jules Rodriguez opened up a cat café down the street? Strangest concept I ever heard of, but it’s loads of fun to go in there and play with the cats while you chat and drink coffee.”
“Oh, ah, okay.”
“I’m doing it again.” She backed toward the counter, still smiling. “Go on and do your shopping. We can talk later.”
Hope had forgotten how overwhelming Jessica was—but in a good way. It was actually kind of nice to have an interaction in town that wasn’t fraught with undertones. She wasn’t ready to confide about the pregnancy, but a break later today from Daniel’s intense presence would be a good thing. Even though he didn’t say anything, she felt him at her back as she grabbed a cart and headed down the first aisle.
Glowering.
It took all of ten feet before her patience ran out. “You have something to say, so say it.”
He grabbed a can of soup off the shelf, seemingly at random. “I open doors, Hope. It’s what any man worth his salt in the South does. It has nothing to do with what you can or can’t do.” Another can of soup hit the basket of the cart hard enough to bounce.
So they were back to that. She should have known. Daniel could be like a dog with a bone when something bothered him. She took a deep breath and turned to face him. If they were going to fight about every little thing, this would never work.
If she was going to be honest, her pride was as much to blame as his stubbornness.
Hope took a deep breath and tried to take the high road. “I get overly defensive. I’m sorry.” She held up her hand. “I can’t promise I won’t snap at you again, but I’ll try to relax about the door stuff.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Just the door stuff?”
“Yes.” It came out sharper than she intended, but damn, could he give it a rest for a few minutes? She knew he wanted her in his house permanently, just like she knew he might have appeared to drop it, but he was just planning a different method of approach. She was so damn tired, and it was only beginning. Hope turned to the row of cereal boxes in front of her. “Now, I’m starving, and arguing with you is burning more calories than I’m comfortable with. We’ll talk when we get back to your place, and we’ll come up with some sort of game plan.” Staying in Devil’s Falls for the next nine months was out of the question. She could do her job in a limited capacity online, but she really needed to be in the office. If she up and told them she was moving back to a little town no one had ever heard of, she might as well quit on the spot.
No. Absolutely not. She might have put her life on hold waiting for Daniel when she was eighteen, but she most definitely wasn’t going to do it now because he was determined to pay penance by being with her.
She deserved better than that.
Both she and the baby did.
The look he gave her was downright indulgent. “Fair enough.”
She hated how suspicious she was of him, but it was hard not to be in their current circumstances. Daniel never gave up a fight unless he chose to walk away, and he hadn’t this time. That meant he was backing off only long enough to find a different approach to get her to do what he wanted.
They moved through the aisles without speaking, Hope pausing every few feet to consider what she felt like eating and Daniel throwing food into the cart seemingly at random.
She didn’t know what to make of that, so she focused on what sounded good. It was so strange. She normally loved oatmeal in the morning, but
when she picked up her favorite brand, she set it back without tossing it in the cart, that horrible nausea rising again. Instead, she ended up in the produce section, loading up on orange juice, fruit, and cucumbers. Through it all, Daniel shadowed her movements, a giant gray cloud warning of an impending storm.
Jessica managed to contain herself as they paid, but she slipped Hope her number with a smile. “It really would be nice to catch up.”
As much as part of her wanted to keep her distance from everything Devil’s Falls related, that goal wasn’t realistic. She was leaving. She had to leave.
Hope forced a smile. “I’ll call. I promise.” And she would. Even though she and Jessica had lost contact after the accident, they’d been really close in high school. It would be nice to have a friend who knew the whole history, someone she could talk to who would understand why she was hesitating to cut Daniel out of her life, even now, after everything they’d been through. Her friends in Dallas were wonderful, but they would, to a person, tell her to get rid of him.
He loaded the groceries into the bed of his truck in short, jerky movements that belied the calm expression on his face. In an effort to keep the peace a little while longer, she waited for him to hold the door open for her instead of climbing into the truck like she was perfectly capable of doing. It wasn’t until they were driving back out of town that he spoke. “My parents are going to want to know you’re back.”
“I’m not back.”
“Yes, darling, you are. At least for today.” He shot her a look. “You’re just pissed that I pushed too hard about it and you don’t want to give in, despite the fact that it’s what you want. If you go back to Dallas right now, it’s going to be a decision made out of spite.”