I need to get out of here, but I’m afraid to move.
If I move, he could wake up. And I’ll have to stare him in the eye, and everything will be so awkward because…well, what now?
Exhaling, I take his wrist within my fingers, and it’s so thick I can only curl my fingers around halfway. I’m not breathing as I try to lift his arm off my body. He grunts and shifts his arm downward again, to grab my hip and spoon me even more.
And he’s…hard.
Fuck me. But I guess…he wants to do just that.
I’m in bed with him, and I’m trapped. There’s no escape. I should probably stay here, turn around, and get one lick down those perfect abs. Get one taste of the very cock that—in all honesty—will probably bruise me. He is fucking big and he is fucking hot. How would it be to have him giving it to me hard?
I’m getting wet.
Why did I even spend the night?
I start when I feel him shift me around. With those incredible blue eyes staring straight at me.
I hold my breath, and he raises his hand and curls his palm around my cheek.
I close my eyes, dreading that he will touch me anywhere else and that I won’t have the strength to make him stop.
Instead, the bed squeaks as he shifts his weight halfway on top of me, and he says in my ear, “I don’t see her in you.” I squeeze my eyes tighter shut as he goes on, his voice dark and almost threatening. “It’s been too many women this past year and in all of them I see you.”
He holds my face and the silence stretches, and I will myself to open my eyes to see blue, just blue, crackling and so alive—and so angry.
“You’re mad that I took her memory away? Keep her. Keep her memory alive if that’s what makes you happy.”
“It doesn’t.”
He brushes his thumb over my lipstick.
I let him. “If there’s anyone in this world who will understand you not being willing to go through that again, it’s me.”
“Do you really? Why are you driving me crazy then? Why do I need more women, more often? Why can’t I get you out of my skin?”
“You feel you’re being unfaithful if you slept with me because it wouldn’t be her.”
A mad muscle plays angrily in the back of his jaw.
“Oh wow.” I blink. “You just never know someone, do you? A ladies’ man like you, faithful to one girl.”
We hear noise downstairs in the kitchen.
“I better go. I don’t want them to assume that we…” I push at his chest and then hurry to go change. “I’ll meet you in the kitchen,” I say in a rush, and then stand at the door. “Tahoe.” I attempt a smile but it trembles on my face. “You were always honest that you couldn’t give me what I wanted but still…thank you for telling me.”
*
“Tahoe’s out with Dad,” Livvy says from the breakfast table when I finally go downstairs, after heading to my bedroom to shower and change.
I join her for a meal of eggs and hash browns.
“I’m surprised he brought you here, you know?” she chattily says. “We’re all surprised. Lisa died on the day of my parents’ anniversary. It made the whole thing a little bitter for him, to celebrate a day when you mourn too.”
“I didn’t know she died today,” I say, setting my fork down.
I’m suddenly not hungry anymore.
Livvy’s expression saddens, then she claps in forced cheer. “Well. My mother’s thrilled you’re here. She wants him to have good, better memories. It was so hard to watch him. So frustrating. He doesn’t like being helpless and has never allowed himself an inch of vulnerability ever since.” She eyes me somberly. “He likes you. And I mean, likes you likes you.”
She smirks, and it’s so adorable, because she smirks almost like he does.
“He looked at Lisa tenderly, as if she were something he needed to protect. He looks at you like a man does a woman he really cares about.”
I try to dismiss her words, but I’m scared because my mind actually clings to them with the kind of fervor only the truly hopeless do.
Can Tahoe’s wounds really heal for him to love someone again? Can he ever even let himself feel something for me?
I’m quietly wondering when his dad comes into the house and tells me Tahoe’s waiting outside to take me for a ride.
Excited by the prospect, I wash my plate quickly as Livvy ushers me out, then I head outside and into a huge barn. I take in the sight of half a dozen horses in the stalls, and I am especially intrigued when I spot a mechanical bull right in the center of the horse stables, amidst a set of mats surrounded by hay.
I take in the bull and the tall man swiping it clean with a blue cloth. Seeing him, there’s a frisson of warmth running through my body.
“You have a bull in your backyard?”
“’Course. Nothing like riding a pissed-off bull.” He pets the seat meaningfully while a grin flirts across his lips. He quirks his left brow. “Try it, Regina?”
“You try it,” I dare.