BUFF

  Becky stays back. Even when her father opens the door and the rest of the family meet up to welcome one another. Colt watches Becky, his eyes darting to the rest of them to see the reunion. It takes a few minutes before any of them realize Becky is not with them. Spencer parts the small huddle of people, stepping reluctantly her way. Becky smiles a teary smile, her eyes soaking him in as though wanting to believe he’s real, but too scared to give in to her wish. But when her father's arms spread out from his side, the gesture must have been too much because Becky hurries forward, closing the distance. Colt sees the tears stream down her face as she kisses his cheek and her father cups her face.

  She’s finally home. Where she belongs.

  His reluctance plays over him making it hard for Colt to concentrate. Leaning against the side of the truck away from the private family moment, Colt stays planted in the shadows. He can’t watch their intimate reunion anymore. The sentiment, the pure emotions, gnaw at his gut.

  He isn’t a part of Becky and her family and even though he hasn’t interrupted in any way, just standing there observing them feels wrong somehow, like he is... an intruder.

  So he backs off into the shadows away from the spotlight and lets them have their moment. They deserve the solace of their rejoining and Colt won't let his presence be a burden over them; a dark cloud that dampens what’s supposed to be a bright occasion. He tends to bring the worst out of people and he doesn’t want that for Becky. He never wants that for her.

  Driving his hand through his hair Colt sighs taking in the weight of his shoulders; never letting him forget that he still has his dangerous life to live once the goodbyes are said. People will be looking to him now wondering who's in charge, now that the great Vladimir Kulich is dead.

  What the fuck am I doing?

  He squeezes the ends of his brows with the tips of his fingers massaging the aching flesh. He knows exactly what he's doing. But he's petrified of what he has to do next...

  He’s never going to look down into those big beautiful eyes that suck him in like the force of gravity. He’s never going to hear her laugh, never going to see her blush. He’s never going to make love to her, be inside her body and discover all the things he’s missed in his need to just be in her.

  Jesus Christ, he’s a fucking idiot.

  He should have never touched her. He should have never laid one hand on her delicate body. What was he thinking? When the hell did he think this was going to be easy?

  “Colt."

  The supple calling of his name utters from her mouth, sends his emotions into overdrive, momentarily blanketing all other thoughts. His body whips around, caught-off-guard. He stares at her as she moves forward and the small steps she takes propel him into motion. He forgets about what he’s supposed to say, what he’s supposed to do, drinking in the sight of her. All of her. He takes her in, inch by inch, hurried only by the compelling need to feel her in his arms.

  One. Last. Time.

  She stops a foot in front of him, seeming to do the same thing he’s doing. Her stare wanders over him, her eyes cast in shadows, coinciding with a happiness that makes the green in her eyes blur and sparkle like sapphires under light.

  She always glows from the inside out…

  Intimately, predatorily, his steely blue eyes travel over her. Is she hurt? Will she lie to him? But when she gifts him with a slight smile he removes the distance between them. Neither touches one another, though.

  “Hey.” She swallows, he watches her cute little muscles in her neck and his heart thumps harder for a beat. “Are you… okay?" Her eyes darken as he leans forward. “Colt?” Her finger trails the lines of his jaw. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I should have never thought…” She lets go of him, completely, starts to back away, but he clasps her wrist gently with his hold and leaves her locked to him. “I can't believe… Colt, I thought that of you..."

  “It's okay.”

  She shakes her head, angling it down slightly, but her eyes gaze into his. “No... No it’s not.” Her voice is thick with remorse.

  "Stop, Becky.” He cups her cheek, knowing he shouldn't, but he has to. She needs him. And he can't fight the instinct to give himself to her in any way she needs. His thumb finds the corner of her lips, smooths down the indent that shapes the sexiness of her mouth. “Stop.”

  She pushes his hand away. “My father told me what happened.” She scans him for a reaction but he can’t let her in any more than he already has. “Mr. Kulich is… dead. He said you killed him."

  His eyes frost over, the blue morph into tiny icicles. Colt clears the residue from his throat. “Did he hurt you at all? Touch you?"

  “Colt,” she protests, her brow curving.

  His one-track mind dismisses her attempt at skirting the issue. “Becky. Answer me."

  “I already told you no,” she says, twisting her wrist to break contact, only to link her fingers with his. “I'm okay."

  “I wasn't sure if you were lying or not,” he replies, mad at himself that he hasn’t been able to tell on his own whether she’s okay or not. He doesn’t like knowing he can’t read her. It makes him feel powerless. “Vladimir—I knew he was forcing you to say what he wanted you to."

  “I was okay, just scared.” She's disregarding him too lightly for his liking. “I thought you could tell when I was lying."

  He looks sideways from her, his sharp profile hammering a message that he’s mad, but it's aimed only at him. “Your head was down... I couldn't tell,” he murmurs, barely audible. “It bothered me that you wouldn't look at me."

  “I couldn't.” She gazes at him, cupping his cheek and turning his face toward her. “I felt like if I did, you'd be able to see how terrified I was and then you'd do something crazy. I didn't want you to get hurt... because of me..."

  His throaty chuckle resonates with an ache. "Always thinking about everyone else's feelings before yours."

  “Goodness sake, Colt, I didn't want anything to happen to you because of me."

  His glare comes down hard on her, blacking out the light in his eyes all together. "This was my fault, my problem."

  “Don’t, Colt, you already said you were sorry a hundred times,” she says, her voice rising in a quake. “Don't say it again."

  “You think you know me?" he says, the drop of his voice, silky and heady, unravels the stir of anger.

  “Maybe,” she responds on a sigh. It has the power to stroke away the stiffness in his body. He tugs her closer and she follows willingly, both in servitude to the emotions wrapping them in place and drowning out everything else.

  His hands memorize the porcelain flesh of her cheeks, the tips moving deftly slow in their exploration. He ends up with his hands cupping behind her ears, his two fingers nipping gently at the dangling curve of her earlobe. He senses her breathing heightening.

  “I promise I won’t hide from you again." Her sultry mumble freezes him in place. And then he remembers everything. He remembers why he’s still here. And what he must do.

  At all costs.

  He lets go of her face, but doesn’t back away and peeks up over her head to nothing in the distance.

  "Doesn’t matter."

  “I know you didn't plan this... Killing Mr. Kulich, I mean,” she goes on, unaware of why he’s withdrawn from her. “Your mother… This must be hard for you.”

  You’ve got no idea…

  “Don’t. Not now… I'm fine.” He scratches the side of his nose. She tilts his chin down in her direction, giving him a direct but empathetic look.

  “No. You're not."

  She can see right through him; the only woman who’s able to do that with him.

  He releases her, glaring in her general direction, not really looking at her. He can feel himself giving in to her. But he must stay cold. It's the only way he can do this.

  “Don't tell me how I feel, Becky,” he says, in a clipped tone, but it does little too deter her efforts.

  “Stop pushing me away then.”

 
“It doesn't matter."

  “Do you ever grow sick of hearing yourself say that? Because I'm sick of it. Of course it matters, Colt.” She sighs, her breath shaky. "Your feelings matter. They matter to me. I don't like seeing you like this. You try to pretend you're all right but I know you're not. Please...” She reaches for his hand. He backs away. "You can trust me."

  He swallows the stabs knifing at his vocal chords. “It's got nothing to do with trust."

  “Then what?"

  “Becky...” His voice dwindles, winding down like a dying man on the verge of his last breath. “You know why."

  She searches his face for answers but he refuses to give. She shakes her head. “I thought I did but I don’t. Not anymore. Not after everything you’ve done for me."

  He turns into a machine in front of her, a sheen of steel eclipsing his dark stare, shading his true emotions from view. “What happened between us is over now."

  “Over...” she repeats the word like it's foreign to her ears.

  “Yeah.” He watches her reaction under the glare of his deepened brow. Her emotions switch from disbelief to anger than back to disbelief, a gray reflecting off her pale skin, but she never looks away from him.

  “So it's over…? Just like that?" Her mouth shifts and her emerald eyes begin to ripple. “Wow—how do you do that?"

  He shrugs, not understanding. “What?”

  “Snap your fingers,” she replies, her fury making a leap into outrage. "Make yourself believe what you're saying."

  “Stop it,” he says, keeping his cool demeanor in place.

  "No. I think you should ‘stop it’.” She steps closer. He should step back. But he doesn’t. “It's not over,” she murmurs, under his gaze. "I won’t let you do this."

  “I told you—" His voice is the only thing that cracks as she moves a foot closer. “—I told you this from the beginning, Becky."

  “I know… but… after everything… I guess my heart made other plans… I thought you would too…"

  “I'm sorry.” He hopes the ghostly void in his eyes will tell her to not push any further. But she doesn’t let it trample her course of action.

  "I don't believe you."

  “I... am.” There are small tremors in his speech.

  “No. I don't believe you when you say it's over.” She forges ahead, latching on to the tiny ripple of emotion he’s been unable to shield from her probing eyes. “I know why you don’t wanna fight for this—for us. I see it in your eyes, Colt. You don’t think you deserve happiness—”

  “I don’t.”

  “You do.” She shakes her head, knowing she’s losing the battle. “This can’t be it."

  “It has to,” he says, his voice determined to push her away. “This is the way it has to be. It's better. For both of us."

  “Colt…” She raises her hand, presses the warmth inside of her palm into the side of his cold face. He should back away, leave, but it's too hard. Too hard to fucking leave her. "I know you don't believe that. You're lying. I can see it."

  “Don’t.” His eyes close. He's doing the right thing. They can never be. She deserves so much more than a cold-hearted killer like him.

  The spawn of the Devil.

  “You're lying,” she breathes out, in a hushed voice that wraps around his resolve.

  “No.” He shakes her off, clears his throat and backs away, her words tempting him more than she will ever know and he will never admit. They blur him from thinking straight. “No I'm not."

  “Who's the coward now, huh?”

  The harder the fight he puts up the more she seems to challenge him. The wall he’s erected around his heart is so well built, years of hurt and pain have made it indestructible.

  Until now.

  “You told me to stop hiding, take a few risks and I finally do and now you're the one hiding," she says.

  “I'm not hiding. I'm facing the truth,” he bites out. His blue eyes glow down at her like the Moon on a starless night. “You're the one hiding if you think we've any sort of future, Becky. This, right here, this moment is our future. That's it."

  "You won’t fight for us?"

  “Yeah."

  She’s angry. Good. This is for the best.

  “All those times we were together…” Her voice slips lower, moving under his skin like a warm current. His steel reserve hardens on the outside. "I know what I felt. I know what you felt when you made love to me till neither of us could separate an inch without wanting each other! I know you want this—"

  “I don’t." The clutter in his reply gathers and releases.

  “Liar,” she spits out, tears dripping from the sides of her eyes, down her cheeks, like blood.

  “I'm not lying.” He looks away, resting his gaze away from her. His eyes flutter shut again, squeezing just as his jawline convulses under the skin, tortured.

  “No, you're just the biggest chicken-shit I've ever met,” she says, wiping the wet under her nose. “You're just going to walk away, leave—never look back? Pretend I don’t exist?"

  “I’ve a job to do. A life waiting for me.” His whole body coils and tightens. If he moves, he'll break. He knows it. "One you can never be a part of, Becky."

  “What life?” she murmurs, wiping the tears.

  There’s no reply from Colt. He doesn’t know the answer to her question. He just looks at her, taking her in for the last time.

  “I want you to be happy.” His plea breaks the tense quiet that has fallen. “I can’t give you what you deserve.”

  She shakes her head and sighs. “Do something for me.” She gulps down the remainder of her tears, wipes the ones that stay on her skin.

  “Becky...” The string of tolerance he’s holding on to tips over. His hands come up from his side, his blue ice glaciers unrepentantly staring at her.

  She falters a small second and her eyes skid down to his lips, his dropping to hers. It's difficult to believe that they’re the same lips that he’s kissed, given and taken pleasure from him, ceaselessly. Their secretive time together will forever be engraved in him.

  “Kiss me,” she says, drawing closer, her nails dragging a trail over his jaw. “One last time... Please."

  She doesn’t give him an ounce, his rigid position never failing. On tip-toes, her lips graze him as she peers up with a doe-like seduction that clings to his bones. And then she kisses him, a gentle breeze of a touch that falls and waves back rapt with hunger. Inexperienced at being the aggressor, Becky's hand fists in his hair, her nose flattening into his cheek as her mouth traps his.

  She is sucking the last of his strength with every move. She rubs her lips against his, knowing damn well he fucking loves that, traces his mouth with hers as he feels the staccato quiver of her breathing melt the last of his restraint.

  He uses his hands to scoop her head in his hold and bring her closer, quickly dominating the kiss. His tongue plunders through her shaky actions and she instantly finds the rhythm his need is directing him toward.

  Her generous mouth opens up against his and he devours her, his lips suckling on the plump flesh, famished as his tongue works hers at a fevered pace. He nips her bottom lip, likes what he tastes so bad his skin grows hot under him and he nips harder, growing desperate for the feel of her.

  And then he realizes suddenly where he is and what he’s doing. The desperation wakes him, the rampaging necessity her kiss alters in him, shifting his priorities so effortlessly, it makes his head spin to think about how easily his enemies can use her against him.

  Her hands tremble as she tries to touch his face again, but he darts away, wiping his mouth. “Tell me that didn't mean anything,” she dares.

  He glares at her. "You trying to hurt yourself on purpose?"

  “Tell me!"

  “It's over. You understand—over!” he tears out, internally struggling as he grapples for a stronghold that had dissolved the second her lips touched his. Feeling bled out to his bones he orders under his breath, “Don’t do this. It’s
over. You know we can’t be together." Her head is already shaking. “Becky."

  “Thank you.” When he can’t find the words to express his confusion she continues, “For everything. I don't think I can ever repay the debt I owe you for what you've done for me and my family—"

  “Don't. I'm the one that owes you," he cuts in, struggling with what he has to say to her. "You saved my life."

  “I guess we evened out somewhere along the way."

  “It's over. That's all that matters."

  “Over, yes...” she concludes, with a softness that resounds lost in memory. A lone tear streaks down her face and she wipes it away immediately, but it's too slow for him not to see. “We can both finally go back to a normal life. Whatever that is now.” She laughs miserably.

  “Stay away from Wentworth Creek. People might get suspicious and start asking questions.”

  "I'll let my father know,” she complies, without argue. That’s a first. A first he doesn’t particularly like, because when she’s like that, it means she is letting herself get beaten by whatever she's feeling. He hates it when she does that. Tiny prickles scurry through him, itching to eradicate the mess he’s just made.

  Instead, he curls his fists at his side and with his chest tight, his tone tighter he says, “Take care of yourself."

  She bites her lower lip, the small flesh skipping under her teeth. “You too."

  “If there's any kind of trouble that involves—”

  “I'll let my father know,” she interrupts, backing away, looking at her family whom are waiting in the car. “I don't want to burden you more than I already have.”

  He holds her there. “That's not how it is and you know it."

  “Be safe.” Her dull eyes are lifeless as they teeter between his. “I know Mr. Kulich has a lot of enemies."

  “I'll be fine."

  Her mouth clenches down. “You always say that."

  “Because it's true. I can take care of myself."

  “I know you don't like people caring about you,” she says, remembering with a soft laugh that doesn’t reach her eyes.

  “It doesn't bother me as much anymore,” he reveals, in an aching whisper, not breaking connection with her. “Promise me you'll be safe,” he asks again, softer.