To make him shake and sweat and come.
Bad road. Her mind had gone down a bad road.
“So, that was...fun,” she said, clearing her throat.
He shot her a glare that could only be described as evil and bent to get his T-shirt, tugging it over his head, and over her happy fun times ab show.
“I take it fun isn’t your adjective of choice,” she said, knowing she was making it worse, unable to stop herself from warding off the awkward silence with even more awkward words.
He took his underwear off the floor and stuffed them in his pocket. She would have laughed if it wasn’t all so horrible. Actually, she might have laughed anyway because anything so singularly hideous had to be a little bit funny.
But she didn’t laugh because she didn’t want Eli to kill her with those very angry brown eyes of his.
Though, they were starting to make her angry, since it wasn’t like she’d assaulted him. He was the one who had kissed her.
He had kissed her and now he was glaring.
And just like that she went from tingly to uncontainable rage.
“Please don’t stalk around here like I compromised your maidenly virtue. You kissed me. You pushed me against the wall. You were complicit in the screwing. So get over yourself.”
His nostrils flared and a muscle jumped in his jaw. “I am well aware that I’m at fault here.”
And that made her bristle, too. “At fault? You make it sound like we had a fender bender. It was sex, Eli. There doesn’t have to be a guilty party.”
Color slashed over his cheekbones and she knew that he felt...ashamed. Of her. Of wanting her. And that just made her feel like garbage. All the glow was gone. All the good everything. And the anger, too.
It just left her with a sharp sinking sensation, a feeling of aching uncertainty. And just like that, the fear, the knot of terror that seemed to be a constant companion, was back in her chest.
And she wanted to run.
Not just from the room, or the house. But from the town. The state. She just wanted to leave it all so far in the rearview mirror that she couldn’t see it. That she wouldn’t be able to remember this regret.
“Why don’t you just go,” she said.
He nodded once and walked out the door, closing it firmly behind him. And she realized they hadn’t even locked it. They’d screwed in the entryway of a place that seemed to have revolving doors on every structure and they hadn’t even locked up.
“I wish I could go,” she said, pressure building in her chest, tears stinging her eyes.
She cried. Of course she did. At the end of books, during commercials for life insurance and movies with intense acts of bravery that were sure to end in death but were performed anyway.
But she didn’t cry over real-life things. Because she kept negative space, negative emotion, out of her life. And she didn’t feel it. She didn’t let it get down beneath the surface when it did run out to confront her.
But Eli had managed to get inside her, and not just in a sexual way. It was...terrible. She leaned against the wall, her heart slowed down to a dull thud that resonated in her ears, her stomach turning, making her feel sick.
Okay, she was not going to wallow. She was not. Wallowing didn’t solve anything. And repeating the same mistakes twice didn’t solve anything, either.
One good thing about growing up with her abusive asshole of a father: she’d learned about human nature in a harsh and real way. Had seen what happened to the optimistic when they believed a bad situation could change with love. With lying to yourself.
She’d come out of that with eyes wide-open. And with a ruptured spleen, but that was another matter entirely.
She sucked in a deep breath and managed to hold back the tears. She wasn’t going to cry over Eli. It was a spilled-milk situation. Or rather, spilled lemonade. She just needed to wipe up the mess and carry on.
She heard the soft thump of four paws hitting the kitchen tile, and then Toby wandered into the room, rubbing against her bare legs, his gray tail twitching up above his head.
She bent down and scratched him between his ears. “I messed up,” she whispered, because her voice didn’t seem to want to function on any other level. “But I guess that’s par for the course, right?”
Toby meowed and pushed his head harder against her hand, angling so that she hit a particular spot just behind his left ear.
“How do you put up with me?” she asked, and was met with nothing but a request for more head petting. Which in many ways was just fine. “Kitty before mantitty,” she said, moving her hand beneath his chin and scratching.
This was just a onetime thing. A moment of insanity. She should be grateful it had happened. Yes, grateful. Because the intensity brewing between them wasn’t healthy. And it had needed some diffusing. That was what today had been. She could draw a line under it and call it good.
What was sex like with Eli? Question answered. What did he look like naked? Question very much answered. There was no more burning curiosity. None.
And that meant the tension between them should be somewhat relieved. So there.
She took another breath, some of the tightness in her chest easing. There was no reason to be upset. They were adults, and they could handle this. Eli would be fine next time she saw him. He’d just been suffering orgasm hangover and hadn’t handled things well.
But everything would be fine.
It had to be.
CHAPTER TEN
IT WAS PIZZA night for the Garrett family, and it should have been somewhat enjoyable. Usually, Eli liked the routine of them assembling in the main house for an evening.
Even though there weren’t a whole lot of sunnier times for their family to be reminded of, they’d always had each other.
The three of them, and sometimes Jack, against the world.
But tonight he wasn’t enjoying it to the degree that he should, and all because of Sadie. Because of Sadie and the fact that, only four hours ago, they’d had sex against a wall, which he’d never, ever done in his life.
Because that spoke of a lack of control he didn’t even think he was capable of. Never before had a kiss just turned into sex.
When he had sex with a woman, they both knew it was on the agenda and things followed careful steps. Living room couch to bedroom. And then out the door again because he didn’t spend the night, but it was okay, because they didn’t expect him to.
It did not just...happen like that. Almost against his will, and certainly against his better judgment. But one minute they’d been shouting at each other, the next they’d been kissing, and then...then he’d been about knocked on his ass by the intensity of his orgasm.
Before he knew it he’d been upstairs in her bathroom, totally naked, pouring cold water down his neck so that he could get back downstairs and out the door again without popping wood when he saw her.
He’d spent the rest of the day riding his horse around the pastures, doing essentially nothing but trying to pound his balls into submission with tight jeans and a punishing day in the saddle.
Unfortunately, he’d just ended up replaying the scene in Sadie’s house over and over.
“Why are you scowling?” Connor asked from his position at the counter, where he was sitting on a bar stool and inhaling his pizza. “Scowling is kind of my thing, and I feel like you’re edging in on my territory.”
“Scowling is your thing? I thought the Robinson Crusoe look was your thing,” he said, indicating Connor’s beard and hair, which were both starting to get a little long.
“I can have more than one thing.”
“What’s my thing?” Kate asked, leaning forward on the counter, speaking around a mouthful of cheese.
“Bad table manners and objectifying construction workers, apparently,” he said, his words a little testy since, in fairness, it was Kate’s fault that he’d gone looking for her in Sadie’s house. It was his sister’s damn sex drive that had put him in this position.
&nb
sp; Her cheeks turned pink and she looked down. “Thanks for ratting me out, bastard.”
“Objectifying construction workers?” Connor said in mock horror. “That’s shocking. Did you whistle at them and say, ‘Hey, baby! Why don’t you drop that hammer so I can watch the view’?”
“I did not,” she said, looking like she was about to fold in on herself.
“Missed opportunity,” Connor said.
“Whatever,” Kate said, pulling a piece of pepperoni off her pizza and putting it in her mouth. “You would lock me in my room if I ever did that.” She stuck her thumb in her mouth and sucked the grease off it loudly.
“Honestly,” Connor said, “I don’t worry much about you and men.”
Kate looked genuinely offended by that. “Why not?”
“I have my reasons,” Connor said.
Relationships, or hookups, which was the veiled content of the conversation, were not Eli’s favorite topic just now, so he was keeping his mouth shut.
“So what happened the other night?” Connor asked, his focus on Eli now. As if his older-brother sense told him that Eli was clamming up to avoid talking about something.
“Which night?” Eli asked.
“You dragged Sadie out of the bar and returned ten minutes later. She looked like she’d been scolded. You looked like you’d accidentally branded your own ass instead of a calf’s. What happened?”
“Why are you choosing this moment to start paying attention to what I do?”
“I always pay attention. It’s just you don’t usually have anything happening. And I want to know what’s happening with Sadie.”
He thought about earlier. Soft skin under his hands, her full breasts...what it had been like to take one of those perfect nipples into his mouth. How wet she’d been.
Mind-blowing, cock-busting sex.
“Nothing,” he said.
“Yeah, I don’t believe you.”
“They’re avoiding each other,” Kate said, looking at him almost apologetically. “Well,” she continued defensively when he shot back a mean glare, “it’s what she said when you were at the house earlier. When you busted us creeping on those guys.”
“I’m avoiding her because she’s a pain,” he said.
“And yet you told Jack to keep his hands off.”
Kate’s head whipped around to Connor. “Jack is interested in her?”
“Jack,” Connor said, “is interested in tits. Whether they’re attached to Sadie or not is immaterial. They are the new breasts in town, and therein lies the attraction.”
Kate lowered her head and mumbled something that Eli didn’t understand.
“What was that, pumpkin?” Connor asked.
“Gross,” she said, a little louder, and a little crisper.
“Men are. Your life lesson for the day,” Connor said.
Seemed like it was Eli’s lesson for the day, too. Since he’d done a fantastic impersonation of a pig today.
“To be fair, Connor,” Kate said. “I appreciate a man’s ass in a pair of Wranglers.”
Connor looked like Kate had hauled off and slapped him with her meat-greasy fingers. “Sure,” he said.
“I just meant Jack’s attitude is gross. Sex isn’t gross at all.” Kate was looking mutinous now, and Eli’s blood pressure was rising because he didn’t need sex talk just at the moment. And he needed sex talk from Kate never.
“That’s enough,” Connor said.
“I mean, if a guy wants to look at my tits I’m not going to—”
“Did someone spike your Diet Coke?” Eli asked.
“I’m just sick of this overprotective crap you guys always pull. ‘Boys are gross,’” she said, in a bad imitation of Connor’s voice. “‘You’ll get cooties if you touch them.’”
“I never said that,” Connor said.
“You told me penises had teeth,” she said, deadpan.
Eli’s head whipped around to face Connor. “Did you really?”
“I don’t remember,” Connor said.
“You did,” Kate said. “I spent the next two years concerned for the health and safety of the inner thighs of every boy I knew.”
In spite of his mood, Eli laughed. “I’m sorry, that’s just funny.”
“Brothers are horrible,” she said.
“I know, but we’re also the best you have,” Eli said. Poor Kate. They were all she had, and they fell short in so many ways it verged on tragic.
“You’re good for some things,” Kate said. “Not as much for others.”
“The same could be said for anything,” Connor pointed out. “Badgers. Great for being kickass in the woods. Bad for sharing a shower.”
“Connor...” Kate groaned.
“Krazy Glue. Good for sticking things together. Bad for personal lubricant.”
Kate scrunched her eyes shut and stuck out her tongue.
“I rest my case,” Connor said. “Men are gross.”
“You’re gross,” Kate said.
“Your mom is gross.”
“My mom’s hygiene is open to interpretation because no one has seen her in nineteen years.”
“Sorry,” Connor said. “Bad joke.”
“Sure,” Kate said, looking dismissive, “but she’s your mom, too.”
“Barely,” Eli said.
She was the woman who had left them all to drown in chaos. His father slipping away on a wave of alcohol while the kids were left to pull themselves up from the wreckage of glass bottles, unwashed clothes and garbage.
To say that Eli had come out of it a little bit of a neat freak was an understatement. Order and control had become essential to survival, and bleach had been a weapon he’d employed early on.
If Connor had become the man of the house, Eli had become the housewife. No thirteen-year-old boy wanted that job. But they had Kate to worry about. And dammit all, worry didn’t even begin to cover it.
But Eli and Connor were both old enough to realize that if rumors about their dad’s drinking got passed around, there was a high likelihood CPS would step in. There had been too much loss for them to be split up. For Kate to be taken away from them. For them to be taken from the ranch.
And so they’d done whatever they’d had to.
School days had been torture for a while. He’d been in hell wondering if his sister was being cared for while he was trapped in a classroom, Kate in a crib while his father drank the day away.
Fortunately, Connor did more with the ranch as a fifteen-year-old than their father had ever done, and they’d earned enough money to put Kate in full-time day care.
So Connor would get up before school and do what needed to be done on the ranch, and Eli would get up and wake Kate. Give her a bath, wash and braid her hair. There was too much to do for him to allow chaos, too much at stake to ever let Kate look like she was less than lovingly cared for.
Connor and Eli had kept up appearances until the old bastard had driven off one of the winding Copper Ridge roads five years ago, drunk as hell, and nobody had been in the dark after that.
In so many ways, it was easier with their dad dead. At least they didn’t have to take care of him now, too.
Well, you did a terrible job of taking care of him in the end.
He shook that thought off. What the hell was wrong with him today? Sex against a wall and this stupid stuff.
He didn’t like reflecting on the past, and he wasn’t really sure why he was doing it now. Maybe just because today sucked like that.
But did it really suck? Because, be honest, you’ve never had sex that good.
No, he hadn’t. And that made it even worse.
Because no matter how bad of an idea he thought it was, he wanted more. The temptation to shove her down onto the floor, hook her legs over his shoulders and have his way with her had been way too big, which was why he’d stormed out of there as quickly as he could.
Because he didn’t trust himself. He almost didn’t know himself, and for a guy like him, that was a ter
rifying admission.
“Well, genetically,” Connor said, “I think we can all agree that other than in the looks department, we lost the parental lottery.”
Eli almost laughed at that since Connor was currently looking shaggy enough that it would take a very close inspection to decide whether or not he was good-looking.
“But seriously,” Kate said, “brothers are actually good for a lot of things. So... I’ve never felt like it was so bad.”
Eli cleared his throat. “Dammit, Kate, why’d you have to get all sincere?”
“You have to warn a guy, Katie,” Connor added.
“Call me Katie again, and I won’t say anything nice to you for the foreseeable future.” And it was all back to normal already.
Okay, he’d screwed up earlier. No denying that. And things were going to be weird for a while. And hard for a while, which was a potential double entendre Sadie would have enjoyed. But he still had Kate and Connor. And his run for sheriff. So most areas of his life were fine. He was just going to rope off that little disaster labeled Sadie and avoid it for the time being. Pay attention to the good and ignore the wreckage.
The incredible, mind-blowing wreckage.
He took a bite of pizza, even though he wasn’t hungry. Tomorrow he was back to work. And with any luck, that would help keep his mind off things he had no business thinking about.
* * *
CAMPAIGN SIGNS AND posters weren’t enough, it seemed. Not for the general election. TV ads and radio spots were needed. According to Lydia at least.
He knew those things were probably necessary, and he’d done some checking into it already, but there was something about the way Lydia talked about the election, filled with spark and enthusiasm, that made it seem like a very daunting reality.
Made him fear it was just too damn much to take on. The feeling he was sinking beneath a pile of endless work was one he’d had for most of his life, so it wasn’t new. But it didn’t mean he had to like it.
He ought to slap a campaign manager button on her chest and hire her right here in the coffee shop. But that would mean constant exposure to this level of energy and ideas, and he wasn’t sure he could handle that now.
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