Unbreakable

by Alison Kent

  She was still holding on to him, and he reached for a lock of her hair, rubbing it, tucking it behind her ear. “I’m not sure how I’m looking at you, so I’m not sure I can stop.”

  “You know, and you can. You very well can,” she said, and guided him to her opening.

  He shrugged, swallowed, but still didn’t grin. “Seems a lot easier for you to say than me to do.”

  “You’re going to ruin everything.”

  That got to him. She saw it in the tightening of his mouth, in the deepening of the grooves at the corner of his eyes. “That’s nothing new, Faith. I’ve always ruined everything for everyone.”

  And then she pushed him inside and slid to sit on him, burying him deep until any movement she made he made, too, because he was part of her. She placed her hands on the seat back on either side of his head, riding him slowly, her hips moving up then down then pausing.

  “What?” he asked, his hands at her waist to guide her, to urge her to go on.

  “Please don’t ruin this,” she said, her voice gruff, her throat aching, her chest too tight to breathe.

  “If you have to tell me that, I’m pretty sure it’s already too—”

  She stopped the rest of his words with her mouth, pressing them back with her lips, pushing them into his throat with her tongue. She didn’t want to hear what he had to say, not about things being ruined or things he wanted from her. He was inside of her, filling her, owning her and giving himself up to her. He was hers, and it frightened her to think she held so much of his trust.

  Her hips moved, her thighs, her stomach, as she worked his cock. His hands stayed put at her waist, guiding her where he wanted her to go. To the left, then up, to the right, stop, forward, and down. Over and over she did what he wanted, did what she wanted, pleasing them both.

  And all the while she kissed him, deep kisses with her tongue and what she thought might be her heart. Tender brushes of her lips to the edge of his rushed out on a breathless moan, his sound, her sound, the sound of a connection she wasn’t ready for.

  The truck rumbled beneath them, the vibrations tickling through his cock to her core. She shuddered as his tip prodded her deeply, intimately, reaching her where she thought she was safe. She wanted him in her body, but letting him in to touch more than the physical parts of her was too much of a risk—for now. Most likely forever.

  She shook her head, pushing the thoughts away. She couldn’t think about forever. She didn’t even want to think about now or where she was or the risk she was taking. Not when there was so much to feel. Holding on to the muscles bunched between his shoulders and neck, she let her head fall back and rode him, the steering wheel scraping her back, his cock scraping her clit.

  He leaned forward, wrapped his lips around her nipple, and sucked it into his mouth, holding her there with his teeth while his tongue scraped the taut surface. He bit harder, moved to the top of her breast, and sucked on her skin, bruising her, marking her. Branding her before letting her go.

  Her thighs burned with her efforts, and she needed so badly to come, to finish this, to feel Casper unload inside of her, to see his abs clench, the veins in his neck pop in relief as he strained.

  She loved watching him come, loved the sounds he made, loved seeing the slide of his cock as he pushed into her and pulled out. She looked down now, reaching into her pussy and opening her lips, catching the ridge of his cock’s head between her spread fingers.

  Close. She was so, so close, and as near as his face was to hers, he had to know it, from the way she couldn’t find her breath, from the way her heart hammered. He sat back and stared into her eyes, daring her to look away. She did because she had to, taking him in…his throat, his hair-dusted pectorals, the bisected plane of his belly where his abs contracted as he fucked her, the coarse thatch of hair cushioning his cock and his balls.

  He was beautiful. So beautiful it hurt. Emotion rose to strangle her, her throat full and aching with it, her chest tight. She returned her gaze to his, licking her lips to tell him of her hunger. She wanted him to know what it did to her to look at him, but she couldn’t find the words. And then she came, the heat and the tingles and tickles and the surge of sensation he aroused in her was too big to contain.

  He followed, pouring into her, the tendons in his neck bold against the canvas of his flushed skin. He held her hips tight to his, shuddering as he finished silently, his eyes screwed shut, his mouth drawn tight against the noises inside.

  She brought up a hand to his cheek, rubbed her thumb there, coaxing a smile before he turned to kiss her palm. Then she leaned against him, her head to his shoulder, letting him take her weight and all her worry that being with him had already cost her dearly.

  TWENTY

  “BOONE?” FAITH CALLED from the entrance to the barn since doing the same from the back porch of the ranch house had been met with silence. She didn’t know where Dax was. She didn’t know where Casper was. She assumed Clay was somewhere with him.

  “Back here,” came a response from the tack room.

  She walked down the center of the enormous structure, glad she’d shrugged out of her suit jacket, wishing she’d thought to get rid of her pantyhose and pumps. She was pretty sure she had a pair of flip-flops in the backseat. And thanks to Casper, she had a new battery. She also had her fingers crossed she wasn’t about to walk into a confrontation with her brother over his partner spending the night in her bed.

  “What’re you doing here?” he asked, glancing over as she stopped in the doorway.

  He had what looked like an awl in one hand, doing some cowboy thing to a saddle. Or, she guessed, looking closer, a stirrup. “Since you won’t ever pick up your phone, I came to see you.”

  “I don’t carry my phone,” he said, flipping his dark hair that had grown way too long out of his face to see her. “Hard to pick it up.”

  “How am I supposed to get your okay on things for the party if I can’t talk to you?” she asked, walking into the small room that smelled of sweat and leather and oil and hay, and catching sight of the phone on the wall. Lord. “What’s that phone and do you use it?”

  “It’s the house line. We’ll pick it up if we’re in here. And you don’t need my okay on everything you do.”

  Words he’d live to regret, no doubt, should he find out what she’d been doing. And with whom. But none of that was on the agenda for today. “I talked with Arwen about catering the party. Her prices are good. Better than Smokin’ Joe’s.”

  “Do her prices hinge on using the saloon?” he asked without looking up from his task.

  “Nope. She’ll bring the food to us.”

  “Okay.”

  “Does that mean you’re good with me finalizing things with her?”

  He shrugged. “You know what we can afford. And by we,” he added, turning, “I mean we. Not you. We.”

  “I know,” she said, feeling the urge to cross her fingers.

  He went back to the stirrup then. “Guess I could pick up a couple of Casper’s hours at Summerlin’s so I can throw more cash at this thing.”

  “This thing,” she said, reaching for what she thought was a currycomb, “is going to be a gorgeous party. Trust me. And you don’t need to put yourself on the backs of any wild horses to make it happen. Everything’ll be covered.”

  “By the both of us,” he said again. “Equally.”

  “Equally.” Which was true enough as long as they didn’t count what she was paying to have Casper’s house raised from the dead. And what she was paying for the beer. She ran the metal teeth of the round comb over her palm. “Are things okay with you and Casper?”

  He withdrew the tool, smoothed the edges of the hole he’d made, gave her a side-eyed glance. “Is there a reason they shouldn’t be?”

  “I was just wondering.” She forced a careless shrug. “He said something about always ruining everything for everyone. I was just wondering what he meant.”

  Boone straightened, popped his neck, waited ano
ther heartbeat before asking, “When were you talking to Casper?”

  Oops. “He came by the bank a few weeks ago.”

  “Why?”

  “About his house.”

  At that, Boone grunted. “I don’t know why he’s so het up on putting that place back together. It’s going to take him forever and cost him a fortune he doesn’t have.”

  Hmm. “Is he still putting in his share of the work around here?”

  “He is, then he puts in more hours at Summerlin’s. Enough hours that he’s made what he needed to get a construction crew over to Mulberry Street, I guess. I don’t know how he’s fitting in time at the house, unless he’s doing it in his sleep.”

  She’d decided not to mention anything about having paid for the construction crew. Or that she’d decided without consulting him to have the anniversary party at Casper’s house. She could mention those things a few days before. Maybe. Depending on the temperature of things by then.

  “I guess he’s doing what he feels he has to, but it does seem like a lot. The house. The horses. All his responsibilities here.”

  Boone’s hands stilled again. “Why the interest in Casper, Faith?”

  “He’s a friend,” she said. When he gave her a look that said he wasn’t buying, she added, “He’s always been a friend. You know that. How often did he eat dinner at our house in high school?”

  “A lot, but that was then. This is now.”

  “And now means what? I can’t be friends with him? Because you said so?”

  “You know how he is,” he said with a grunt, getting back to work.

  “He’s your partner. I don’t like hearing him say he ruins things because of that. That’s the only reason I asked,” she lied.

  “As far as I know, we’re fine. Other than the obvious debt we’ll never pay off in this lifetime. But you wouldn’t be here about that since you know more about it than anyone.”

  “If nothing’s going on here, could he be talking about something personal? Something from his past. I mean, his mother dumped that house in his lap. I’m guessing that’s been weighing on him.”

  “So you thought you’d ask me.”

  “You know him better than I do,” she said, wondering if that was the truth.

  “Yeah, but as often as he came to dinner, I’m sure you know enough.”

  “Is that what his mother told him? That he ruined things?”

  “I’m not talkin’ to you about Casper.”

  “But you know, don’t you? You know about what went on in that house.”

  He grunted again. “Some. Maybe.”

  She rolled her eyes, considered stabbing him with the comb. “Is there some Dalton Gang code keeping you from telling me? Like the no-sisters rule y’all have?”

  “What do you know about that?”

  “You don’t think Darcy and I talk?”

  “She shouldn’t know about that either.”

  “Well, it’s moot now as far as she’s concerned. She’s happy with Josh. And Dax is happy with Arwen.”

  “That still leaves Casper, and he better not be breaking the rule.”

  And if he was breaking it, it had to be with her. “I’m an adult, Boone. He can’t break it without me letting him.”

  “Then you damn well better not be letting him.”

  She squeezed her hand around the comb. “What if I did? What harm could there be—”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” he asked, spinning on her.

  “No. I’m not. He’s your friend. He’s your partner. You obviously trust him—”

  “I don’t trust him with you.”

  “Then you might as well say you don’t trust me.”

  “It’s not the same, and you know it.”

  “I can handle Casper.”

  “Are you handling him? Is that why he’s spending most of his nights away?”

  She held her brother’s gaze, admitting nothing, refusing to allow him a say in her personal life. “He came to me at the bank. I did some research on the house. We’ve talked about it. If he’s spending his nights there, I don’t know anything about it.”

  That much was the truth. The lie was that she did know where he’d been sleeping, and she waited for Boone to make the jump to the obvious. But he didn’t.

  “I’m not trying to be an ass, Faith. I just don’t want you to get hurt,” he said, leaving off the again that echoed between them as loudly as if he’d spoken the word.

  “I know that. I don’t want me to get hurt either. But I’m not nineteen anymore. You’ve got to let me be me. Even if you don’t like the choices I make.”

  Another grunt, but nothing more.

  “Trust me, please? When I say I’m over being stupid?” Or at least over expecting happy endings. And the dream coming true at the fairy tale’s end. “And know I’ll always need you there when I mess up. Because it will happen.”

  “You stay away from him and you’ll be less likely to.”

  “Boone!”

  “Okay, okay. I trust you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But I don’t trust him.”

  Gah. “You’re not making this easy.”

  “Well, I’m not going to look the other way while you—”

  “While I what? Bite off more than I can chew? Get in over my head? Make a fool of myself with another inappropriate man? Because that’s what this is about, isn’t it? You’re afraid I’m going to repeat the biggest mistake of my life. Well, I’m not. I’m older and I’m wiser and that lesson was one I’ll never forget.”

  He jammed the awl into the surface of the workbench, his hand a fist around the handle. “I wasn’t there for you. I should’ve been there for you.”

  “Oh, Boone,” she said, her throat tight as she walked close and laid her head on his shoulder. “You being there wouldn’t have changed anything. It was something I was going to have to figure out for myself. If you or anyone else had saved me”—she made air quotes around the words—“I would have been more likely to dig myself in deeper, or move on to someone else just as bad for me as Jeremy. I needed to suffer through all of it, on my own, to figure out how not to make the same mistake again.”

  “I don’t like seeing you suffer,” he said, resting his head against hers before reaching for the awl and pulling it free.

  “Then it’s a good thing I’m not, isn’t it?” Once that had settled, she thought it best to change the subject. She returned the comb to its hook. “What do you think of Clay?”

  “I think Casper’s insane for taking on a kid with the trouble attached to this one. Wait. How do you know about Clay?”

  Good grief. This juggling of what she was supposed to know with what she actually did was killing her. “I met him at the house on Mulberry Street.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “Casper’s using me as his financial advisor.”

  “You could’ve just said that in the first place.”

  Because it was okay for her to have a business relationship with him? “So you like Clay?”

  “Good thing is you didn’t have to hire a maid. The house hasn’t been so clean since Tess was the one taking care of things.”

  “He cooks, too, I hear.”

  “You hear that from Casper?”

  “I did, yes. We do talk about more than money, Boone. Which is why I was asking if things were okay.”

  “Things are fine. I’ve got two partners who come and go like there’s not a shit ton of work here needing done. One of these days…”

  She didn’t like the way he’d let the sentence trail. It could mean so many things. “One of these days things are going to turn around for y’all.”

  “Assuming we can hang on till that happens.”

  “You know you can come to me for money. I have more than enough for you, too.”

  “I know you do. Just like you know the three of us have to make a go of this on our own.”

  To prove themselves worthy of the gift given them b
y Tess and Dave Dalton. “I know. But if things get to the point where you may lose the ranch without my help…”

  He nodded. “Then we’ll have a partnership meeting and take a vote.”

  “Do y’all really do that?”

  “Hell no. Usually we work this shit out in the pens while sliding around on calf nuts.”

  “Gross.”

  “Hey. You asked.”

  “Guess I’ll get back to town. Now that I have your okay to let Arwen cater. And your okay to live my own life,” she said, lifting up on her tiptoes to brush a kiss against his cheek, and backing out the door before what she’d said registered.

  “Hey,” he called after her. “I never said that.”

  But she was already halfway out of the barn, and her laugh echoed to the rafters.

  TWENTY-ONE

  EMPTY TRASH BAG, dustpan, and broom in one hand, Faith wiped the sweat from her forehead in the crook of her elbow, then pushed open the door to the small third-floor room. Somehow, even with all her umpteen billion trips up and down the stairs, she’d managed to miss this one. Picking up the bucket of cleaning supplies, she walked inside with a sigh.

  Saturday had rolled around again, and again she was spending her time off laboring physically when there were a million other things she’d rather be doing—sleeping being at the top of the list. Even taking care of the loads of chores she had waiting at home would be better than this. But here she was, checking off and clearing another room in Casper’s monstrosity.

  Thank God this was the last time she’d have to be shocked by what she found in this house. The construction crew took over on Monday, and Monday couldn’t get here soon enough. Honestly, discovering where Casper had spent his time the years he’d lived in Crow Hill was making this adventure more depressing than fun.

  Earlier in the week, the cleaning crew she’d hired had done the heavy lifting inside and out, leaving the more obvious personal items for Casper to store or dispose of. He’d turned over a lot of that chore to Clay, which the boy had managed without the grumbling Faith thought was the norm for teens.