Lawson shook his head. “No ranch hand mentioned anything about you asking for me.”
“It was some new guy who I didn’t know, and even if I had, he probably wouldn’t have recognized me. I was wearing a baseball cap and big sunglasses. The publicity was in full swing for Demon High, and I was already starting to hide out from the paparazzi. I hadn’t wanted any of them following me out to see you.”
“But you didn’t see me,” he quickly pointed out. “Why? What the heck was I doing that turned you off so much that you’d leave without saying a word?”
Here was more of that long painful story, but this part wasn’t going to be nearly as easy to explain. “You were just riding, cutting through some cattle. I think you were checking on them, maybe even counting them.” And it had most certainly not been a turnoff. Just the opposite. She’d wanted to go to him and pull him into her arms. “You looked...content.”
That was the word that had come to mind then, and it came again. Normally, that was a good word, but it hadn’t been eighteen and a half years ago.
“Content,” he spit out. “Yeah, I could see why that would send you running.” And yes, it was doused with plenty of sarcasm.
“It did send me running. Or rather, slinking away. Because in that moment I realized the ranch was the center of your universe. Your happy place. You definitely weren’t crying buckets of tears over me.” She could douse with some sarcasm, too, but it was short-lived because this particular old memory still carried a lot of pain.
“And you thought you’d...what? Map out my future for me? A future that didn’t involve Tessie or you?”
“Something like that,” Eve admitted, though it was going to earn her a huff. It did. “I knew you wouldn’t be happy in California. And I also knew you hadn’t forgiven me for Brett. Or for leaving. Plus, there was that little detail about you being a teenager and not wanting children. I was more or less locked into a future, but I didn’t want to lock you in there with me.”
He gave her one of those angry, flat looks, but Lawson must have remembered how things were then. Emotions had been high. Like now. The anger had been thick and hot. Also like now. But the old attraction would have been there, too.
Like now.
“You would have resented it,” Eve added before he could argue. “Maybe not right then, but eventually you would have. If I’d told you that day in the pasture that I was pregnant, you would have been shocked. But you would have done the right thing. You would have asked me to marry you. I would have said yes because I was crying buckets and was lonely, and our marriage would have failed because we had too many strikes against us.”
Of course, she’d just proved him right about her mapping out his future. Apparently, she’d mapped out a predicted outcome, too, which meant she’d said too much. She should have stopped after the first thank you and headed to bed. And that was what she turned to do. But Lawson stopped her in her tracks.
“You’re right,” he said.
At first, she thought this might be part of his continuing sarcasm, but there didn’t appear to be any of it in his expression. Or his next grunt. In fact, his grunt seemed to be one of frustration. Not with her but with himself. Then again, that might be wishful thinking on her part.
“You cried buckets over me,” he said. “I’m guessing that’s a higher amount than usual for a teenage girl with a broken heart?”
She nodded. “I made everyone around me miserable.”
He nodded, too, paused and blew out a heavy breath. “Yeah, I did the same. No tear-filled buckets, but there were lots of fights, skipping school and generally making a nuisance of myself. Roman threatened to drown me in the creek. My mom came home and made me see a counselor. That’s when I started saying fuck this and shit on a daily basis.”
The relief came, and it felt as if a heavy weight lifted off her shoulders. Not because she was glad that Lawson had gone through the same hell she had but because it finally felt as if they’d cleared some old, stenchy air between them.
“But it got better.” Eve made sure that didn’t sound like a question. Made sure she didn’t mention Darby, either.
“Eventually. But during those dark days, my dad flew in just to tell me to suck it up and take it like a man. Dylan set me up with his girlfriends’ and former girlfriends’ sisters. And Lucian hired me a hooker.”
That didn’t stench up the air again. At least it probably didn’t, but it was a surprise. “A hooker?”
He lifted his shoulder. “I’m pretty sure she was one, anyway. Lucian’s not very good at solving teenager angst. He just wanted me to shut up and quit causing problems since he was the one who was having to deal with the aftermath of most of those problems. I guess he figured if I kept busy having sex, I’d stay out of trouble.”
And just like that, the air changed between them.
Eve was very familiar with that specific type of air change, especially when coupled with the mention of sex.
She fluttered her fingers toward the bedroom. “I should take that shower and get some sleep.”
Eve got her feet working, and she even managed a few steps, but just as quickly, she found herself turning around to tell Lawson that they should keep their hands off each other. In the split second she did the turn around, she also came up with some reasons.
Fatigue, bad timing, spent adrenaline from worry. Oh, she couldn’t forget the part about this complicating the heck out of their lives.
Eve might have actually managed to voice some of those reasons if she hadn’t landed right in Lawson’s arms. He didn’t kiss her. Didn’t really touch her except for the loose grip he had on her. She could have easily slipped away from him at any time.
She didn’t.
She stayed put and made matters worse by looking up at him. They were too close and she took in his scent. She wasn’t sure how he could smell both cowboy and expensive at the same time, but he managed it.
Eve’s gaze went from his eyes. To his mouth. And that’s when she realized he was doing the same thing. He was looking at her as if trying to decide just how much to mess this up. She went for the mess-up first though by attempting to keep this light. Like a joke.
“Touch, lick or kiss?” she asked, and Eve made sure she added a wink to it.
Lawson didn’t wink.
“All of them,” he drawled, and this time when he pulled her to him, there was indeed some touching going on.
* * *
APPARENTLY, AIR CLEARINGS could turn into some mighty serious foreplay. Of course, breathing could be foreplay, too, when it came to Eve.
Touching took the foreplay up a whole bunch of notches when their bodies landed against each other. It wasn’t really a surprise that his most prominent male feature thought this was a stellar idea. His dick was stupid. So was he. Because he immediately added yet another component to this.
Kissing.
His mouth located hers. Not that he had to search long for it. Eve was already moving in on him, and their lips met a little harder than he’d planned. There might have been some pain involved, but the pleasure had a way of overriding that. Overriding any tiny shred of common sense, too. That’s because the kiss was an ultimate pleasure generator. Third only to touching and sex.
“We keep doing this,” she complained when they broke for air.
Yes, they did, and despite the recent eighteen-year break they’d had from each other, they just picked up right where they’d left off. It was as if they were in the baseball dugout again. Or the seat of his truck. And then there’d been his mom’s house, which Eve now owned. But this apartment had one huge advantage that the other places didn’t.
Privacy.
Unlike every other single place where Eve and he had made out, there was no chance that someone could come walking in on them. Too bad. Because in those days and nights past, it had slowed them down so that
he could keep watch. There was nothing to slow them down now, which meant it could lead to quick and dirty sex on the floor.
Emphasis on the quick.
He didn’t mind being swept away on a tidal wave of lust, and he was willing to deal with regrets and consequences, but he wasn’t sure Eve was ready for it. That’s why he pulled back to give it one last shot at trying to talk to her.
She blinked as if puzzled by the halt. “Are we playing the game?” she asked before he could say anything, and she didn’t wait for him to answer, either. “Because if so, I’d rather you just kiss me until I melt.”
Those were not the right words to open up a logical discussion about this. However, it was effective in getting him to kiss her again. And Lawson thought she might indeed be melting. She was definitely soft and pliable in his arms, and while their tongues did some playing around, Eve played around by sliding her hands to his lower back and pulling him even closer against her.
Other than the millimeters of clothes, there was no more space between crucial parts of their bodies, and Lawson did something to rid them of that last obstacle. He caught onto the hem of her loose cotton dress and pulled it off over her head.
And he got a nice surprise.
A lacy red bra and panties. Not the practical kind, either. These were sheer and looked more for show than for covering anything vital. He could see nipples peeking out behind the lace.
She followed his gaze. “Now that I no longer need a nursing bra, my taste in underwear has gone...slutty.”
“I like slutty,” he assured her.
In fact, he liked it a lot because there was some peeking going on behind the lace in the panties, too. But the nursing-bra comment was a reminder that they did need to do some talking as to whether or not any of this was emotionally a good idea. As opposed to this just being a dumb thing physically. He would have launched into that conversation, too.
If Eve hadn’t unzipped him enough so she could put her hand in his pants.
She went right into the waist of his jeans and boxers and found pay dirt. Of course, it wasn’t difficult to find since he already had a raging hard-on.
“We used to do slutty quite well,” she whispered, her voice all breathy.
Yes, they had. They were doing a pretty damn good job of it now, as well. Because Lawson put his hand in her panties.
“I just want to make sure you’re ready for this,” he said.
That didn’t come out right, considering that at the exact moment those words left his mouth, his fingers slid through all that slick heat between her legs. At least she had the physically ready part down pat.
Her eyes were also showing some heat. And she played dirty with the touching. She slid her fingers the entire length of him and then right back up, all the while her hot breath kept hitting against his mouth and neck.
“I haven’t had sex with you in nearly eighteen years,” she reminded him. “Just how ready do you think I am?”
Plenty ready, he was sure of it, but that was the brainless part of her talking. Unfortunately, it was making a lot of sense to his corresponding brainless part. Despite that though, Lawson thought he was going to get a reprieve so he could launch into that much-needed discussion when Eve took her hand out of his jeans. But he soon realized that she did that only so she could wet her fingers with her mouth and go back in.
Hell.
He hadn’t had much willpower left, and now his brain cells were frying. Lawson knew he had to say something with the pinch of breath that he managed to gather, and he forced out one word.
“Lick,” he said.
Okay, it was the right word, but it got Eve stopping with the hand job, and there was now a little confusion mixed with the heat. “You or me?” she asked.
“Me licking you.” Because that might give him time to get things under control. He still wasn’t sure full-blown sex was the way to go here.
She stared at him a moment, then smiled. “All right. Then it’ll be my turn.”
And she started to get ready for her turn by unbuttoning his shirt. She left it on but finished unzipping his jeans, making him wonder just where this licking was going to take them.
Apparently, it was going to take them to the floor.
That’s because when he went to lick her lips, it turned into a full-fledged French kiss, complete with a new round of groping. Now, with even fewer millimeters of fabric between them, the heat skyrocketed right out of control.
Suddenly, he was starved for her. Also suddenly, time seemed to matter. The touches became more frantic. Ditto for the kisses. And that’s why they started for the hardwood floor.
Lawson knew he had to make one last-ditch effort, and that’s why he made sure they landed with him on top of Eve. He also pinned her hands so that she couldn’t go underpants-exploring again.
“I really want to finish this the old-fashioned way,” he assured her.
And that was a nice way of saying he wanted to be hard and deep inside her. Hard, deep and hitting her in just the right spot with his own much larger right spot. But he had just enough common sense to know that he didn’t want to do something that could hurt her.
After all, it’d only been three months since she’d given birth to Aiden.
He gathered both of her wrists in one of his hands. Again, to cut down on the touching. She touched anyway, though, by lifting her hips to grind against his hard-on. It was possible his head exploded, but thankfully the rest of him didn’t. With all her bucking and moving, he managed to get his right hand back in her panties.
One touch there, a couple of slippery slides of his fingers, and the urgency returned for Eve. She struggled to free her hands. No doubt so she could go after his dick. But Lawson held on. Kept on touching her, too. Thankfully, they’d had enough practice, and he hadn’t forgotten all the ins and outs of her body.
Nope.
He didn’t time it, but he got it right after what seemed like the flash of a few seconds. Much too short, considering that he was enjoying the feel of her, the look on her face. Still, he knew it couldn’t last. And it didn’t. He touched her, watched her and then kissed her as he took her right over the edge of the orgasm cliff.
Eve stopped struggling, stopped the body grinding and went limp. It gave Lawson some much-needed time to catch his breath and adjust himself. A needed adjustment since his hard-on was still on a mission to dive in and make this a double climaxing situation. That couldn’t happen. Though Eve seemed to have a different notion about that.
After a few gulping postorgasmic breaths, she pushed aside his hand that was still making an adjustment and latched on to his jeans. Lawson hated to do this, but he stopped her.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said. “And I don’t have a condom on me. I seriously doubt you want me to knock you up twice.”
She stared at him, as if weighing options that didn’t really exist. Or so he thought.
“There are other ways,” she insisted, and she batted away his hand to go after his jeans again.
He batted back. She persisted. Until they were playing a very adult version of whack-a-mole. It probably would have gotten him off, too, but he heard something over the shuffling of their hands.
The doorbell.
Shit.
His first thought was that this was Sophie, coming there to check on them. He didn’t want to face her, not with his erection about to bust out of his jeans, but he also knew if it was his cousin, then she could just use her key to get in.
But it wasn’t Sophie.
“Mom?” someone called out from the other side of the door. “Are you in there? It’s me—Tessie.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
TESSIE WASN’T SURE what she dreaded more—that her mother would come to the door or that she wouldn’t. Her mom had to be just as angry as she was worried.
And
Tessie couldn’t blame her.
She was feeling that, too, but she thought her mom might believe that she was the winner of this round of worry and anger. She’d left her mom high and dry with no explanation as to the craziness going on in her heart, and now Tessie owed her some answers.
Too bad Tessie wasn’t sure she had answers just yet.
Thankfully, she didn’t have to wait long to find out whether or not her mom would come to the door. Within seconds after Tessie had called out to her, Eve did her own calling out.
“Tessie?” Her mother followed that with what sounded to be a string of Oh, Gods. That was mixed with other sounds of footsteps and someone scrambling around in the apartment.
Tessie put her ear to the door to try to figure out what was going on, but just as she did that, the door flew open, and she came face-to-face with two very disheveled people. Her mom’s dress was hiked up on one side because it was tucked into the waist of her red panties, and the cowboy had missed several buttons on his shirt. Adding in some seriously messed-up hair and her mom’s flushed face, and Tessie was pretty sure she’d interrupted them having sex.
Great. Nothing like a side order of embarrassment to go with all the other emotions that were sloshing around.
Just as she’d done outside the bar in Wrangler’s Creek, her mom hugged her, and she held on a lot longer than last time even though Tessie went stiff again. The cowboy just stayed back and watched. Tessie watched him, too.
And she saw the same resemblance she had before.
So, was he her father?
He’d been her mom’s boyfriend back in high school, so the timing also fit. Tessie had done the math, and he could have gotten her mother pregnant shortly before she moved to LA. But Lawson wasn’t the only guy she’d heard her mom talk about. There was Brett, who’d died, and whenever her mother had mentioned him, she’d gotten all teary. Maybe it had been some kind of love triangle that had ended in a bad way.
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