by Maisey Yates
This place. This ranch. The thing that was the ultimate realization of his dream. He had put that off; he had buried it deep, just as he had done with everything else. She could see that now. He had always seemed to her like a man who didn’t worry much about what anyone thought. A man who seemed supremely unbothered in general by life. But she knew now that wasn’t the case. He cared. He cared so much about so many things.
But it was painful. And that was why he chose to smile instead.
She had felt like she had known him before he had told her this, but it was different now. It truly was. Because now all those separate little pieces of him had come together. This one thread weaving into the complete picture of Luke Hollister. Just another mystery about the man solved. But it had opened up so much more.
Her image of him had shifted. She didn’t just see the man standing in front of her, but the boy he’d been. Grieving. Guilty. Alone. Moving hours away, taking a chance on a job. Leaving his home. It made all that ease he possessed seem so much stronger. So much deeper. Because she knew now that it had come from hardship, from pain she’d never even imagined.
“You came to Gold Valley all alone,” she said. “And you were sixteen.”
“Yes. I lied about my age, but I think Quinn suspected it. And obviously I don’t claim to be older than I am now, so he’s certainly figured it out at this point. He let me stay on the property... He never asked me why I came there. But I think he recognized the loss in me. Because he experienced loss himself. Sometimes I think you see that in each other.”
“Do you?”
His eyes connected with hers. “I think we see it in each other, don’t you?”
The words landed precisely in her heart, made it throb. “You can hardly compare my loss to yours.”
“Yes I can,” he said. “I can’t imagine having a twin sister pull away from you like that. Hell, I don’t have any siblings. When my mother died, it left just me. So I went and I made another family. But the loss is still there. You have friends, you have a life, you have a close relationship with your parents, but it doesn’t mean the loss of Vanessa isn’t still there.”
She looked away, twisting her hands together. “I suppose so.”
“We have a lot of things in us that are different,” he said, reaching out, his thumb brushing against her cheek. “But I think we have some of that same pain.”
She reached up and placed her hand over his, encouraged him to flatten his palm over her cheek. “We make each other feel some of the same pleasure, too,” she said softly.
She was entranced by that thought. That for all their differences—his age, his experience, his seemingly easygoing attitude compared to her—that at their core there was something that the other recognized. And maybe that was where they ignited. All those other things struck the sparks, but that right there was the fuel. It was what made it undeniable. It was what made it endless.
“I think that might be so.”
“Look at this place,” she said, turning around in a circle, looking around the room. “I bet you anything that your mother would be so happy to know that you have it.”
He took a deep breath, and she could see that it was cutting into him. That it was painful. “I think she would. I think if there had been a time when she could have figured out a way to get on top of that demon that was always on her back, this is the kind of place she would’ve wanted. I think it’s the right place.”
“For your roots,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” he responded.
He took hold of her hand and the two of them walked out of the house, back out to the driveway. It was starting to get dark now, twilight settling over the tops of the mountains, the inky black at the center of the sky bleeding down to the tops of the pines.
She didn’t want tonight to end. Didn’t want this time to end. She wanted to be here with him, on the verge of this new step he was taking. Now that she knew how big this was for him. How much it meant.
More selfishly, she wanted him to remember her being in that house. Wanted him to remember her standing in the driveway. Wanted him to remember her down by the river, and in every other piece of the land.
“Can you show me the barn?” she asked.
He looked over at her, his expression inscrutable in the dim light. “Sure.”
He opened up his truck, retrieved a battery-powered lantern from the back, twisting the knob and illuminating the gravel around them, a shaft of light on part of his face. He was so beautiful she ached.
She wanted him. Suddenly, so very much, that she felt desperate for it. For him.
He took her hand and started to lead her toward the field. “Wait,” she said. “I’m cold.”
“I have a blanket in the truck,” he said.
She nodded and he reached in and grabbed it, handing it to her. She wrapped it around her shoulders, a plan and a shiver winding through her as he gripped her hand and led her through the field, toward the edge of the trees where the old barn stood.
It was old and rickety, probably past the point of repair. This would most likely have to be demolished to make room for a new structure. One that didn’t have large gaps in the siding that let in the cold night air, and the same gaps in the ceiling that revealed a smattering of stars coming forward, a light in the darkness.
The ground was dusty, but dry, and there was a small amount of hay spread out around them. There was a pile of it in the corner, too, and she had a feeling that it was probably worse for wear from the weather that no doubt got in through the cracks.
“I think this will do,” he said.
Olivia’s heart was pounding hard. And she tightened her hold on the blanket and looked from Luke to the floor of the barn. Yes. It would do perfectly. For tonight. Tonight with him.
She felt... It was an amazing thing. Feeling like she knew him like this. In the house, he had laid bare his soul to her. He had told her things about himself that nobody knew. They had traded that information, as she had given hers to him. Luke Hollister was the only man on earth who knew how she felt about Vanessa. Who knew the guilt she carried and knew the burden that she felt to be the good one. To be the one that never caused any trouble. To be the one that her parents could count on. She knew that his smile was a mask for loss. For pain. That the man who seemed like he didn’t care much about anything, cared hell of a lot about everything. That his loyalty to the Dodge family came from a place of knowing what family meant. Of how painful losing family could be.
And it was too cold to skinny-dip. Otherwise, she had half a mind to drag him down to the creek, so that she could do something to express the ways in which she felt changed. By him. By this. So that she could strip off her clothes in front of the whole world and declare that connection. Those feelings.
Feelings that were raw, tender and frightening. The kinds of feelings that she had always tried to choke out.
And it might be a little cold in this barn, too, but she knew what she wanted. Knew that after their conversation, after the confession that he had given to her, that no one else on earth had, she wanted to give him something that no one else had ever had of her.
She unwrapped the blanket from her shoulders and laid it across the floor. He turned away from where he was looking in the barn and gave her a questioning glance.
Heart thundering heavily, she kicked off her boots, and then undid the buttons on her coat.
“Olivia?”
“Let me,” she said.
She pulled her top up over her head and threw it down onto the floor, goose bumps breaking out over her skin as the cold washed over her. Then she undid her jeans, pushed them down her legs before she could lose her nerve. And in one quick breath she did the same to her panties, leaving herself standing there naked in the dimness, a bit of the lantern light shining over her.
She could see a hungry glittering in Luke’s
eyes and it didn’t shock her. It made her feel good. Made her feel excited.
“I want you,” she said.
“You said you were cold.”
“Not anymore.”
And it was like a clap of thunder had sounded. Like the truth of it all was suddenly so bright, so clear.
She loved him. She loved him with everything she was. With everything she ever would be.
She had spent a lot of years trying not to. She had spent a lot of years making sure he never got close enough for those feelings inside of her to have a chance to turn into this. Somehow, some part of her must have known that all it would ever take was the slightest bit of water on that seed, and it would grow into a tree that would be so large and so strong it could never be shaken, could never be uprooted.
That part of her had been wise. Wise and intuitive.
Because here she was, having slept with him once, and totally and permanently in love with him.
She wasn’t going to say that though. She was just going to show him.
“You want me now?” he asked, a hint of that amused smile on his face, but not the whole thing. As if he couldn’t quite force it out.
Always. “Right here,” she said. “Right now.”
She almost smiled because that very confident, sex kitten voice didn’t feel like her. But it did, too. In some ways. Because he made her feel like she could reach new parts of herself. Like she was stretching out inside of herself for the first time and taking up all the space she could, instead of shoving herself into one corner.
She closed the distance between them and placed her palm on his cheek, stretching up on her toes, pressing her naked body against his entirely clothed one as she kissed him.
It was so strange, kissing him while she knew she loved him. While she knew she was in love with Luke Hollister with everything in her.
It made her want to cry. But she was going to try to keep it all together.
She’d never been in love before. That thought went through her like a lance through her stomach. That this was a first for her in so many ways, regardless of what she had imagined before.
This was love. This was hope for the future, a pain in her heart, her chest, her lungs, coming together with desires in her body. This was honesty. It was two people who connected on every level. Skin to skin, soul to soul.
She had thought that she could have a relationship that cherry-picked those things, that she could care and call it love, that she could hold on to secrets and call it love. That she could keep her control and call it love. But Luke had shown her that for her at least, for them, that wasn’t enough. She wanted to be closer. She wanted to strip everything that was between them away so that they could connect. This thing that had frightened her for so long... Suddenly, it wasn’t enough. Suddenly, it wasn’t scary. It was necessary.
The buttons on his shirt abraded her nipples as she arched against him. His large, rough hand moved to cup her butt as he drew her up against him.
When she pulled away, she examined his expression. It was raw, almost uncivilized. She liked him like that. Liked that she—Olivia Logan, the consummate civilized lady—could reduce him to this.
And that he could reduce her, too. To a creature of need and desire rather than one of logic and control.
But then, that was the beauty of this. This all-encompassing feeling that she was choosing it over control. That she chose it above everything. Because it was everything and so was he. Because it was better. Because the risk was worth the potential reward.
The present was so blindingly beautiful she didn’t have to live for a hypothetical future. The journey was so amazing she didn’t have to obsess about the destination.
She unbuttoned the top two buttons on his shirt, kissed his throat, down lower. Then she undid the next button and the next. Slowly, she pressed her hand beneath the fabric of his shirt, feeling his hot skin, his chest hair, his muscles. He was so beautiful. So undeniably, incredibly masculine.
From the solidity of his frame to the deep, rumbling sound he made when she kissed him at the hollow of his throat.
She finished unbuttoning his shirt, lowering herself down with each button as she went, and then finally came to kneel in front of him. Butterflies jostled around in her stomach as she reached up and undid the button on his jeans. She could see that most masculine part of him outlined to perfection there beneath the denim. She knew what he looked like already, had already had him inside of her once. But not like this. She was afraid she would do it wrong. That she wouldn’t be anywhere near as good as the girl he’d been with in the bathroom at the saloon. That she wouldn’t be as good as any of the women he’d been with at all.
But none of those women knew about his past. None of them knew where he had come from. She did. On some level, that had to matter.
She lowered the zipper slowly, her heart pounding in her throat as she drew the fabric down, revealing his arousal to her gaze.
“Olivia...” His name on her lips was a warning, but it was one that she wasn’t going to heed. After all, she was intending exactly what he suspected she was.
She had a feeling he didn’t realize that. But she was.
She curved her fingers around his length, and then leaned forward, tasting him tentatively.
She had never imagined herself doing this. Had never imagined wanting to. But with him it hadn’t even been much of a consideration. She just wanted to make him feel good. And she wanted...
She wanted him to remember her, to remember this. However many women came after her, she wanted him to remember her most of all.
This wasn’t a loss of control. It never really had been. This was her, a woman of supreme control, deciding to surrender to something wholeheartedly.
Olivia was the kind of person who got exactly what she set her mind to. And this would be no different.
She shifted, tightening her hold on him, and taking more of him into her mouth. And then she was lost. In the feral sounds that he made as she pleasured him with her mouth, in the flavor of him on her tongue, in the fact that she felt so connected to him. But nothing felt shocking or dirty about what was happening between them. It felt good. It felt right.
And it turned her on. That she could make him feel like this. She could make a man like him shake.
He bucked his hips and a wave of pleasure washed over her. When she realized just how close he was to losing his control. When she realized just how efficiently she had brought him to the brink. It reminded her of the way he had done the same to her in his truck that first night. When a kiss and a little bit of intimate contact had made her lose herself completely. Because the pull between them was so strong. Because the chemistry was so real.
“Olivia,” he rasped, his voice completely frayed.
“Shhh,” she said, “I’m enjoying myself.” She took him in deeper, pleasure bursting through her like a firework, popping along her veins. Her breasts felt heavy, an ache growing, deepening inside of her.
“This has to stop now.” He grabbed hold of her shoulders and lifted her up, and no amount of protest could stop him. “I need you. Not just this. You. All of you. I need to be in you, Liv. So deep. So deep I can’t see straight. So deep I can’t think anymore.” Then he picked her up, grabbing hold of both thighs and wrapping her legs around his waist as he brought her down on the blanket, settling himself between her thighs. He kissed her deeply, rocking his slick erection against that place where she was wet and needy for him.
She gasped, those simple motions nearly bringing her to the brink.
“Gotta get a condom,” he said, pressing his lips against her neck as he contorted, reaching into his back pocket and producing his wallet. “I was hoping,” he said, his tone apologetic as he pulled out the condom. “Just so you know this is in there because I was hoping this would happen with you. Not anyone else.”
&nbs
p; A smile curved her lips upward. “I know,” she said, lacing her fingers through his hair and kissing his chin, loving the way it prickled beneath her lips.
“Do you?”
She did. She really did. Because if there was one thing she was confident in now it was that she had him. Right now, she had all of him.
“I do.”
She took the packet from him and tore it open, her fingers shaking as she struggled to figure out which side of the protection went up, and once she figured it out she placed it over the head of his arousal and began to roll it down over his length.
She wanted to do this. Wanted to be an active participant in all of it. She might not have experience, but she had desire in spades.
She was going to make sure it counted for something.
He rocked his hips backward, then pressed the head of him against the entrance to her body, teasing her with a slight push forward and a pull away.
It shocked her how different it felt this time. How ready she was for him. How it didn’t hurt.
No, this time, she thought she would die if she didn’t have him.
When he finally did join himself to her, there was none of the tearing pain that she had felt the first time. It was just... Perfect. Like being home. It might not be being good, but whatever it was it was what she wanted to be. This woman who had Luke Hollister, at least for now, body and soul.
That was the woman she wanted to be. Hers. His.
This wasn’t about anyone else. Not about performing or pleasing anyone but each other.
She closed her eyes and rode on a wave of satisfaction as her orgasm crashed through her, as he followed closely behind. She clung to him after, shaking and sweating, feeling absolutely and completely undone by what had passed between them.
When it was over, Luke rolled to his side and pulled her up against him, and she laid her head on his chest, taking in the feeling of his heart beating against her cheek, his skin beaded with sweat beneath where she had rested her palm. She liked that, too, and she would have said she didn’t.