by Croix, J. H.
“My turn,” she said with a grin. Her boldness now didn’t feel like a cover. She pushed him back, running her hands across his chest and down his abdomen until she reached his cock. With a light stroke, she curled a hand around his length and lifted her hips, barely coming down on him. She teased him to the point of madness, lifting and barely lowering her hips, the heated glove of her folds a taunt. Her breasts bounced softly with the motion, her nipples peaked and pink in the lamplight.
Driven beyond his endurance, the reins of his control slipped and he grabbed her hips and surged into her. Her head tipped back as she arched on a groan. Her tight wet sheath pulsed around him. He forced himself to hold still until she slowly lifted her head, her dark eyes meeting his in the shadowed room. Her lips were parted, her breath coming in soft pants. He barely managed to remain still, his cock swelling at the feel of her throbbing channel. Never breaking his gaze, he slowly shifted his hips, lifting hers incrementally, and began a circle of surges into and out of her. Her eyes flashed, her spine arched as she followed his lead, rolling her hips. Time dissolved as he lost himself in nothing but the sensation of stroking in her slick channel. Her breath became more ragged, pressure built within him. In seconds, she cried out again, clenching around him. He finally let go, his climax crashing through him as she fell against him.
With Risa’s warm, soft curves plush in his lap, he came down. Their breath echoed in the quiet room. Rain fell on the roof, the sound enveloping them in the cocoon of this moment. Thought started to intrude, and Darren shoved it away. After a while, he didn’t know how long since time didn’t seem to exist in this space with them, he ran a hand up her back and felt goose bumps on her skin. He shifted and stood, lifting her with him. She started to wiggle out of his arms.
“Don’t bother. I got you,” he said softly.
She relaxed against him as he carried her into his bedroom, a room he shared with no one. He paused by the bed and met her eyes, dark and sated.
“Shower?” he asked.
With a soft smile, she nodded.
They tumbled into bed later—after a shower and a cobbled together snack of fruit and cereal. They talked about nothing much and didn’t speak of what lay between them. And yet, he felt so comfortable, he didn’t dare say anything aloud, for fear reality might rear its head. He fell asleep with Risa tucked against his side, her leg thrown across his and her palm on his chest.
***
Darren came awake with a jolt, crushing fear in his chest, barely able to catch his breath. As usual, he’d sat upright before he was fully awake. Risa’s hand was on his shoulder, her eyes quietly watching him. Her features came into focus in the dark.
Oh shit. Exactly why you’ve made a habit of not spending the night with anyone. How the hell are you going to explain this?
He opened his mouth to say something and shut it when it occurred to him that he simply wasn’t up for this. He wanted to run and erase this moment, so she didn’t see him like this.
Risa’s eyes were questioning, but he didn’t sense that awful pity he couldn’t stand. His heart rate slowed down. He tamped down the urge to jump out of bed and head for the shower.
“Are you okay?” she finally asked, her voice soft, her hand warm on his shoulder. Her thumb stroked in soft circles. His throat was tight. He had to force himself to breathe slowly.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.”
She waited a beat. He sensed she was giving him a chance to offer more than that, but he couldn’t.
“You don’t seem fine.”
“Just a nightmare.”
“That was some nightmare.”
He couldn’t help it, but he wanted to know what she meant. Because the thing was, he didn’t know what happened. Before he woke, he didn’t know if he thrashed or cried out. He didn’t know what his nightmares looked like outside of himself. All he knew was he’d wake in a sweat, his pulse pounding and adrenaline rushing through him. If he remembered his dream, it was the same every time. Driving up to the accident, seeing the cars, breaking through the window and starting to reach for the little boy and then someone screaming his name.
“What do you mean?” he finally asked.
She shrugged, her eyes on him. “You tossed and turned for a while. That’s what woke me up. You started to mumble and then hollered before you sat up like that,” she said, gesturing to him. “You’re covered in sweat.” She slid her hand down his shoulder and arm. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
He wanted to lean into her touch and shoved the thought away. Because he wasn’t okay, and he damn well knew it. But he sure as hell didn’t want to try to explain that to her. He’d rather find some way to escape without looking like the coward he was. But he couldn’t run as fast and far as he wanted. Not now. Instead he shrugged and flung the covers back. “I’m fine, just need a quick shower.”
Chapter 12
Risa slammed the door to her apartment behind her and tossed her purse and keys on the kitchen counter. One look around, and she sighed. Boxes were everywhere. She’d been bouncing between Anchorage and Diamond Creek for weeks now. She’d come up with the bright idea to pack gradually, which meant she lived half in boxes all the time. She hadn’t yet figured out where she would live in Diamond Creek and was up to her eyeballs in work, so she’d been putting it off.
Every night she spent in Diamond Creek, Darren’s mere existence was a magnet. She kept promising herself she’d stay with Trey and Emma, but she only managed it here and there. It’s just sex. Once the thrill wears off, you won’t feel so crazy. That’s what she told herself over and over, but repetition didn’t seem to be getting through to her heart. The heart she’d battened down behind a solid door was pushing against it insistently, telling her Darren was a good man and worth taking a chance on. She believed it, but she didn’t believe he’d want to take a chance on her. The idea that a man like him would want her, really want her, was a foreign concept. She couldn’t dare believe it and hope for more.
There was also whatever lay behind his occasional nightmares. He acted as if they were random and meant nothing, but he walled her out so completely, she knew there was something behind them. The way he behaved after the few times she’d witnessed him wake, so obviously shaken, had reinforced her plan to keep their relationship where it needed to be—on the terrain of temporary. He shut her out so thoroughly, it made her aware that no matter how she felt in his arms—so intimate it almost hurt—he wasn’t open to being intimate in other ways. She couldn’t help but wonder if it that had something to do with her. Though she so desperately wanted to know what lay behind the walls he’d put up around parts of himself. She wanted it so much it hurt. Which brought her full circle back to why she needed to remember to keep her heart out of this. It was clear he didn’t want more, so she needed to protect herself.
A knock on her door startled her. She eyed the door, wondering who it was. She wasn’t expecting anyone. She quickly flung the door open to find Brad standing there. She was so startled her mouth actually fell open. She eyed him.
“What do you want?” she asked, throwing her manners aside.
Brad attempted a smile that she assumed he meant to be contrite and endearing, but it only grated on her. Her eyes coasted over him, and she wondered how she could ever have considered him attractive. Oh, he was attractive, in the objective sense of the word, but it was so superficial. The façade had collapsed now that she knew him for who he was. He had blondish-brown hair, remarkably close to the color of Darren’s. Yet what she found sexy on Darren was too carefully styled on Brad. Brad aimed for the look of someone who didn’t bother with how he looked, yet he tried so hard, he couldn’t quite pull it off. His blue eyes were empty to her. She didn’t know what he was after, but the calculating look underneath his exterior annoyed her so much she wanted to slam the door in his face. Though his presence robbed her manners, she didn’t want to make a scene.
He cleared his throat. “Can I come in?”
He nodded slowly. “Okay then. I was hoping we could move past what happened between us.”
Dear God, he sounded like Gretchen. Risa sighed. “Brad, I have moved past it. It just so happens that means I don’t want you in my life. I don’t consider someone who lied to me as long as you did to be trustworthy, so that rules you out of the friend category. Get to the point. What do you want?”
“I don’t know if you heard, but Gretchen and I broke up.”
Risa kept her expression carefully blank. She hadn’t heard because she’d been so busy, she hadn’t paid attention to the social radar in Anchorage. Not to mention all she thought about in her spare time was Darren. She held her silence and waited.
“I was hoping maybe we could talk. I, uh, realize how things looked after what happened, but being away from you has made me realize how much you meant to me.”
Risa couldn’t hold her laugh back. He was so patently ridiculous. At one time, she wanted to mean something to him. Now, the idea was ludicrous, a joke she should have understood much sooner.
Brad looked affronted. “Geez, Risa. I’m trying to admit I screwed up. When you and I were together, you supported me in all the right ways and I didn’t appreciate it at the time. With Gretchen, well, it’s all about her…”
Risa cut him off. “And with you, it’s all about you. It doesn’t surprise me at all that you two blew up. It was bound to happen. But there’s no way I’d reconsider anything with you. Let me guess: it’s not so convenient when you lose all my connections around here, and Ethan and Jack are cutting you out of your coveted arts committees and what-not. Brad, forget it. If there’s one thing I learned from you, it’s that I should have seen you for what you were much sooner. Don’t come by, don’t call. I wish you the best.”
At that, Risa stepped back and quietly shut the door in Brad’s face, bolting it and walking away. She heard him call her name through the door a few times before footsteps headed away from her door down the hall. Kicking a box out of the way, she collapsed on the couch. The flash of annoyance with Brad faded quickly. She felt strangely calm. Instead of being embarrassed to see him, the clarity she felt about him was refreshing.
Darren was everything Brad wasn’t—genuine, unassuming, and sexy in that down-to-earth, rugged way that slipped right under her defenses and set her on fire. And dammit, she didn’t want to make a fool of herself over him. With Brad, now that the freshness of his betrayal had faded, she could look back and laugh because she didn’t want someone like him. She’d meant it when she’d told Gretchen she’d done her a favor. But with Darren…letting him matter would mean a much deeper scar. At first, she’d been afraid because he might have duped her as Brad had. The more she got to know him, the more it became apparent he was good—hold on and not let go kind of good. And she didn’t know if she was good enough for him. That problem was an impossible one to fix. She stood abruptly and headed for the kitchen to scrounge up dinner.
***
Darren stood in front of his refrigerator wondering what the hell to eat. The sparse contents reminded him of the last night Risa had been here. He discovered she often wanted to snack after their bouts of earth-shattering sex. She teased him over the past weekend that he needed to find a personal shopper since he so rarely had much in the house when it came to food. With a sigh, he snatched the milk out and grabbed a box of cereal from the cabinet. Suddenly, there was a sharp knock at his door. Before he took more than three steps, the door flew open.
His sister, Hallie, came through the door in a whirl, her arms laden with bags.
“Darren!”
Hallie set her bags down and ran over to hug him. She moved so quickly he hadn’t managed to swallow the bite of cereal in his mouth until she stepped away. She was dressed in black leggings with a bright blue button-down flannel shirt. Her soft brown hair was tied in a knot on the top of her head. She smiled expectantly at him, her hazel eyes tilting at the corners.
“Hey Hallie. How’s it going?”
Her smile wobbled.
“You okay?”
The smile completely disappeared and tears welled in her eyes.
Darren didn’t know what was going on, but he had enough sense to set his bowl of cereal on the counter and walk her to the couch to sit down.
At which point, Hallie burst into tears. His little sister, who he adored, crying sent his heart in his throat, and a flash of protectiveness clenched like a vice inside. He floundered as he watched her sobbing.
“Hallie, what’s going on?”
She rubbed her eyes and sighed. “You remember Ryan?”
Darren nodded. “The guy you followed to Greece because you were in love and had to follow your heart?”
Hallie nodded, the misery in her eyes making it clear that Ryan had wiped away the carefree joy Hallie was blessed to carry with her. That made Darren instantly angry, but he held back and waited.
“I’m such an idiot. Ryan…well, we got to Greece and things were okay for a little while and then I found out he had some other girlfriend on the side. And then when I got into an argument with him about it, he…” Hallie paused and looked at Darren carefully.
Darren didn’t know what she was about to say, but he could tell she was concerned about how he’d respond. If there was one thing he and Hallie had always had, it was honesty. Their parents, though loving, had been committed to their careers. Their father worked long hours as an investigative cop while their mother threw herself into her academic career. He and Hallie took care of each other while their parents’ minds were focused elsewhere. It wasn’t a bad childhood, but it had formed a strong bond between them.
“He threw me out!” Hallie said forcefully and promptly burst into tears again.
“Okay, and then what happened?” he asked, his quiet words belying how he felt inside. Picturing Hallie all alone in Greece after the man who persuaded her to follow him left her to fend for herself infuriated him. He wanted to slam his fist into the man’s face, but that wasn’t exactly an option at the moment what with him here in Alaska, and Ryan in Greece. He silently vowed if he ever laid eyes on Ryan again, he would have the satisfaction of one good slug. He closed his eyes, clenching his jaw, and forced himself to breath slowly. His fury would do Hallie little good.
Hallie rubbed her sleeve across her face and took a breath. “Well, first he started swearing and told me I didn’t have any right to tell him who he could be with. He just went on and on. He finally left and said I had to be gone before he got back. I packed everything and left right then. But I don’t have much money saved up and don’t know where to go. I don’t want to tell Mom and Dad. They’ll just think I’m an idiot. Dad already said I needed to stop being so flighty and even though he didn’t say anything about it, I know he thought Ryan was a loser. Of course, he had to be right. So I came here…” Her words trailed off and she shrugged. “Can I stay here for a little bit until I figure out what to do?”
Darren didn’t hesitate. “Of course. Did you drive here from Anchorage?”
“Yeah. I had a return ticket and I was able to change the date. I sold my car before I left, so I rented one and drove straight here. I’ll have to return it tomorrow to the airport in Homer though. I can’t afford another day. I just need a little time to get some work somewhere and figure out what to do.”
The wheels in Darren’s mind spun. He wanted to grill her with more questions about Ryan. Well, to be specific, he wanted to hop on a plane, fly to Greece and satisfy his urge to punch the guy. Since that wasn’t an option, he glanced at Hallie, trying to assess how she was doing.
“Is there anything else that happened with Ryan?”
She shook her head. “No. I just wanted to be gone. And don’t go all big-brother on me. Yeah, he was a total ass, but I guess it’s better I figured that out sooner rather than later. I’m not going back. I don’t ever want to see him again.�
��
Darren didn’t really give a damn that Hallie warned him against going big-brother, but he was relieved to know she didn’t want to see Ryan again.
Darren nodded. “I’ll leave it alone for now, but I reserve the right to give the guy a piece of my mind and then some if I ever see him. You’re also calling mom and dad tonight to let them know you’re here. I don’t want them worrying about where you are.”
Hallie fiddled with her hair, untying the knot so that it fell around her shoulders. “Okay, I’ll call them in a little bit.” She slanted her eyes at him and wrinkled her nose. “I’ve dumped my sob story on you. Now tell me what’s up with you and who that pretty blue scarf belongs to? Because I know damn well it doesn’t belong to you, so don’t even bother trying to pretend it does.” She gestured to a scarf hanging on the back of one of the stools by the kitchen counter.
Risa had left it here. He chuckled before replying. “I might be seeing someone.”
Hallie squealed and clapped her hands. “Really? Oh Darren, that makes me so happy. You are the best brother in the world and the best kind of guy! I keep hoping some woman will snatch you up and hold on for dear life.” She paused, her gaze sobering. Hallie knew how much he’d struggled after the accident and his guilt over not being able to get that little boy out in time. Hallie probably knew more than anyone, but he’d never explicitly told her he’d thought he might avoid relationships for the long haul. So this thing with Risa…well, it was a thing.
“Does that mean you’re sleeping better at night?” Hallie asked softly.
Darren flushed and nodded. “Most of the time. Not all the time.”
He’d told Hallie how awful it had been to see the pity in Jill’s eyes the few times she’d stayed with him before they broke up. He thought back to the other night when he woke to see Risa watching him. Discomfort roiled inside. You like her too much. It’s getting dangerous. If she gets too close, she’ll look at you the way Jill did.