He narrowed his eyes. “Has it really been six years since I saw you?”
“Yeah.”
“You look the same, Trina. Exactly the same. Like time doesn’t move for you.”
“Oh, it moves.” She laughed. “And you’re just…bigger. The same but bigger.” Okay, Trina, you can shut up now. But of course she didn’t. “You’re like man-sized.”
And beautiful. All that adolescent promise had been fulfilled, and Dean was one of the handsomest men she’d ever seen.
Easily the handsomest one she’d ever seen naked.
Cowboys had way better bodies than accountants. It was fact.
“Anything else you want to say about my size?” He was laughing at her, so she scowled at him.
Still laughing, he crouched down in front of the brick fireplace, laid out some dried cedar and started a fire. His shirt slid up in the back and his pants dipped low, and she saw a small swatch of alabaster skin at the small of his back. She felt like a sixteen-year-old ogling a hot guy’s butt.
She had to look away, or she’d touch him. And she kind of thought that all the touching that was going to happen between them had happened last night.
By getting out of that bed, she’d given up her claim.
“I like your place,” she said.
“Thanks. It’s not much, but Holly let me have it cheap for the winter.”
She wondered why he needed it cheap, but was afraid to ask.
A star hung crooked on one of his cupboards. A dark tree sat on a table in the corner, dressed in tinsel and red bulbs.
“It’s Christmas Eve,” she blurted out. Somehow in the drama and fire of last night she’d forgotten what she’d walked into Holly’s to forget.
His blue eyes moved over her with intensity, as if he were checking her for injury. Blood, maybe from a wound. But all her wounds were internal. And he already knew about those.
“You okay?” he asked. For a moment the weight of the memory, of both their memories, was almost too much to bear.
This is why she’d stayed away for so long. Because it was all too grim. There was nowhere to turn here without running into her failure, the ghost of the scared, trapped kid she’d been. Unloved and left behind.
On the heels of that came the freezing anger. The urge to push herself away from anyone that could potentially hurt her.
“Trina?”
“It’s never a good night.” She turned the mug in her hands, letting the heat seep into her skin. Part of her felt like she’d never thawed from that night. She was still a frozen girl sitting outside in December, waiting for her mom to come home.
“You ever hear from your mom?” he asked.
“Yeah. She called once a few years ago.”
“Once?”
“I wasn’t interested in forgiving her. I mean…my phone rang one day and it was her, and I’m supposed to just forgive her?”
“No. But aren’t you curious?”
“She lives in Denver. She’s married to a dentist, has two step-kids. And she left me. She left me behind like I didn’t matter. So I figure I got all the pertinent details.”
“Oh my God, Trina—”
“It’s fine,” she said. Though it wasn’t. Every other day of the year she barely thought about it, but on Christmas Eve, it stung. Hard. And Christmas Eve back here… God, what had she been thinking?
She stood, unable to sit. The urge to move, to leave, was hard to resist.
It was so, so hard to stay.
“Why are we here?” The question sprang from some dark place. A dark place she’d been able to forget about the last few years. She’d buried it under work, endless work. And distance. Miles of it.
“Well, I live here.” He shot her that cocky grin that made her want to climb inside his lap, his memories, into every joke he had. “And last night you wanted to get laid.”
"No, I mean, how are we both here? In Dusk Falls? We promised, remember? That we'd never come back?”
“I remember.” He shrugged. Set his coffee down. Picked it back up. Odd, he seemed nervous. Dean was never nervous. "I don't know, Trina. But we were kids and I think maybe some places are hard to avoid."
"Right.” The bitterness, the guilt she felt over her choice, it would not be contained and came out as a terrible, rough laugh. "This place shouldn't be one of them. It's nothing but bad memories for both of us."
"Not all bad.” He waggled his eyebrows and tilted his head toward the bed.
She laughed, happy to jump onto the raft of easier thoughts. "Not all bad. A little foggy, maybe."
"You only have yourself to blame. The shots were your idea.”
"No way," she cried. She was not a shot kind of girl. She was a half a white-wine spritzer at a firm party kind of girl.
"Hand to God, you wanted tequila." He leaned back against the counter. "So, what are you doing back here? Last night you didn't say.”
No. Last night she’d avoided the issue.
“New job," she hedged.
“Around here?” His happiness actually made her hurt. “I thought when you left for law school in California, we lost you forever.”
“I couldn’t turn it down.”
Tell him. Tell him. He’s going to find out sooner or later.
“Well, I for one am happy to see you.”
“Yeah.” She smiled at him over the edge of her mug. “You made that clear last night.”
She’d forgotten one of the most adorable things about Dean. He blushed. Bright pink. Big burly man blushing like that, it was enough to make her take her pants off again.
“When did you move back here?” she asked.
“To my palace above a bar?” He spread his arms out wide.
“No, Dusk Falls. Last I heard you were engaged and living near Laramie.”
“We broke it off before the wedding. I think she caught on that I was more interested in pissing off my dad than I was in actually being married. So we split—or rather, she split. And last year I...ah…I got a job offer I couldn’t refuse.”
“Really? You ramrodding somewhere?”
“Yeah.” He said it casually. But she knew that was all he’d ever wanted, and his family had sold much of their herd and acreage years ago. But still, he’d gone to school and graduated top of his class in land management, despite the narrowing field.
He’d gotten what he wanted, what he’d worked hard for, what his father both disdained and never thought he could do. He got it.
And that wasn’t easy in his world. In any world.
She put her mug down on the edge of a bookshelf and crossed the room to him, like he was gravity and she was a stone at the top of a hill.
He turned slightly to face her when she came to stand beside him. Both their hips pressed against the counter. Their bodies cupped the air between them. While the cold wind blew against the window, she was safe and warm. With Dean. The world could fall away around them. As long as she had this moment. This now.
“Hey,” he said, smiling at her.
“Hey.” She smiled back.
He ran a finger down her nose. “I remember you.” The fondness in his voice made her feel so special, so wanted. So cared for.
No person had ever made her feel this way.
It was like taking a first hit of something very addictive.
“You are vaguely familiar to me, too.”
They stood so close that when she took a breath, their bellies touched. Her knee brushed the inside of his leg. His breath in her mouth tasted like coffee.
It was nearly, so very nearly, too much. And she stood there in this wide puddle of longing and desire and melancholy and happiness and pride and she tried to handle it all. She wasn’t good at that and she started erecting sandbag walls and levees, drainage ditches to divert the feelings she didn’t know how to handle.
"You angling for more hot monkey sex?"
"The memories are a bit hazy. They could use some clarification." She ran her hand over his chest, the waf
fle print of his shirt both rough and soft against her palm. "I'm so glad for you," she whispered. Inexplicably, she felt tears in her throat. "That you're doing exactly what you wanted to do. That you're happy."
"And what about you?" he asked. "Are you doing exactly what you want to do?"
"At this minute?” She got lost in the blue of his eyes. "Yes."
“I missed you, Trina,” he breathed. “A lot. It’s weird going years without a best friend.”
Instead of answering him, she stood on tiptoe to press a kiss to his lips. Chaste, nearly. Friendly, sort of. It was a kiss with a promise, an edge. And they both leaned hard on that edge, as if savoring it.
Because this will never happen again. Not ever.
It was funny how touching Dean, kissing him, felt both entirely new and like she’d been doing it for years. It was a strange kind of magic, the stretch and pull of time. The quality of her fantasies given heft and weight. A wild sense of real.
Tell him. You need to tell him.
And she would. In a minute. When she'd gotten her fill of this kiss. This moment.
Her hand slid up from the edge of his denim onto the warm bare skin under the hem of his shirt. It was so soft. So tender. He worked day in, day out in the weather, but that little patch of skin, right where his spine curved and dipped, that was hidden skin. Secret skin.
My skin.
His hand brushed her cheek, slid into her hair. His fingers were thick with calluses and her hair got caught and pulled. It stung. Just enough. Just right.
“Last night.” He was looking at her, watching her so hard, she could feel his eyes on her and she didn’t quite have the guts to look at him. To see him. Let him see her. “I never thought I would see you again. And you walked into that bar…”
“I know,” she sighed.
"No," he told her. "You don't. Not really."
His words seemed to imply too much and she didn't want to press him further, or try to figure it out, because they were running out of time.
She pressed her face to his wide chest. Breathing in the scent of him, of sweat and sex, but under that he smelled like warm sheets and cold wind. Winter and fire, all together. And somehow, under that, pencil lead.
He always smelled like pencil lead.
The familiarity of it, of him, broke her. She was like that dried cedar, only needing a spark—and he was exactly the right spark. She put her fingers in his hair, clenched the silky black strands in her fist and pulled him down to kiss her.
It was like last night all over again. Friends to lovers in no time. She was breathing hard into his mouth, standing up on her toes. Running her hands over as much of his body as she could touch, she cataloged all his textures: soft, silky, rough, sharp. He had scars on his forearms from countless run-ins with barbed wire and scared calves, and for some reason she couldn’t leave those scars alone.
They were so entirely him.
Groaning, he lifted her by her waist and spun, shoving her against the plate drying rack. She pushed it into the sink. Consumed by his mouth, by his heat, she didn’t even flinch when something broke. He pulled her sweater up and over her head, his lips leaving hers for the barest second before he was back, licking into her mouth, tasting her like he’d tasted her last night. Completely.
There was no hiding from him like this. He meant to see and taste and touch all of her. And she'd never in her life had sex with someone like him. No restraint, no careful apologies. Just an impossible and delicious instinct.
She pulled him hard against her, until their teeth knocked together. Until they couldn’t breathe. And she didn’t want to. Because they would do this, one more time, and then she had to tell him. She had to.
His hands lifted to her breasts, holding them gently in rough palms, and she loved it. For years the moment when she took off her shirt and her bra was always a loaded moment.
Ha! She always thought. You got suckered by a push-up bra.
But Dean didn’t even pause. Didn’t seem to even notice. They were breasts and they were in his hands and that was all he needed. All he wanted. She arched against him. Wanting more. Wanting every opposing force inside of him. He growled and kissed her harder, touched her harder.
“More,” she breathed, and she fumbled with his belt, pushing past leather and denim to hold him in her hand. Hot and hard and soft.
Big, really.
That part from last night was not hazy. And between her legs, she throbbed. Empty.
“Trina,” he breathed, and he pulled back, just a little. He wanted her to look at him, look him in the eyes, and that was something she didn't like. It was an intimacy she never allowed another person. "Look at me."
“No,” she said. If she couldn’t do it with other men, she certainly couldn’t do it with Dean. Other women had other limits. This was hers. She’d do anything with him, she just wouldn’t look at him while she did it.
“Hey,” he whispered. “Trina. It’s just me.”
Oh God, that was a stupid thing to say. Honestly. He wasn’t just anything.
He stepped back, creating a small slice of cool air between their bodies. His hands fell from her body.
“Is that blackmail?” she asked.
“If that’s how you want to think about it, sure,” he said. He was smiling. Teasing her, because he knew this was hard for her.
“Fine,” she muttered, putting as much screw you in her gaze as she could.
“Oh girl, if you’re trying to scare me off with that look, you need to come up with something new.” His hands when they swept up over her skin had new urgency. He touched her harder. Rougher.
A log fell in the fire and the sparks filled the air. Her body.
She fell right into his blue eyes and touched him, holding him firmly, stroking him, until his hips started to move in counterpoint to her hand.
The connection between them was nearly painful and she wanted so badly to end it. To look away. And like he knew, he grabbed her chin in his rough-gentle hands and held her still.
She leaned her head back, her hand still working him, until she was resting back against the cupboard. His fingers touched the seam of her jeans between her legs, and she twitched as if touched by electricity. He did it again, back and forth, his fingers pressing harder against that seam that ran right between her legs. She jerked and twitched, caught her lip between her teeth, but she did not—could not—look away.
He yanked open the button of her jeans, the zipper half unzipping with the force of his tug. She groaned. Whimpered because she liked that so much.
"Get a condom," she breathed.
“No, like this,” he told her, his eyes pinning her to the wall.
“But—”
“We got time. Lots of time.”
She didn’t have the courage to tell him they didn’t. And she didn’t have the will to tell him the truth now. So she let it go. Let everything go. She was nothing but bone and blood and desire in his hands.
He slipped his hand down over her stomach, between her jeans and her skin, right to the heart of her. The heat and wet. Her legs twitched and her eyes closed.
“Open your eyes, Trina,” he breathed, and she did what he asked. It did not occur to her not to. Not for a minute. Even though she knew it would hurt in the end. Because these hands that pulled her closer, impossibly closer, they would push her away.
Bright color filled his cheeks and he was breathing hard through his mouth. His eyes were the bluest things she’d ever seen.
He was wet now, she was infinitely so.
He wrapped a hand around the back of her neck and pulled her up to him, kissing her. Breathing into her mouth. Holding her there, long after the kiss stopped.
“I want you to come,” he said against her lips.
The words made everything worse and better. “Yes…yes.” She sighed, sucking his lip into her mouth. Nipping him with her teeth.
His finger slipped inside of her and she jerked, pushing herself against him. Hard and hard
again. Another finger and she was breaking apart.
“There we go,” he breathed, and his voice in her ear lit the match on everything, and she exploded against him. He grabbed her wrist, holding her hand. He lifted it and licked her palm and then put her hand back against him, tighter this time. So tight she thought she might hurt him, but then he shuddered and groaned and dropped his head against hers. Faster, harder.
She felt entirely too far away from him, from this pleasure he was feeling. She slipped off the kitchen counter and fell onto her knees.
This. This was what she wanted.
“Trina—”
“Let me taste you again,” she said and slipped him into her mouth. She reveled in him, his texture and taste. He was hot and hard, salty and sweet. Earthy. Perfect.
His fingers tangled in her hair and he groaned, falling back against the counter. And he was at her command. Her mercy.
She licked and stroked, listening to him, feeling him. Finding out all the things he liked by collecting all the data she could glean. He groaned and whispered, nonsense about how good she felt. How beautiful she was.
“Yes, please… Trina,” he cried out. He tried to push her away, the gentleman, but she stayed where she was, her hands around his thighs, and he came in her mouth.
When it was over, he pulled her away and up into his arms, holding her hard between his chest and the cupboards. For long moments the only thing she heard was their breathing and the pounding of her heart. And, distantly, the pounding of his.
But then he was laughing, soft little breaths against her hair. A rumble under her cheek. “Why in the world haven’t we been doing that all along?” he asked. “Like every minute in high school?”
“You were sort of busy.”
“No way. Not too busy for this.”
“Yeah.” She smiled at him. Replete and happy. “Doing this with other girls.”
That blush again. Really. It was too much on him. “Well, you were busy saving the world.”
“Some of us just have higher callings, I guess,” she said with a grin. Slowly, they disengaged from each other. They both shuddered and twitched, rocked by the end of the unexpected storm.
“Thank you,” he breathed, kissing her hands. Her cheeks.
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