Tough Luck Hero (27 page)

He turned and pressed the plunger down in the French press, then poured her a cup of coffee, adding cream and peppermint. She didn't even yell at him for doing it for her, even though she doubted he had gotten the ratio right. He was being too nice. She would take her slightly wonky coffee, just because it had been such a thoughtful thing.

That thought disturbed her. That she was willing to take potentially gross coffee just because she was having soft fuzzy feelings for him.

Still, she accepted the coffee. And actually, it was good.

“Everyone is hiding,” he said finally.

“Everyone?”

“Yeah. I think so. I think it's easy to pretend you're doing the hard thing, that you're making the selfless decision, when you're really doing what will keep you safe. Or, I guess, the simple truth is there often isn't an easy thing. It's just that one decision protects you, and the other doesn't.” He took a deep breath. “I don't think staying with your family would have been easy. I don't think leaving was easy.”

“Maybe it was the same for your brother.”

He laughed. “Okay, Gage may have taken the only true easy way.”

“But you're assuming that it was easy. That he didn't go through anything. That it didn't cost him to walk away.” She swallowed. “Or that he doesn't care about leaving you with the consequences. Maybe he does. Maybe, he just thought it was worth it. I didn't leave consequence-free. It required adjustment for my family, and I know they weren't happy for me to leave, but they adjusted. Unlike your brother, I didn't cut them off completely, but I didn't make it easy. And it didn't make it wrong.”

“So it was all right for him to leave me with everything?”

“He didn't leave you with everything. He left. And you chose to be the one to pick it all up.”

Colton pushed his hand through his hair. “What's the alternative? To just let it go?”

“To trust that everyone in your family is an adult and they can take care of themselves. And to realize there's a lot of ground between abandonment and having your own life.” She straightened, taking a sip of her coffee, and looking at him square in the eye. “Do you think I'm weak, Colton?”

“Of course not. That's ridiculous.”

“I left. I left because as difficult as it was, as much as I want to support my parents, I can't be everything for them. My life is not in existence solely for me to devote myself to them. And you don't think there's anything crazy about that, do you?”

“No,” he said.

“Good. I don't, either. And there wouldn't be anything easy, or crazy about you doing the same. About you being up front with your dad and telling him that you aren't going to give your entire life to the family name when you want something for yourself.”

“I don't know if I can do that.”

“I want you to. You...you have no idea how amazing it is to finally tell someone. To be able to stand here and talk to you. I have never said most of this out loud. I've never had this conversation, not with anyone. Not with Sadie, not with Natalie, not with anyone. You're the only person who knows all of this about me. Telling you, having you hear me without judgment... You have no idea. You really don't. I want to give you something.”

“I can think of something,” he said, his gaze turning sharp, intense.

“I was thinking emotions,” she said, “not sex.”

“But I like sex. Emotions are terrible.” He leaned in, nuzzling her neck, sending a streak of lightning through her body. “This seems better.”

“I was mad at you,” she said, her tone faint.

“I know. But you aren't mad at me now.” He kissed her neck.

“I'm smart enough to know that you are trying to change the subject by getting me hot and bothered.”

“Is it working?”

She let her head fall back on a sigh. “Yes.”

“Good.” He kissed her again, and she started to forget what they were talking about.

“No,” she said, fighting against the fog that was crowding her brain. While at the same time wanting to latch on to it. There was something magical, something completely unique about the way that Colton made her feel. About the way that he commanded all of her focus, all of her control and all of her attention in a way that nothing else could. Her brain was a busy place; it was always working, always two steps ahead of the moment. Colton forced her to be in the moment. Something she had been avoiding for years, ever since she had first existed in a moment that was too painful to stomach. She had practiced being somewhere else. Practiced planning the next thing.

It was an effective block against dealing with strong feelings. And it had become a habit. To be somewhere else. To have one foot in the future in order to shift some of the weight from the present.

Colton stole that from her, and it was both a blessing and a curse.

“Colton,” she scolded, “we are talking.”

“I don't want to talk.” He kissed her lips, snatching the next words right from her mouth.

“Tough luck,” she said.

“Story of my life.”

“Yes,” she said, “I feel really sorry for you.”

“Not sorry enough.” He put his hand on her waist, his fingertips sliding up toward her breast, making her shiver. All of her focus went to that touch, to him.

“You're helping me become mayor,” she said, and for some reason, those words made him freeze. “I want to help you. I don't want to help you keep your mom happy. Although I do care about that. I want to help you with more. I want you to have this ranch, the way that you see it. Take it. Don't you think you're worth that?”

“You sound like a shampoo commercial.”

“I'm serious.”

“So am I.”

“If you're not man enough to take the ranch,” she said, hardening her tone, “I'm not sure you're man enough to take me.”

* * *

C
OLTON
COULDN
'
T
LET
that go unanswered. He had no idea what to do with this moment, how to classify this conversation. It was anger, baked goods and desire, mixed with a generous helping of soul-baring secrets. Only Lydia could ever bring all those things together. Only Lydia could make him feel like this.

When she talked about claiming the ranch, she made him feel like it was possible. When she talked about hiding, he felt like she was chipping away at his own defenses, at his own stronghold, built to protect him from all manner of things.

Things he didn't even have names for, because he didn't do this kind of weird self-examination stuff.

But then, he didn't do what he was about to do, either. Except, Lydia made him break all of his rules. Lydia made him into something different.

How the hell had that happened? How had the only person he'd ever met who was more uptight than he was managed to set him free? Who knew that somehow, they would be combustible together, when they had never combusted before in their entire lives?

He wrapped his hands firmly around her slender waist and lifted her off the ground, settling her on the counter, knocking her coffee cup to the side, sloshing some liquid over the edge. Her fork clattered off her plate. He was on the verge of causing a serious kitchen accident, and he simply didn't care.

“You want to say that again, peaches?”

“If you aren't man enough to take hold of your aspirations, I don't know if you're man enough to grab on to me.”

“I think I and my inoffensive penis could change your mind.”

She tried to keep a straight face, but he saw the corner of her lip turn upward. “
Inoffensive
isn't the word I would use anymore.”

“Oh yeah? What word would you use.”

She reached down, cupping him through his jeans, squeezing him tight. “
Big
, for a start.”

“Cliché. But I'll allow it because my ego likes it,” he said, his voice tight.

“Hard.”

“Uh-huh.”

She leaned in, her teeth scraping over his jawline, the feral little action sending a rush of pleasure down his spine, settling at the base and jetting to his cock.
“Mine,”
she finished, squeezing him even more tightly.

That left him completely undone. Incapable of response. Incapable of anything but submitting to her touch. He braced his hands on her thighs, pushing her skirt slowly up her hips, parting her thighs so that he could step between them. She didn't release her hold on him.

“I'm yours?” he asked, wrapping his arm around her waist, kissing her chin, adding his teeth, as revenge for what she done to him earlier. “I guess that makes you mine.”

She shivered beneath his touch and he gloried in it.

“You think?”

“I'm going to need you to say it, peaches.”

“I'm yours,” she said, giving the words easily, simply, as though they were the most natural thing in the world. And they left him feeling like he was in a free fall.

“Am I allowed to take you?” He slid his finger along the edge of her panties, feeling her wet and ready for him beneath his touch. “Or do you have more ultimatums?”

“How about I put it this way,” she said, her voice husky. “If you're man enough to take me, you're sure as hell man enough to take the ranch.”

He felt...unmanned. Completely and totally unequal to the gift that was spread out before him. This home, this land, this woman. He'd never done a damn thing to deserve any of them.

But that didn't mean he wouldn't take them. She made him feel like he could. Made him feel like he should.

But then, she made him feel like sex on the counter in his kitchen was a great idea. Lydia, possibly the only person on earth as sensible as he was. Somehow, together, they were wild.

She made him want to drop everything and have her all the time. She made him crazy. She made him something that went way beyond control, that went way beyond common sense and every other pillar that supported his life. Wanting her, being with her, it didn't benefit anyone. Anyone but him.

It had nothing to do with a staid, sensible future. Had nothing to do with carefully laid plans. It was heat, it was fire. It was destructive and it was restorative. It was absolutely everything, and whether or not it was a good idea, he couldn't turn away from it.

He pressed her more closely to him, holding on to her tight, pulling her off the counter before depositing her back on the floor, grabbing hold of her hip and turning her away from him. She gasped, and he leaned in, pressing a kiss to the top of her shoulder. “Trust me,” he said.

He unbuttoned her top, letting it flutter to the floor before making quick work of her bra. He cupped her breasts, teasing her nipples, marveling at the perfect, soft weight of them in his hands. There had never been anything so perfect, not in all the world. Not a sunset, not a swing, not a ranch spread. His entire world right now was Lydia Carpenter's breasts and their unmatched perfection.

Reluctantly, he slid his hands downward, reveling in the soft silk of her skin as he blazed the path down to her skirt, pulling her panties and all down to the ground. She was still wearing her shoes, which was the only thing that made her tall enough to do what he did next.

“Trust me,” he said again.

He protected them both, then tested the entrance to her body with the blunt head of his arousal. She gasped, her shoulders tensing. He pressed his palms flat between her shoulder blades, until he felt her relax. He reached around, one hand firm on her stomach, the other braced on her back as he pushed deeply inside of her.

“Good?” he asked.

“Good,” she responded, shivering delicately.

He moved his hand between her thighs, teasing the source of her pleasure with his every thrust, trying to push her higher before he reached the edge. Because he was so close, so desperately close. She was so tight, so hot, so undeniably his. No other woman had ever responded to him this way before, and he had never desired another woman like this. This was theirs. It was only theirs. It was intimate in a way sex had never been before. Intense in a way he hadn't known desire could be. And it was all wrapped up in things he normally would have turned away from. But he was turning into them now. Embracing them. Needing them. Needing her.

He was lost in her. In the soft sounds of pleasure she made with his every thrust deep into her body, in the sweet, floral scent of her that was so deceptive in its fragility, then wound itself around him like a creeping vine, threatening to strangle him with all of its feminine magic.

Just like Lydia.

From the first moment he laid eyes on her she had grabbed hold of something deep and unknown inside of him. And from that first moment, she'd had him. He'd convinced himself it was annoyance. That she was an irritation. Nothing more. And then she had continued to burrow her way under his skin, completely undetected. Until, when he was drunk, the first thing he'd done was haul her off to Vegas and marry her. Because that was how powerful it was. That was how powerful she was.

She'd said he had to prove he was strong enough to take her. But he knew for certain, he didn't possess enough strength, enough self-control, to do anything but take her. The road had always been leading here. From that first moment they'd met in Ace's bar, it had always been leading here.

He stroked her, moving his fingers over her slick flesh, responding to her every sound of pleasure, to her every command. Until he felt her lose control, her internal muscles gripping his body tight as she went over the edge. Then he gripped her hips, losing himself in her completely, losing his control entirely. He came on a ragged, uncivilized sound, his entire body shaking as his orgasm raged through him like a freight train.

He held her against him, his chest pressed against her back, still buried deep inside of her. He had started this to avoid talking about feelings. To avoid uncovering yet more uncomfortable, vulnerable things that he didn't want to deal with. And that plan had backfired spectacularly. Because this had left him feeling raw, exposed in a way he never had been before. He had no control. He had no strength. If she were to turn around and push him over he would fall straight onto his ass, and he wouldn't be able to get back up.