by Maisey Yates
“Can’t,” she said, her voice thin now, breathless. “It’s impossible to be mad at you when you do that.”
“That’s interesting,” he said, flashing a wicked smile at her. “Makes a man want to try.”
He wrapped his arm around her, planting his palm between her shoulder blades, holding her steady as he let his other hand drift down to her stomach, all the way down to the waistband of her jeans.
“Somehow I don’t think you’re trying to make me mad.”
“No. But I might be trying to change the subject.” He flicked the button on her jeans open and drew the zipper down slowly.
“And I might allow it. For now.” She had achieved one portion of the victory she’d been aiming for. She hadn’t allowed him to push her away. So she would stick a little flag in that and claim it as a triumph for Kate Garrett.
It was either that or she was weak.
She didn’t really care which it was at the moment.
He slipped his hand down between the fabric and her skin, his fingertips teasing the edge of her underwear. His expression changed, the mischief, the wickedness gone, replaced by that intense focus he’d treated her to earlier. As all-consuming as the things he made her feel were, as intense and wonderful as it was when he dipped his fingers beneath the fabric of her panties, gliding through her slick folds. Watching the intensity on his face as he set about the task was almost more compelling. Almost.
His touch set her on fire, created a deep, restless ache, the impression of a spark that was about to burst into flame.
She touched his stomach, hot and unbelievably hard, pushing the hem of his shirt up before pulling it resolutely over his head. It forced his hands away from her body, but it was a small price to pay to earn the pleasure of seeing him.
Of giving herself another chance to look at him and really feel what it did to her. Rather than trying to push it down, rather than getting angry, rather than acting disgusted. She had spent so long pretending because she hadn’t been able to deal with what it meant. That gnawing, beastly ache in her stomach that seemed to appear whenever Jack was around. It grew more intense when he lifted something heavy or stripped down to nothing more than his jeans.
She remembered, vividly, when he’d done that during the rebuilding of Connor’s barn. The show she’d put on about being irritated that he was showing off.
No wonder Liss had figured it out. With hindsight, with less innocence, Kate could see her own excuses for the paper-thin constructs they were.
“You’ve gone very still,” Jack said. “Either there’s a rabid wolverine behind my head about to attack, or you’re thinking.”
“Wolverine. Stay perfectly still if you value all of your body parts.” He went still beneath her hands, his muscles tensing. She leaned in, kissing his neck, angling her head and biting his ear.
“I’d say I have to worry more about the badger-cat than the wolverine,” he said, his voice rough.
“It’s true. I am fearsome.” She pressed her mouth to his, then nipped his lower lip.
She reached between them, making quick work of his belt, opening his jeans, then pulling his underwear down to reveal the package beneath. He shifted, raising his hips and reaching behind him, digging in his back pocket until he produced his wallet. “Very important,” he said as he opened it and fished out a condom.
“Very.”
He took care of the necessities, his jeans only partway down his hips still since she hadn’t ceded her position on his lap. “Katie. I’m desperate.” He sounded it. And she would have been lying if she said she didn’t like that.
She stood, getting rid of the rest of her clothes before moving back to him, over him. She waited for nerves, for uncertainty. She’d never done this before, and it was putting a lot of the control into her hands when their other two times Jack had firmly led the way. But her nerves didn’t show. The confidence she had found in a fleeting moment during their kiss outside, and more permanently when he’d demonstrated just how much she affected him, held fast.
She put her hands on his shoulders and rose up on her knees, adjusting her position carefully, reaching down and taking hold of his thick arousal and guiding it slowly inside of her body as she lowered herself onto him. He wrapped one arm around her waist, anchoring her, and reached up, gripping her chin between his thumb and forefinger, tilting her face down, forcing her to meet his eyes.
Jack was big on eye contact, and that was another thing that sent a wave of satisfaction through her. He wasn’t tuning her out, concentrating only on the physical feeling. He was forging a connection between them. Far from denying that she was the woman he was with, the way he looked at her, with such focus, proved that he was embracing this. That he wanted her, not just the way sex made him feel.
She moved above him, trying to recall the way he did things when he set the pace. The speed and pressure at which he seemed to lose control. She rocked forward and he released his hold on her chin, moving his hands to grip her hips, holding her steady without taking the control.
“Is that okay?” she asked, breathless, barely able to force the words out.
He didn’t say anything. His only response was to kiss her, deep and savage, none of his skill or carefully learned moves on display. But it was okay. She liked it. Jack was all around her, in her. And she was more than happy to be consumed, by him, by this. By the firm grip of his hands on her hips, his lips, his teeth, his tongue. And those blue eyes that looked into hers, unflinching, uncompromising.
Emotion expanded in her chest, blending with the pleasure unfurling in her stomach, both of them bleeding out and meeting the other, mixing together until they were one and the same. It was so all-consuming, so very much, that she could barely breathe.
And all the feelings down deep beneath that layer she had uncovered today rushed up inside her. It was too much, too much for a woman who had only just discovered that all of this existed within her. And now she was being pelted with it, like raindrops, hard and sharp, threatening to break through her skin in the downpour.
And the only thing keeping her from succumbing, from being completely destroyed, was those blue eyes. Familiar where everything else was so foreign.
“Jack.” She hadn’t meant to say his name out loud, but she was beyond thought, beyond control.
His grip tightened as he began to meet her thrust for thrust. And then she lost the thread of who was in control and who wasn’t. It was equal, a joint pursuit. Him following her, her following him, each of them recognizing what the other needed, what the other wanted.
His movements became erratic, rough, pulling her body down on his as he thrust up to meet her. He moved one hand from her hip and placed it on her cheek, drawing her down nearer to him and kissing her throat, his teeth scraping over her delicate skin. She tightened her hold on his shoulders, bracing herself as he flexed his hips one last time, pushing her from the outskirts of the storm into the center of the tornado.
It roared over her, in her, through her, but Jack held her steady. Even while his own release shook his frame, he held her.
When it was over, she raised her head, half expecting to look around the room and find furniture upended, papers scattered everywhere. But everything was the same. Even the spreadsheets they’d been looking at before were in their place, completely undisturbed by what had just passed between them. It didn’t seem possible. The disconnect between what had happened inside of her and the state of the room was too sharp for her to process.
He patted her thigh and somehow she recognized it as a signal he needed her to move. She complied. He disappeared from the living room and returned a few moments later with his jeans done back up and the protection taken care of. She hadn’t bothered to get dressed again. Instead she took the blanket that was draped over the back of the couch and pulled it over her body.
He returned to the couch, sitting next to her, his denim-clad thigh pressed against her blanket-covered knee. She wanted to say something, to use words to connect them now that their bodies were separated. She poked at the woven elk on the blanket, considering, flashing back to the conversation they’d been having right before they’d stopped talking altogether.
“I don’t remember our mother at all.” The words slipped out before she’d fully committed to speaking them. Jack had that effect on her. Always had. “Sometimes I think maybe that’s a good thing. How can you miss something you don’t even remember?” She swallowed hard, her throat getting tight. She resented the emotion that was creeping over her. It was messing with all of the good things Jack had just made her feel. And she didn’t like feeling anything on the subject at all. “But...at least if I had a memory, it would be clear. The pain, I mean. Instead it’s just this weird ugly black hole that opens up inside of me sometimes. At the strangest moments. Not on Mother’s Day or anything like that. Just sometimes when I see a woman taking care of a child. I remember one time I saw a little girl pestering her mother in the store, and the woman looked so tired. And she was frustrated, it was obvious. Obvious that parenting wasn’t easy or fun all the time. But she was there, Jack. She stayed. And I... I just stood there staring. Wondering why my mom couldn’t stay for me. I don’t have an image of her in my mind, nothing specific to even be angry at. But sometimes I am.” She cleared her throat. “I don’t even feel like I have the right to be. Eli and Connor gave up everything to take care of me. They are the ones that should be angry. I didn’t lack for much, because of the way they handled things. Why should I feel sad at all?”
She searched his face, because part of her really wanted an answer to that question.
Jack was staring straight ahead, his jaw clenched tight, his gaze distant. “The way I figure, if people have a right to leave, if they have the right to never show up at all, we have the right to be as angry as we want to be. Appreciating what Connor and Eli did for you doesn’t mean you can’t be hurt by why they had to do it.”
“Are you angry?” she asked, the question almost a whisper.
“All the time.”
She studied his profile. Strong, visually perfect. Straight nose, square jaw, dark brows and a fringe of lash that somehow never, ever made him look feminine. He appeared to have it all together. He seemed happy, carefree. Her brothers had often commented that Jack never had to try, that good things fell in his lap, that luck followed him around like a slobbering puppy.
But he was angry. And in that moment she saw it. In the hard lines of his face, the tension in his muscles.
All the time.
He was angry all the time.
“You don’t show it,” she said, her words strangled.
“You don’t show yours, either.”
“I don’t feel like I deserve it.” She sucked her lower lip between her teeth. “How would it make Eli and Connor feel if they knew...?”
“Screw them, Kate.” He turned to her, his eyes blazing. “This isn’t about them. Your feelings aren’t about them.”
“But they—”
“Right. They’re wonderful. And they love you and they cared for you, but shit, that doesn’t mean that everything was fine. It doesn’t mean that being raised by your teenage brothers was as good as two functional parents would have been. Of course you’re angry. Of course you are.”
He spoke with such strength, such conviction, and she knew that beneath those words, that vein of anger running through them, was rage for himself.
She had a feeling she would have to show hers first. That he needed permission to let his out. Well, hell, so did she. So maybe they could give that to each other.
“I am angry,” she ground out, “because...because my mom left and what the hell was I supposed to do when I needed a bra? Or...or pads or tampons or whatever? Ask my brother’s wife. Ask a school nurse.” She should have been embarrassed, but she was too upset to feel embarrassed. She had never talked to anyone about this before, had barely let herself feel it. “I sure as hell wasn’t going to talk to my drunk dad. Sometimes Eli and Connor would need him to pick me up from something. And he would...get drunk and forget. I remember being in junior high and sitting there waiting. Teachers just look at you all sad and kids wonder who gets forgotten. What must be wrong with you.”
“He was a drunk, Katie. That’s why he forgot.”
Her throat became impossibly tight, an ache spreading down from her chin to her chest, blooming outward. “I don’t think he really forgot.”
“Of course he did.”
She shook her head. “No. I think he hated me. I think he was punishing me.” She felt as though she’d just ripped back the skin on her chest and exposed a dark, ugly secret that lurked beneath. Exposed all her blood and organs and a darkness she’d never wanted anyone else to see.
“Why would you think that?” Jack asked. And she was glad he hadn’t tried to tell her she was wrong.
“I reminded him of her. Not because I looked like her, but because I was... I was the reason she left. I was an accident. The kid they weren’t supposed to have. The one that tipped it over into being unmanageable. The one that made her leave.” Her voice broke and she forgot to be horrified by the show of emotion. “I’m the one who made her leave.”
Jack leaned in, folding her up into his strong arms, holding her against his bare chest. “You didn’t make her leave. Best argument she could make in her defense is that her demons chased her away. Though in my experience, demons like you where you’re at. The better to torment you. She walked with her own two feet, and nobody made her. Certainly not a two-year-old girl who deserved her mother. There was nothing for you to earn, Kate. That’s the kind of thing we’re supposed to be given from the moment we come into the world. The love of our parents. I’ve earned a lot of bad things in life based on my own actions. But I didn’t earn my father’s abandonment. Not right at first.”
“Are you talking about when you met him? A few weeks ago.”
She hadn’t asked him about that. Not since that night. Because he hadn’t brought it up, and she wanted to respect his silence. But they had gone somewhere past careful respect in the past few minutes. She was open; she was exposed. And she craved something similar from him. So that she didn’t feel like she was alone, sitting here on his couch with her heart out in the open.
“I didn’t know my father. I still don’t. But I’ve known who he was since I was eighteen.”
“You...you have? Do Connor and Eli know that? Does anyone know that?”
“No. Because I found out who my father was the day his attorney offered me a payoff to never tell anyone. They thought I knew. I didn’t. But I took the money. And I signed their nondisclosure or whatever the hell it was. I paid to make myself disappear. I sold myself.” She wished that she could see his face, but he was still holding her close. She wondered if the look in his eyes matched the bleak tone in his voice. “It wasn’t luck that made me rich. It was my father.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
JACK DIDN’T KNOW why he was sitting here opening a vein and bleeding all over Kate. Maybe because she had gone first. Because he wanted her to know she wasn’t alone. Because for the first time he didn’t feel alone.
A strange shift had happened in his life, and he could hardly figure out how or why. Eli and Connor had been his best friends for as long as he could remember having friends. And he’d never even been tempted to talk to them about this. In turn, they’d never spoken about the way they felt. With their mom leaving, their dad a drunk, their entire life focused on the responsibility of caring for Kate and the ranch. Of course they hadn’t. They were men and men didn’t talk about their feelings.
And he’d never had a long-term relationship with a woman. Never been in a situation where he wanted to talk to women about an
ything but which position they liked best.
Kate was different. She was different from those women, and she was different from a friend.
She was Kate. That was the beginning and end of it.
“Your dad gave you money in exchange for you...keeping yourself a secret?” Kate’s tone was incredulous, and he couldn’t blame her.
“Yes. And I took it. It was all the child support money my mother had refused all of our lives. And then some. I was so angry, Kate. So angry when I found out, because we had lived in that trailer that was falling down around us for all of my life. Because she wouldn’t take his money. Because she had too much pride. She was disappointed to discover that I didn’t suffer from the same problem.”
“Is that why she...?”
“Why we don’t speak? Why she moved into a different trailer about fifty miles away? Yeah, I think so.” He laughed, leaning his head back, tightening his hold on Kate, suddenly very aware of the warmth of her body pressed against his. “I traded a lot of things for that money. My relationship with her. My fantasy of ever having a relationship with my old man. My fantasy that he was somehow decent, just unable to be with us for some reason. My self-respect. It’s tough to feel proud about that kind of decision. So I felt like I better make damn sure I used that money well.”
“That’s why you ended up in the rodeo.”
“Something I never would have been able to afford to get into otherwise. Without it, I don’t know. I would probably be working at the gas station store or working as a hired hand for Eli and Connor. Sometimes I think that might’ve been better. There’s a lot of honor in something like that. Working for every bit of what you have instead of getting ahead of the game by taking a handout.”
“That isn’t what you did. What your father had was yours.”
He shrugged. “Is it? I mean, I get that legally he owed us a certain amount. I get that morally you could make the argument that what a parent has also belongs to their children. But I’m not sure that in reality it made his money mine.”