Smooth-Talking Cowboy

by Maisey Yates

  She arched against him, wrapping slim legs around his hips, her heels digging in his lower back, urging him on.

  He looked down at her and his heart stopped. She had her head thrown back, moving side to side, her eyes closed. She bit her lip, the color rising higher in her cheeks. He could see her pleasure. See her desire.

  She was wild. His Olivia. Undone. For him.

  Any control he thought to stake claim on was gone now. He had no more finesse. No more measure left in his thrusts. All he could do was desperately chase the release that was snarling at him from deep inside. Demanding satisfaction.

  He gripped her hips, moving hard inside of her, meeting her every hip flex with a hard, decisive thrust of his own. Her fingernails dug into his skin, and he welcomed it. Welcomed any sense of discomfort that might take the edge off this pleasure. Because the pleasure was what might kill him. Was what might make it impossible to go back to life the way it had been.

  This life that had been fine. At least until Olivia had shown him there could be more. Until Olivia had become his reason for breathing.

  She curved her face into his neck, her internal muscles pulsing around him as she found her release, and then he found his own. Was blinded by it. Deaf to everything but the roaring in his ears and the sound of his own heart thundering like a spooked horse inside of his chest.

  And Olivia was whispering words in his ears. Soft words. Sweet words. Words he hadn’t heard since he was a child.

  Words no one had ever spoken to him. But he couldn’t translate it. All he could do was feel. Like a battering ram in his chest, trying to break out.

  And suddenly, all the words ordered themselves in his mind, and he was able to understand.

  Just in time for her to press her lips to his cheek, one last sweet whisper in his ear.

  “Luke. I love you, Luke.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  SHE HADN’T MEANT to say it. She had been overwhelmed by her feelings, completely swept away on a tide of pleasure and something so much deeper. She hadn’t been able to hold it inside. Not anymore. She loved him. Really, and truly. The kind that made her not care if there was heartbreak on the other side. The kind that made her reckless.

  She hadn’t gone skinny-dipping with her sister and her friends, because it hadn’t mattered to her. That had seemed silly. Certainly not worth risking her pride, worth risking getting caught, being humiliated. But this was worth that. It was worth all that and more. Luke was. He was everything. And if she didn’t have him she was going to break apart. If she didn’t have him, then the rest of it didn’t matter. Whether or not she was good, whether she was bad.

  She wouldn’t have him. And that was the only thing that mattered right now.

  She had insulated herself with Bennett. Had sought to use him as this thing to keep her in line, to complete her life. An asset to all of her good behavior. To give herself the life her parents wanted her to have.

  The cottage, not the farmhouse.

  She didn’t want it anymore.

  She didn’t want an asset. She didn’t want a life that looked like that perfect image that had lived in her head for so long. Didn’t want that golden retriever. Not if she didn’t also have Luke. Everything but Luke was negotiable.

  It hit her then, for the very first time, that everything was negotiable but love.

  The rest... Well, the rest would have to cover itself.

  “I love you,” she said again.

  “Olivia,” he said, that firm, decisive tone that he was using just because he was about to explain to her how things work. That was what Luke did. He teased her, and then he took on that tone that told her he was going to tell her all about how the world worked.

  She didn’t want to hear how Luke Hollister thought the world worked. Didn’t want to hear how he thought love might work, not when she had a feeling that the two of them were going to disagree.

  “Don’t tell me that I can’t,” she said. “Don’t tell me that I don’t. Luke...” She stood up, naked, and really not caring. Not for the first time. She was naked, and she wasn’t embarrassed. Naked, and not ashamed. “I... Made a lot of mistakes in my relationship with my sister. Or maybe I didn’t. Maybe what I did was the nicest thing I could have done. I don’t know the answer to that. But I did what I did because I loved her. I loved her, and I wanted her to be safe. So I made the best decision that I could. But everything went to hell after that. And I have spent so many years since trying to make up for that. Trying to be the daughter my parents needed. Or that I thought they needed.” She swallowed hard. “I was keeping myself safe that way. So many excuses that I used as armor. And I don’t know what the future holds now. I don’t know if all this is going to crumble around me or if it will upset my parents. I don’t have a lot of answers. And I know that I love you. And that I might get hurt because of it. But I wouldn’t change it. Because loving you...”

  She looked down at her fingers, locked them together, twisted them. “Loving you wrenched me open.” She looked up at him. “I was closed off for so many years. I had this one thing in mind. To be good. And that would make me happy. And it would make everyone around me happy. I don’t feel... I don’t feel happy right now. I’m terrified. I’m terrified and my chest hurts and everything feels impossible. But it’s me. It’s me unafraid. Of making mistakes. It’s me learning to look outside of myself. That’s the funniest thing I’ve realized. In my effort to be everything my parents wanted me to be, I used other people. I used Bennett. And I didn’t mean to. I wanted him to make my dreams come true. I wanted him to make me the person that I saw myself being. I didn’t care what he wanted. Not really. It was all about me. At the heart of it. But last night I wanted to argue with you when you sent me home, because I wanted to be with you. But I wanted to give you what you needed more. I’ve never experienced anything like that. Because I’ve never been in love before. I told you that. I don’t love Bennett. I never did. I realized last night that I love you. And... Oh, I ran from that hard for so long, Luke.”

  He was staring at her, not saying anything, a muscle in his jaw jumping, his entire demeanor tense. He was naked, lying there on her bed, that impossibly feminine bed that was made of lace and frills, with that hard, muscular man lying across it, all angles and lines and delectable masculinity. He didn’t fit. And yet he fit. Wonderfully, and possibly perfectly. And he was worth this. Worth this risk. Worth this moment where everything might fall to pieces. Where she reached inside of herself, inside those new, recently invigorated places that wanted and needed more.

  “When Bennett asked to have me back, he said that he didn’t love me. And that was when I realized that the life in my head wasn’t enough. It was my wake-up call. I thought that it could be. I thought it would be. I thought I could love that idea enough that I could love Bennett, too. That he could love me. But it doesn’t work like that. I’m learning... And all I keep thinking is that... I was right to be afraid of this. Luke, this is bigger than I could have ever imagined. It’s tearing me up inside. I was right to be afraid of you. I was. I was protecting myself with Bennett, protecting myself from another loss, another potential heartbreak. Hiding behind this idea that I needed to be good, because what good really means is safe.” She swallowed hard. “I don’t want to be safe anymore. At least, not above all else. I can’t be. Not when I know that none of it matters if I don’t have you. If I don’t have your love.”

  He wasn’t saying anything. He was just staring at her. There was no smart-ass smile. There was no easy grin. There was nothing. Nothing but a hard stare that she couldn’t decode. An expression that looked nothing like the Luke that she knew. And nothing like the vulnerable boy she had imagined him being twenty years ago.

  This was hard. It was merciless. It was blank and cold.

  And it terrified her.

  “Olivia... I told you what this was.”

  “
I don’t care,” she said. “Because we both lied to each other for years. Do you think that you like picking on me because you’re an overgrown child? I don’t believe that. I just don’t. I think that you pick on me because you care about me. Because you love me. Because you’ve always wanted me, no matter what either of us think. It’s bigger than us. And our plans. I’m pretty sure it always has been.”

  “I can’t,” he said.

  “You can’t or you won’t?” she insisted.

  “It doesn’t matter which,” he said.

  “Yes it does. If you can’t love me... If this is just sex and years of the two of us wanting sex with each other, and then us finally having it the minute that we got close enough for it to happen... I could walk away from that. I walked away from Bennett when he said he didn’t love me. I could walk away from you, too. But I think you do love me. And I think you could give a life with me a chance. I think we could love each other. Real, serious love. Maybe not safe love. But real love. And that... That matters. That’s everything.”

  He swallowed hard, a muscle in his throat working. And she could see that he was deciding what to say. Luke, who prided himself on his honesty. Who said nothing when he couldn’t say the truth, who fell back on sarcasm when the truth was too heavy.

  He got up off the bed and began to collect his clothes.

  “Luke,” she said. “You have to say something.”

  He looked over at her, his eyes holding a deep resolve she didn’t recognize. “I don’t, kiddo,” he said.

  He continued to collect his clothes, and got dressed. She was too numb to take all that in. To register what was happening exactly. It was surreal. It was painful.

  It was like the world was falling apart in front of her with each new piece of clothing Luke Hollister put on his body. He pulled his jeans up and a piece of her was stripped away. His shirt. Socks and boots. And that hat. That cowboy hat that made her feel so fluttery inside. Until he looked just as he had when he’d walked into the saloon tonight. Until he was put back together, and she was left ragged and destroyed. Naked in every way that counted.

  “Luke,” she said, “tell me that you don’t love me.”

  He just looked at her with those green eyes. So flat and desolate and unreadable. Then he walked out of her bedroom.

  Olivia sat there for a moment, stunned. Then she rallied. Scrambling up and moving after him, into the living room. She caught him just as he put his hand on the front door.

  “Luke Hollister,” she said, the words coming out as frayed and shaky as she felt. “As I live and breathe, if you don’t give me an answer right now then you’re nothing but a coward.”

  “The answer doesn’t matter,” he said. “Because it wouldn’t be enough either way.”

  He opened the front door and started to walk out.

  “Answer me,” she screamed, past the point of caring about pride, past the point of caring about anything but this. But him. “You owe me a fucking explanation.”

  She had never said that word in her entire life. But she would scream it a thousand times now if it would make him stop.

  Then his eyes connected with hers, and she felt it like a blow. “I don’t love you.” Then he walked out the door and closed it behind him.

  And Olivia Logan, who had once suffered a horrible breakup on a public street on Christmas Eve and hadn’t let it destroy her, fell to her knees in the dark quiet of her house and wept as if she would never stop.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  LUKE DIDN’T KNOW how many shots of whiskey it took for a man to die of alcohol poisoning.

  He was tempted to find out.

  He grunted. Even in his whiskey-addled mind he knew that wasn’t an acceptable line of thinking, even if it wasn’t sincere. Even if it was just in his mind.

  He had loved someone who had drowned her life away like that, and he didn’t intend to do that.

  But for the first time he could understand the hopelessness. The feeling that you would be in a dark tunnel for the rest of your life with no end, so what was the damned point of taking the next breath.

  As he lay there on the floor by his bed—because beds were for people who weren’t horrible human beings, and the floor was for liars—he wondered if he had been in that tunnel all of his life, and had emerged for just a moment the first time Olivia Logan’s lips had touched his. Or maybe that day when he had pulled over and helped her with that flat tire.

  Maybe then.

  Maybe that was the first time he had seen the sun in twenty years and now he had simply been plunged back into darkness.

  What a fine time to realize it. What a fine time to be alive.

  He would rather be unconscious.

  He rolled over to his side, pressing the heel of his palm against his pounding forehead.

  She had made him lie to her. He didn’t lie Not directly. Not like that. He prided himself on being a pretty up-front guy.

  But he had never cared enough about anyone, or anything, to lie. Except for Olivia, apparently.

  Because it had kind of been a lie when the two of them had tried to make Bennett jealous. Except so much of it had been the truth since he had wanted to be with her, even then.

  But the words he’d spoken to her before he had walked out of her house had been an outright lie. A damned lie straight out of hell. He loved her.

  He had loved her for... God knew how long. Months. Years.

  But it wasn’t enough. That was the problem.

  And she’d said that him not loving her would be the one thing that would make her walk away from him, so he’d said he didn’t, even though it wasn’t true.

  Even though when those words, those three simple words, had fallen from her lips, it was like the whole world had lit up. Like he suddenly saw her, and himself, and their feelings for each other exactly as they were for the first time.

  It still wasn’t enough.

  Because in the end love didn’t change a damn thing, and he knew it. It couldn’t keep someone with you when they decided they didn’t want to be there. It couldn’t erase that terrible darkness that had lived inside of his mother. His love wasn’t enough.

  Olivia didn’t know that because she’d never been with him for long enough. But he knew it.

  She thought love was everything. That it could protect you in hard times. She talked about being fearless but it was only because she didn’t understand.

  Love was weak. It was helpless as a sixteen-year-old boy crying over his mother’s body.

  It was a sword that could be turned against you and used at a moment’s notice. Like he had done to his mother. The way he had wielded his words with devastating accuracy when she had been at a moment that was so low she couldn’t recover. When she had brandished it against him, taken herself from him. Proven that the love she supposedly felt for him wasn’t enough to keep her there.

  Love wasn’t enough.

  And that was the problem.

  He loved Olivia Logan with everything he possessed, every last part of himself. And in the end, it was futile.

  And it always would be.

  He rolled back over and poured himself another measure of whiskey, then let his arms fall slack.

  He was pathetic. And at the moment he didn’t much care.

  Because love might not be enough to save him, but he had a feeling it might be enough to destroy him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  OLIVIA WAS SURPRISED she got as much isolation as she did, but even so, when there was a knock on her door early the next morning, she felt jolted and cranky and not at all ready to deal with anyone.

  She scowled and looked at her phone, and saw a raft of text messages from her mother.

  The last one said: Olivia, I’m coming over.

  For a moment, she froze, debating whether or not she should let her moth
er see what a freaking disaster she was. She wasn’t the kind of person to let all that hang out. She kept it contained. She didn’t want to worry her parents, after all. But... Well, her mom had come by without waiting for the okay, and Olivia just didn’t have the energy to pretend to be okay. Not now.

  She sighed heavily and shuffled to the door. She was still wearing her pajamas, and she knew she looked like a small disaster. She had to be at work in a couple of hours, and while she knew Lindy would be somewhat sympathetic to her breakup situation, she also knew that her boss would need her for a shift, broken heart or not.

  She frowned. She had been brokenhearted a lot lately. The first time, though, it had been largely performative. Designed to convince both herself and the man who she felt had broken her heart that her love had indeed been true.

  She’d been so, so wrong. And had somehow walked herself into a much bigger heartbreak while trying to patch up the old one.

  It was funny now, in hindsight.

  Or would have been had anything been funny at all to her right now.

  Nothing was funny. And it never would be again. Because she was heartbroken. Really and truly heartbroken.

  She jerked open the door and saw her mother standing there, looking concerned and soft. Not angry like she should have been, since she’d no doubt heard about the incident with Luke at the Saloon.

  Olivia couldn’t stand it. She burst into tears.

  “Mom,” she said, her voice wobbling.

  “Olivia?” Tamara Logan stepped inside and pulled Olivia into a hug, holding on to her tightly while Olivia wept plaintively into her shoulder.

  She put her arm around Olivia’s shoulder and walked her into the living room. “Sit down, sweetheart.”

  Olivia complied, taking a seat on the couch and pulling a blanket over her lap. Her mother went into the kitchen, and Olivia heard the sound of running water. She assumed her mother was putting some tea on. Because that was her mother’s solution to all bad feelings. A warm drink.