Between the Sheets (11 page)

“I’m fine,” she said, though it was obvious she was confused. Scared.

“Mom’s ready to look through those photographs with you,” Shelby said meaningfully, but Deena needed very little prompting.

“Looking forward to it. Why don’t you get settled, Evie, and I’ll get us something to drink.”

Evie shuffled off into the living room, where all the boxes of loose photographs and the albums were stacked.

“Are you all right?” Deena asked.

“Is it that bad?” She smoothed down her hair, wiped her thumbs under her eyes only to pull them back covered in black mascara.

“You just look like you’ve been smacked around some.”

“Some,” she breathed, but it rattled in her chest. Through her body, as if it were made of tin cans and string. “I can’t leave …”

Deena shook her head and grabbed her hands. “Nonsense.
We’re fine. Your mom is calm now. She’ll have forgotten about it already.”

“I can’t.”

“You can and more importantly, you should.”

“How do I—?” She stopped, swallowing the words and the tears.

Deena took a deep breath. “You need to think about care, honey.”

The tears again, and she had to look away or fall to pieces in Deena’s soft, strong arms. “She hasn’t had an episode like that in a long time. I think … I think it’s just because I’m dressed this way.”

“So you should never dress up again?”

Shelby shot her an arch look, because Deena knew it was more than that. It wasn’t anything that could be simplified into a question of either/or.

“You look beautiful, honey. Just beautiful.” She smoothed Shelby’s hair down and handed her a Kleenex to clean up her mascara.

“Thank you,” she said, gathering up the edges of herself, but they were jagged and sharp and she felt herself shifting under her skin. Writhing and squirming. Distressed and out of sorts. “But I really don’t think I can—”

A loud knock at the door interrupted her. “Damn it,” she muttered. It had to be Ty. It was seven forty-five and he must have crossed the street to get her. She ran to the front door before he knocked again, setting Mom off.

She took a deep breath at the door, formulating a lie about a stomachache or a sudden migraine, anything that would keep her from having to sit at a table with him and pretend everything was okay.

Hoping her smile didn’t look as bad as it felt, she pulled open the door.

It was Ty. Ty in a denim and shearling coat over a
light blue sweater that made his eyes look like the sky in August. His breath steamed in the cold air, small puffs from his beautiful lips. Sudden, sharp, and unpredictable lust lit a dangerous spark and the combustible emotions in her chest, her heart—they went up in flames.

“Wow,” he breathed, taking her in. “You … you look great.”

“Thank you,” she managed to say, past the sudden horrible raging heat in her blood. “You, too.”

“You ready? I don’t mean to rush you or—” He tilted his head, the smile draining from his face. Those blue eyes, they turned cold. The color of ice. “Are you okay?”

He lifted a hand, as if to touch her cheek, where perhaps there was a pink mark from her mother’s hand, but she shifted away, unable to be touched like that by him.

With compassion. With kindness. She would shatter like glass under his kind touch.

She swallowed down a thousand responses. The truth, versions of the truth, outright lies. She swallowed down all of them. Where they boiled and burned in her stomach. She felt her own break with reality coming and she needed to change her clothes, put her hair back up in a ponytail. Remind herself who she was.
I am my mother’s daughter. Her caregiver. Everything else has to slide in around that
.

“I’m sorry, Ty,” she said, closing a door between them, one she never should have opened. “I don’t think—”

Suddenly, she was pushed from behind out onto the porch. She turned, only to have her coat thrown over her head. She yanked it off to see Deena grinning in the doorway.

“Go,” Deena said. “Get drunk. Don’t come back for at least two hours.”

And then the door slammed behind her. Ty and Shelby
stared at each other under the porch light. Which then blinked out.

Ty’s laughter rumbled through the partial darkness.

And she couldn’t help it—she just gave up holding onto who she was. She just dropped every jagged edge she’d been clinging to and she let her world fall away. All of her pretenses.

This is Dean all over again
, she thought, panicked.
This is some kind of awful self-destructive behavior. I use sex with inappropriate men as a coping mechanism. How can this be okay?

But she knew in her gut that Ty wasn’t Dean. Ty wasn’t going to hurt her, not the way Dean had.

“I don’t want to go on a date,” she whispered, staring down at her boots.

“Oh.” He sounded surprised. Hurt even. “Well, then—”

She was past worrying about whether or not this would work. Whether it would turn around and ruin her life in a few months. The pressure release valve was in danger of breaking right off, her whole life about to implode.

And she had to do something.

“Follow me,” she breathed and stepped off the porch toward the barn.

Chapter 7

Ty had been around the block a time or two, and if it were any other woman leading him across the silver-tipped grass to a dark barn, he’d think he was about to get lucky. But this was Shelby, and she’d answered that door looking both gorgeous and like she was about to twitch right out of her skin.

I’m either going to get laid or she’s going to take an ax to my head
.

She pulled open the door and turned on a few of the lights. The chandelier she’d been fixing now hung above the small gathering of couches near the flower wall and created a gold pool of light.

“Would you like a drink?” she asked.

“Sure.”

“All I have is bourbon.”

“Bourbon is fine.”

She threw her coat down on the low table where they’d sat the other day and he followed suit. The barn wasn’t freezing. She must have had it insulated at some point. He contemplated his couch choice: a blue velvet thing that looked like women used to faint on it or a big, fat leather couch with some of the stuffing coming out. He chose the leather and sat in the corner of it, one arm along the back, the other along the armrest, and waited to see what was going to happen next.

Who knew a date with Shelby would feel … dangerous.

It was a good sign when she came down the small,
dark hallway with a bottle of bourbon and not an ax. He noticed the bottle was the good stuff, too. And she had two mugs.

Volatile energy poured off her and he was surprised the lightbulbs overhead didn’t shatter as she walked under them. As she got closer, her energy, like a virus, spread to him and he felt the hot coil of need in his belly.

Need. And want.

She sat across from him on the blue velvet couch. With her hair down like that and the flowers behind her, she looked like a woman from a different era. A different time. A pristine, beautiful lady in an ivory tower somewhere.

He wanted to get her messy. Dirty.

She put the mugs down on the floor and poured a hefty double shot in each mug.

“We’re getting drunk?” he asked.

“That’s my plan.”

He nodded and accepted the mug. She lifted hers in cheers and then shot it down.

“You … okay?” he asked. She leaned back over to pour more bourbon in her mug and her hair fell down over her face, over her arms. So much hair, a golden curtain.

He liked it. Imagined it against her bare chest, that golden hair obscuring her pale skin. Her pink nipples. He imagined it in his fist. The silk of it caught in his fingers as he pulled it, making her cry out.

A deep breath shuddered and shook in his lungs and he took a big sip of the bourbon.

The need and want she inspired in him scrubbed away at the polite veneer he was determined to hold onto.

“Not really,” she said. She drank another ounce and took a hissing breath. “I am not really okay.”

That she wasn’t all right wasn’t a surprise. It was all
over her face. But that she was being honest and telling him that—that was a surprise. And, kind of an honor. “Can I help?”

She laughed, glancing at him through her hair. “Probably.” She downed what was left in her mug.

“I feel like we should get some food in you if you’re going to drink like that,” he told her, putting down his mug. One of them needed to have a clear head.

“I don’t want to go out to eat.” Those level brown eyes saw right through him. Past skin, past muscle and bone. She looked right at his heart, beating hard with anger and lust and frustration.

Anticipation sizzled through him. It had been a very long time since he’d anticipated this. And never with a woman like her. Someone so far out of his realm of experience. The whole act felt new.

“What do you want?” His voice was low. Hot. Loaded.

“I want to fuck you.”

Hard. His cock was hard as stone in a heartbeat. The world swam for a second and he didn’t fully grasp the implication of her getting to her feet and crossing the small, worn rug to stand between his legs.

And then she sank to her knees.

“Shelby,” he breathed, part prayer. Part
are you sure you want to be doing this?

“Do you want this?” she asked. Again, straight to the point. No bullshit.

He nodded, speechless.

“Me, too. I just … I just want to forget for a little bit.”

It took him a second, because he didn’t intend this. He’d expected a dinner date, some small talk. He’d even been polishing up his bad first date stories to tell her over the appetizer. But at the root of his attraction to Shelby, at the base of it, was
this
.

He wanted to forget for a little bit, too.

She tucked her hair behind her ears and when she looked at him she was steadfast. Rock solid. Whatever had driven her here, between his legs, she was making this choice. She wanted to be down on her knees in front of him.

He stretched his arms back out and shifted his hips forward slightly on the couch and she took him up on the subtle invitation. Her fingers moved over his belt, the buttoned fly of his jeans. On fire, he pulled his sweater over his head and she glanced up, her eyes running over his chest like fingers. She shifted on her knees, her lips falling open, her brown eyes dilating, and he felt stupid hot pride swell through him. He liked the way this woman looked at him. He liked
her
, but suddenly, the way this was playing out was totally wrong. It was hot that she planned to kneel between his legs and suck his dick. But he hadn’t even kissed her. And a woman like Shelby, she should be kissed.

He grabbed her waist, feeling the tension of her muscles and the soft give of flesh, and pulled her up into his lap, shifting so her legs were split over his, her butt against his knees. She tried to shift closer, but he kept her there. Someone had to slow this shit down.

“I haven’t even kissed you,” he whispered.

She blinked at him as if considering his proposal. “Okay.”

He cupped her face in his hands, his fingertips pulling on the thin strands of hair by her ears. “You’re beautiful.”

She flinched. “Don’t—”

He sat up, stopping her words, sealing her lips with his. Softly at first, because she was that kind of lady. Because whatever sexual instinct he had, he had the good sense to do the opposite with her. Instead of feasting
on her, opening her mouth with his tongue, sucking on her lips, he pressed his closed mouth against hers. A little respect, because she was something to revere.

The heat of her sigh against his cheek inflamed him but he kept it slow. Gentle. She put her hands against his shoulders, the fingers curling over the muscles to bite into the skin on his back. He hissed against her lips; he loved that touch. The sharp pain of a woman’s nails against his back. Nothing threw gasoline on the fire better than that.

Slow
, he told himself.
Slow
.

She leveraged herself against him, crawling upward on his knees until she was fully in his lap. The heat of her pussy hard against his dick. He recited the parts of the Velocette carburetor in his head.

She licked at his lips, merciless and driven. He stopped trying to resist it and let her in. The kiss he wanted, she gave him. And then some. Hot and wet, sucking at his lips, his tongue, she raked her teeth over the inside of his lip. Her hands left his shoulders and cupped his head, yanking out the ponytail until his hair filled her hands. She gathered it up and
pulled
.

He yanked his mouth away, more turned on than he could handle. “Slow down—”

Her eyes were wild and she pressed herself hard against the erection in his jeans. “I don’t want slow.” Her hands dropped his hair and ran down his chest, her fingers trailing across the muscles of his stomach down to his belt. He didn’t stop her this time. He was powerless to stop her, and her fingers slipped in the gap of his open jeans and grabbed him through his boxers.

“Fuck,” he breathed, the word nearly soundless. He arched his head back and she leaned forward, licking his throat, biting at the soft skin under his chin. He jerked in her hands.

“I don’t want gentle,” she whispered into his ear. And
then she sucked the lobe into her mouth, bit at the tender flesh with her front teeth, and he nearly twitched right out of his skin. His hands grabbed her hips, his fingers curving over her ass, and she moaned into his ear.

The walls could have come down around them. The place could have been on fire and it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but this sudden surprising heat that melted them together.

“Honey,” he breathed, lifting a hand to stroke her hair, but she dodged it. Instead, she gripped his hair in her hands, fists of it like she didn’t care if she hurt him, like she
wanted
to hurt him. He hissed and arched against her, unable to stop himself, unable to curb this wild violence humming between them, a motor running at full throttle. She pulled his head back until he met her eyes. “I. Do. Not. Want. Kind.”