by Skye Warren
“Why do you care?” His tone is cold enough to freeze me where I stand, but I have a lot of experience dealing with assholes. I fell in love with one when I was sixteen.
“Because you’re doing the same damn thing to me that you did to her, putting her away when it gets hard, telling yourself that you’re doing it for her own good.”
He takes a step closer to me, his silence heavy. “It’s not you,” he says, and I shake my head.
“Don’t lie to me.”
“It’s not only you.” He looks more than pissed off; he looks shaken. As if my presence here bothers him on a bone-deep level. As if talking about this reaches to the core of him.
“What the hell is going on, Sutton? This is more than competition between two alpha males, isn’t it? I know it is. You’re hiding something.”
He turns away from me, proving the point. “It’s none of your business.”
A few steps and I plant myself in front of him again. “You had your cock inside me a few weeks ago. You played with my clit while you groaned my name. This is totally my business.”
His low growl reaches into my chest. “You could have said no.”
“I wanted you then.” I take a step closer, enveloped in the scent of earth and sweat and sex. “And I want you now. I think you want me too.”
An uneven laugh. “I look at you and I’m hard. You give me attitude, and I’m like goddamn iron. There’s about a hundred ways I want you, and when we’re done with that, I’ll think up a hundred more.”
He doesn’t take a step toward me. Doesn’t move a muscle. “What’s stopping you?”
“And when you’re done fucking around with me?”
I flinch at the word fucking, the way it’s laced with accusation. The way he makes it sound hollow. Isn’t he right? It’s not like we’re married, riding off into the sunset on three of his horses. We had a threesome after an illegal poker game. “Don’t tell me you found religion.”
Another low sound, this one menacing. He does move then, pushing me back, crowding me against slats of wood. “You don’t have one goddamn idea what I believe.”
“Then tell me,” I challenge, pushing back, my palms against his chest. They don’t move him any, but they give me an excuse to touch him. To measure him. To feel the muscles he’s holding in check.
He dips his head near mine. “You’re not the only one I dream about.”
My body responds to the seductive timbre in his voice, which is sad, really sad, because he must be in love with someone else. At least in lust with someone else. “Another woman?”
“No, sweetheart.”
I pull back, staring hard at those beautiful blue eyes. “You’re not—But he—”
“Go ahead and say it,” he says in a drawl. “Spell it out for the horses, here. They don’t understand.”
My cheeks feel warm. I’ve turned over every rock, searching, demanding answers, and now that they’re exposed to the sun, I’m suddenly worried. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“Oh, I think I do. After all I had my cock inside you not long ago. I played with your clit while I groaned your name. Isn’t that what you said?”
I swallow hard. “You… and Christopher?”
“No,” he says sharply. “Don’t get the wrong idea. We’re not an item. Never have been. Never will be.”
“But you want to be,” I whisper. “Does he know?”
A rough sound. “Does he know? I don’t even fucking know half the time. It’s a goddamn mystery. A riddle designed to drive me slowly insane. It’s un-fucking-knowable.”
All the pain inside him pours out. It’s always been there, simmering around him. Disguised as Southern charm, when really he’s caught in unrequited love. Unrequited desire?
“All this time,” I say, slowly wondering. I’m not hurt by this revelation, but there’s time for that later. “When you wanted me. It’s because of my connection to Christopher. When you took me to the theater, when you knelt down in front of me at L’Etoile. When you first saw me in your office.”
“No. Yes. Hell, I’m not lying to you. You take over every room that you walk into. I knew there was something special about you from the way Christopher talked, and then when I met you, it was over.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means it doesn’t matter whether I wanted to use you to get back at Christopher. Or to get close to him. When I saw you, when I got to know you, I fell for you, not for who you were to him.”
“Oh, and you just magically got over him?”
“No,” he says, as solemn as I’ve ever seen him. “I wish it were that simple.”
I let my hands fall to my side, away from him. The loss feels like a physical blow. “You never really wanted me. Tell me the truth, Sutton. I deserve that much.”
Something dark moves beneath those blue eyes. “Christ. Want you? I didn’t want you, sweetheart. It was a craving. A need. Do you know how much it tore me up?” His voice comes out ragged, a man at the end of his rope. “I’ve spent the past six months trying to get you out of my head.”
“Did it work?”
His gaze doesn’t leave mine. “I wake up hard every morning, your taste on my tongue.”
“It’s as close as you’ll ever get to Christopher Bardot. Is that it?” My voice is taunting because I’m too shaken up. Too aware that I was between these men, both physically and emotionally. “You really want to suck his dick, but I’m the one who got to do it.”
He grabs my hand and presses it against his jeans. The denim is well-worn from washing. I can feel him hard and impossibly hot. “This feel like I don’t want you?”
I squeeze gently, and he makes a sound low in his throat.
“Go back to Tanglewood,” he says, a little breathless.
He’s thick and ready in my hand. I could push down my skinny jeans and turn around. He would be inside me in a matter of seconds. We would fuck like animals in this barn, but what would happen next? We’d have to face the reality that he wants Christopher.
And maybe I’d have to face the reality that I want Christopher, too.
I take a step back.
His blue gaze takes in every inch of me. I’m standing in the most unsexy pose in the history of the world, but he looks appreciative. My clothes might as well be see-through. There’s a world of promise in that gaze. And for maybe the first time since his revelation, I think he might have been telling the truth about wanting us both.
All this time I wondered whether it was possible for me to love two men. The complexity of that. The pain of it. And Sutton had been struggling with his own impossible choice.
I’m not completely clueless when it comes to boys.
Sometimes it feels that way when I’m torn between Christopher and Sutton, when I’m a small boat tossed between an unforgiving night and stormy seas. But I used to give excellent advice when it came to boys. Everyone at Smith College came to me with questions—both the girls and the boys. Gay, straight, bisexual, whatever. I’d only ever had my fingers between my legs, never a man, but that didn’t matter. I still knew the way boys thought. I knew what made them tick. I predicted their next move before they even figured it out.
But I had no idea that Sutton was interested in Christopher all along.
Had I been blind because I wanted Sutton to be interested in only me? Or had he really buried the feelings down so deep that they were almost invisible? It makes me wonder what else I’ve been missing.
Well, maybe that’s the difference.
I’m not completely clueless when it comes to boys, but Christopher and Sutton—they aren’t boys. They’re men. And I’m finding them as mysterious as living, breathing surrealist art.
Yes, Daddy made me cynical about men. Maybe my mother did that too, marrying so many rich assholes after him. I assume the worst about them, but they just keep proving me right. Even Christopher, which breaks me anew every single time. Who puts me back together with those rare moments of tenderness.
Sutton fills the doorframe, his body ridiculously handsome in a thin T-shirt that hugs his arms and falls loose at his waist. And the torn jeans that have no right to look that sexy.
His face is in shadows, but I feel the torment radiating from him. “Can I come in?” he asks, a little gruff. I’ve seen him in a business suit making decisions around a conference table. I’ve seen him with his sleeves rolled up and a hard hat on, giving orders to a construction crew. There are a hundred ways he shows his strength, but he’s never seemed as masculine as he does now—when he’s achingly vulnerable to me.
“Is this a booty call?” I ask, hand on my hip.
He looks down at the row of pumpkins, each featuring a different-shaped cock. There’s long and short, thick and curved. “Is that what you want?”
“A bunch of cocks?” I glance back to where Casablanca plays on the TV. Mom fell asleep before the French national anthem drowned out the German soldiers. “Maybe it’s what you want. We should call Christopher so you can have a good time.”
The words are a challenge, and Sutton responds with a small laugh. “Call whoever you want, sugar. But don’t pretend it’s because you don’t want him.”
I reach for his wrist, ignoring the spark when we touch, ignoring the play of tendon and muscle within my grip as I pull him inside. “Oh, come in.”
He leans back against the door after he closes it. His arms cross, which make them bulge in a way that’s hard not to admire. “Where did you see all those, anyway? I know you were a virgin when Christopher fucked you.”
“There’s lots of different kinds of experience,” I say in a haughty voice, as worldly as Ingrid Bergman on the big screen. She was a lover to one man and married to another, a feat she managed with total grace. I bet she never wondered if she was going insane.
Sutton doesn’t look convinced, so I admit, “Naked models in art class. They aren’t really supposed to be erect, but someone would usually tell dirty jokes until they got hard.”
“It was you, wasn’t it?”
“Okay. Yes. God.”
His lips quirk. “And I bet they went home and jacked off all night long.”
I can’t help but dip my gaze to the bulge in his jeans, the denim worn around the edges. My breath hitches as I remember what he felt like inside me. He makes a growling sound. “If you look at me that way, I’m going to do something about it.”
My feet back up before I can plan a retreat. Apprehension and desire war in my body. “Mom’s not in bed yet. We’re watching a movie.”
His eyes don’t leave mine. “I can wait.”
That’s what I’m worried about. I’ve never met a man with more patience. More determination. And it’s scary, because I can feel my defenses crumbling every second. Only I’m not sure what he’s fighting for—Christopher or me.
Or maybe some combination that can never come true.
Sutton helps me wake up Mom, who says she hadn’t actually slept for an hour of the movie. She insists on playing cards with Sutton, who agrees with an easy smile. I make hot cocoa for everyone—extra marshmallows for Sutton—while my mother wins three rounds of gin.
It’s almost possible to believe she isn’t sick until it’s time for her to go to sleep. Then I help her walk up the stairs because she’s too weak to climb them herself. I tuck her into bed like she’s a child, because it’s one of the only things I can do.
There is an assortment of herbal medicines I hand her, one after the other. The only prescription medicine she allows is something that helps her sleep.
“That Sutton is a nice man,” she says, her voice soft. “Not like your daddy.”
Acid burns my throat because I think she’s right.
And because I think she’s wrong.
He’s not mean like Daddy, but even Daddy was nice once. He had been in love with the woman who now looks so frail beneath the pin-tuck comforter. It was his own ambition that made everything terrible, and both Sutton and Christopher have plenty of ambition.
A feeling of melancholy settles over me like falling leaves on the front lawn.
Downstairs I find Sutton with a bottle of wine and two glasses. That’s how we end up in front of the fireplace, my toes warm from the gas fire. The scent of pine cones fills the air—an affectation from the expensive fake log. It’s not exactly a rustic scene, but it pretends to be one.
“So what’s the deal with your not-sister?” I ask, taking a sip of wine.
“My what?”
“The woman I met at your ranch earlier this year.”
“Ah.” He stares into the fire, his jaw square and shadowed. “I already told you I worked on a ranch. My daddy was a drunk and a bastard, but he had a way with horses, which is why they kept him around as long as they did.”
How many frat boys have I sat with, taking confessions from them like I’m some kind of female priest? Never has it been as important to me as now, never have I strained forward, hungry for every word out of his mouth.
“He had a way with women, too. Slept with most every woman in a hundred miles, despite the fact that he had no money and not a speck of kindness.”
If he had half his son’s good looks, it didn’t exactly surprise me. Those blue eyes could charm anyone into anything… in my case, they charmed a virgin into a threesome. “You hated him.”
“Everyone hated him, but no one more than me. There were all these blue-eyed kids. People whispered about it. But in the end they got to live somewhere else. I was the only one stuck with him.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Hell… I don’t… It’s old news around here. Everyone knew about it. Except maybe Whitney. She was younger than me. Maybe people were more careful about what they said around her.”
“And she had a crush on you?” It’s disturbing enough to have a crush on my stepbrother; I know what that’s like. But it would be way more disturbing to have had a crush on an actual blood relative. That would be hard to live down.
“I tried to discourage her without telling her. In the end it was some kid at school who gave her the bad news, and by then she was humiliated. Didn’t speak to me for a year. She forgave me in the end, but it was unfortunate.”
“You probably just… made her feel safe. When you’re young, that feels like love.”
“The ranch was worn at the edges when I worked there. By the time I grew up, her daddy had died and the place was in debt. It was the first property I ever bought.”
“Not the last.”
He comes to stand in front of me. “The library was the last.”
Only a foot of air separates us now. I have to look up to meet his gaze. “Christopher has a way of ruining a person, doesn’t he? You meet him and boom, it’s all over.”
That earns me a faint smile. “You’re pretty destructive yourself.”
I place my palm on his chest, feeling the steady rise of his breath, the beat of his heart. “You feel nice and solid. Put together. Not broken at all.”
“A trick of the light,” he says softly, blue eyes intent on mine.
“Have you told him?” I whisper because confessions can’t come too loud.
A slow shake of his head. He retreats to the armchair opposite mine. “What would I say? He makes me want to punch him in the face. He makes me want to climb out of my skin. There’s not a word for what I feel when he’s in the room.”
“Desire?”
“The closest thing would be… maybe obsession. The most unhealthy, fucked-up kind of obsession. It made me throw my money in with his. Made me go after the woman he loves.”
Obsession. “Do people ever just meet and fall in love and get married?”
That earns me a soft laugh. “I’m sure you’ve met plenty of well-adjusted guys in college. Why aren’t you married to one of them alre
ady?”
“I don’t know,” I say, but that’s a lie. I wanted magic and fireworks and the kind of explosive chemistry that changes my DNA. It makes me sound too naive to admit that.
“I’ll tell you why. Because none of them could have kept up with you, none of those pumpkin cocks would have been enough.”
His words echo on my skin with total truth. Those frat boys who brought me lukewarm beer in a plastic cup, the ones who lured me into an upstairs bedroom only to collapse into confessions at the slightest sign of kindness. They couldn’t have handled the real me, and the thought gives me a sense of power. A sense that, amid my confusion and doubt, I’m in the right place.
I’m wearing jeans and a T-shirt, my makeup smudged after a long day, drops of water on my shirt from helping my mother shower before bed. This is the least sexy I’ve ever been, but I become a siren right here in this armchair. I’m a seductress for the ages as I stand up in front of Sutton. His blue eyes darken, proving me right, goading me on.
It doesn’t really matter what I look like, anyway. I’m burned out on grief, desperate to feel something real. Maybe I want Christopher, but so does Sutton.
All we have in this moment is each other.
“What are you doing?” he asks, sounding amused. “Do you want a new model for your pumpkins? Because I have to tell you, I’m not going to stand very still like the boys at art school. I’m not going to get hard for your entertainment.”
“No?” I ask, reaching for the hem of my T-shirt. I have on a plain white bra underneath, but it might as well be black silk for how proud I feel once I’m bared. “But I would heckle you so nicely. And I think you’d enjoy it, Sutton, I really do.”
A muscle ticks in his jaw. “You are playing with fire.”
“Sometimes a girl wants to get burned.” I push my jeans down my hips and step out of them, revealing plain pink panties that are soft from washing a hundred times, and he sucks in a breath. He’s already hard, judging from the way the denim stretches taut between his legs. He’s tense everywhere, muscles flexing in his arms, his thighs. His whole body held at alert.
His voice is hoarse. “If I get up from this chair I’m going to have you bent over the side of the couch so fast you’ll get dizzy. I won’t bother taking off your panties, I’ll push them out of the way so I can get inside you. I’ll reach under your bra and touch your breasts, pinch your nipples until your tight little pussy squeezes around my cock.”