Untouched (18 page)

“That’s fine. I don’t want it. Not from you. You’re my mistake, remember?”

“Well then, Ms. Mitchell, what do you want? Because you seem to have it all figured out.”

“I do,” she said, craning her neck, looking like a little heiress. In a baggy t-shirt with stringy hair.

“And it is?”

“We have an affair. Physical only. And in the end we part ways several orgasms richer. How does that sound to you?”

“And what about Cade?”

She bit her lip. “I don’t care.”

“Do you want to keep it a secret from him?”

“He’s a pretty great secret keeper himself. It seems like I’m entitled to a few. Plus, it’s not my brother’s business who I want to have a strictly physical affair with. It’s not like I’m going to bring you home for dinner.”

This was all getting tangled. Cade knowing Quinn was sleeping with his sister would be a hell of a way to goad him. He’d thought so almost from the get-go. But that was when the sister had been more abstract. Now that he knew Lark, and most especially now that he’d been with her, he didn’t want to bring her into it.

And wasn’t that unexpected? A conscience he didn’t know he had had kicked into effect. Sure, it was on a low hum, behind the drive for revenge and absolution, but it was there.

“He doesn’t have to know,” Quinn said.

Of course, in the end, it wouldn’t really matter. He was intent on taking Cade down if he had to, regardless of his personal relationship to the man’s sister. No matter how he played this, Lark was going to end up getting hurt.

“No,” she said. “He doesn’t have to know. But I want this, Quinn. I want it for me.”

It was too easy to say yes, and anything that came naturally to him was probably the wrong choice. He’d learned a few things in life, among them that being good was hard, and being bad felt good. Until the next morning when you woke up with a hangover or ended up in jail.

That alone should have been enough of a reason for him to say no. For him to turn and walk away and go sleep in a different bedroom.

She was too young. She was too inexperienced. And no matter how he played it, she was going to get hurt. Better he pull the plug now than later. Better he stop things before they went too far.

They already had.

He looked at the blood on his comforter and swallowed a lump rising in his throat. There wasn’t really any fixing it. And she was looking at him like he was the solution to something. A solution she needed badly.

“Let’s get one thing very straight,” he said, speaking before he thought his words through. “I’m not going to fix any of the problems in your life. You sleeping with me? It’s not going to make anything easier. It’s not going to give you anything but memories. Hell, it might even make your life harder in the end, because that seems to be the effect I have on people.”

“Does that mean you want to have an affair with me?”

Quinn looked at Lark, his heart raging, his body aching. He unzipped his jeans, shoved them down his hips, and got into bed with her.

Want didn’t come into it. There was an element of need that ran through all of this, something that seemed to be driving him, pushing him past that sudden, reemerging conscience and into Lark’s bed. Well, his bed. With Lark in it.

She smiled, and it was like the sun breaking through the clouds. He didn’t deserve that smile. He didn’t deserve this moment, or any of the moments that would come after it. But he was going to take them.

Because it was so easy for him to be bad. And it was so hard to be good.

She curled herself around him, smooth legs tangling with his, warm breath fanning over his chest.

“Quinn,” she said.

“Yes?”

“Don’t ever try to protect me from me again.”

He hesitated for a moment, then leaned down and kissed her hair. He let out a long breath. “All right, baby. But who’s going to protect you from me?”

“You’re not as scary as you think.”

Except she didn’t know. Not really. She didn’t know the real manner of man she was letting hold in his arms. Hard drinking, hard fighting. The man who had been rejected by every person who, by genetics or the fact that they’d raised him, should have at least grown an attachment to him.

“When you say things like it only makes me sure you need to be protected.”

“And you’re the one to do it?”

“I’m not sure the lamb should be asking if the big bad wolf can protect her. Can he? Sure. Should you trust him? No.”

“Mmm . . . big bad Quinn. Why am I not scared of you?”

“I haven’t bitten you yet,” he said, only half-joking. “Don’t you realize that I’m the guy you’ve been warned about all your life?”

“Probably,” she said. “But I went after you. I seduced you.”

“You seduced me?”

She raised her eyebrows. “Don’t sound so surprised. You’ll wound my pride.”

“You were a virgin.”

“And so?”

“I’m older than you.”

Her lips stretched into a wide grin. “Hot.”

“Excuse me?”

“Older men,” she said. “Rawr.”

“I’m not an older man. I’m thirty-four.”

“You’re lots older than me, baby.”

“You’re just a lot younger than me.”

Her smile broadened. “Yeah, do you think that’s hot?”

He tensed. “No.”

“Why not? I think it’s hot that you’re older.”

“Because it’s not . . . I don’t . . .”

“Because it’s not okay to think it’s hot that I’m younger? And that I was a virgin? That I picked you to be the first man to ever touch me like you did? To ever let you inside of me?”

He was getting hard. Damn that woman. “No, it’s not okay.”

“I thought you were bad. I thought you were a bad, bad boy. But you’ve never even debauched a virgin before. And now that you have you’re sweating bullets and getting ready to go to confession or something.”

“Sleep, Lark.”

“I want to have sex again.”

And now he was sporting a crowbar between his legs. “No.”

“Why not?”

“You’re probably really sore.”

She wiggled against him, nipples hot on his arm, the thatch of curls between her legs brushing his thigh. And he pulled back like she was burning him. “I don’t feel sore.”

“Woman, you don’t—”

“Are you about to tell me I don’t know if I’m sore?” She gave him a look that could have burned him through a wall.

He arched his brow and put his hand between her legs, stroking her gently. A sweet, sexy sound escaped her lips, a smile curving them upward. He slipped a finger inside of her and she winced. “See?”

“I like it,” she said.

“And would you like it about this size?” He took her hand and wrapped it around his cock.

“Probably not,” she said, squeezing him.

“So wait then, until you will. I know you’re bristly about being told what to do, or told you don’t know about something, but at least trust that, while I’m not quite the defiler you thought I might be, I know a few things about sex. I don’t want to hurt you again.”

“You win this time, Parker.”

“Oh no, I don’t consider this a win.” He moved his hand around to her back and held her close. “But it is the right thing to do.” The one right thing in a list of wrong choices.

“I’m sleepy anyway. And pissed.”

“What are you pissed about?”

“Cole,” she said, “and Cade.” She yawned, her eyes fluttering closed. “In the past couple hours I’ve screamed down my brothers, cried till I wanted to throw up, and lost my virginity. You’re right, Quinn. I am tired. So tired.”

He pulled her in close and stroked her hair. “Then sleep.”

And then she was. And he was left there with a raging hard-on and a pain in his chest that wouldn’t go away.

Chapter Thirteen

“Did she answer her phone?”

“No.”

Cade put his face in his hands, then started pacing the kitchen. As fast as his leg would let him. He felt particularly horrible tonight, in every way.

His stupid body was failing him, at thirty-one, and he’d gone and failed his sister. He was one giant fail today.

“I don’t even know when she left,” Cole said, sitting down at the kitchen table. “I looked out the window last night and her car was gone. And it’s still gone. I called down at every hotel.”

“Did you call Longhorn Ranch?”

“They aren’t listed in the damned phone book,” Cole said.

“Did you Google it?”

“Yes. I did. That number doesn’t get you the ranch in Silver Creek; it gets you some corporate office.”

“She always has her phone,” Cade said.

“Yeah, and I think she has it now. I just think she’s opting not to speak to us.”

“That’s not like her either. She usually lingers and growls.”

“I think this isn’t like anything else, Cade. I think we screwed up. And I think she’s really angry, not just regular angry.”

“You know who screwed up,” Cade said, pacing and trying not to wince when his foot made contact with the slate floor, “is dad. He’s the one who messed everything up. He’s the one who did this. He’s the one who put us in this position. First by cheating, second by dying. This is his fault.”

“It’s not his fault he died.”

“The affair. The . . . kid, is still his fault.”

“She’s not a kid. She’s twenty-five.”

“Yeah, older than Lark. And how is she going to feel when she finds that out? All she has of mom are vague memories. She had the most of dad. And now what she believed is gone. It’s ruined.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Cole said slowly.

“It didn’t for you?”

“I’ve let it. I don’t know if that’s fair. I’ve made some pretty big mistakes. I married the wrong woman the first time around. I know you’ve made mistakes. Does that make everything we’ve ever done a mistake?”

“Getting philosophical? Let’s make one thing clear: If you ever cheated on Kelsey, I would disown you so fast your head would spin,” Cade said. “I don’t care if you cured world hunger while your dick was in that other woman, and it was the magical power of her brilliant vagina that led you to the discovery. You would be dead to me.”

“Good to know. I’d never cheat on her though.”

“I know. But I’m just saying. I’m saying that it
does
matter that much. It does to me. And I knew it would for Lark. And that’s why . . . that’s why I didn’t want her to know.”

“Yeah, and now she’s Lord knows where doing Lord knows what, so there was clearly a flaw in the plan.”

“As long as she’s safe. Maybe she’s at a friend’s,” Cade said, sure, even as he said it, that she wasn’t.

“Does she have friends? Not being condescending, but does she? Away from the computer, I mean.”

“I don’t know. And if she does, I have no idea where to look.” That was surely a big brother fail. But then, this entire thing was a big brother fail, so where was the surprise in that?

“Well, damn. You mean we have to trust her to get her ass home all by herself?”

Cade ground his teeth together, a muscle in his cheek twitching. “I guess so.”

“Trust and respect, I guess?”

“Yeah. Trust and respect,” Cade said. “Forced on me by my lack of foresight. I would have put a tracking device on her car if I would have been thinking ahead.”

“I think you missed the entire point of why she’s pissed at us.”

“No, I didn’t. I’d make sure I didn’t get caught. She wouldn’t know.”

“You’re a dumbass.”

***

Jill took a long, slow breath of the air, of the hay and warmth, dust and pine, and smiled. Things were starting to feel . . . different. Not fixed, maybe, but like she and Sam were building something new. Learning about each other again. Or maybe about who they’d become, for the first time.

Sam came out from the cabin, came to stand behind her. She was so aware of him, in a way she hadn’t been for years. She could feel the heat from his body, could feel his presence.

He walked up to her, wrapped his arms around her, resting his hands on her stomach, his chin on her head. “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” she said.

“I hope you slept well.”

“Better than I have in a long time. You?”

“You wore me out.”

She blushed. She’d been doing that a lot lately. Sam wasn’t shy about saying things to her that were definitely not for anyone else’s ears. He hadn’t always been like this. Her sweet, ma’amming, hat-tipping, cowboy husband would have never dreamed of saying the F-word in her presence before. Oh, maybe if he smashed his thumb with a hammer while he was out in the garage. But not during sex. Not
purposefully
.

He did now though. Often. Just thinking about it made her warm.

“I deleted the emails,” she said.

“What?” he asked, his voice rumbling against her back.

“I deleted those emails. I don’t need to keep them. I’m sorry that I did.”

“I’m not.”

“Oh, really?”

She felt his nod. “It made me wake up. It made me realize that if I didn’t make you feel the way a man should make you feel . . . someone else would. And it would be my own damn fault if you had to look somewhere else.”

“It would never have gone that far.”

“But you deserve more than what I was giving you. And I . . . I know things aren’t fixed yet. I know we have to put all this, the talking and the sex, into practice in the real world. I know we have to keep doing it. Right now it feels easy. It’s like falling in love again, except . . . I was already in love. It’s better, actually, than the falling. It’s going deeper. Discovering something new about the most important thing in your life. I know later . . . it might not always feel this easy. But we still have to. I still have to.”

She swallowed past the lump in her throat and leaned her head back, resting it on his chest. “I was so afraid that if we talked, we would find out how much we’d changed. And I was afraid if we did that . . . we might have to wake up and realize that we weren’t the ones for each other anymore. That we would see that we were hopelessly mismatched. I was right, Sam, we’ve changed. Because twenty years makes you change. And it should. But if I met you now, not knowing you at all, I would still fall in love with you.”

“I don’t know if you’d fall in love with me . . . into bed, maybe.”

She laughed. “Definitely that. It would have been a lot like when we actually met. I think we fell into bed pretty quickly then too.”

“That’s true.”

She turned to face him, his arms still around her. “We’ve changed, but you’re still the only man I want to be with. I’m choosing you. I think I was afraid that if we ever got to this moment, this one where we talked, where we were honest, where we admitted we were less than happy, that . . . that I might not. And that you might not choose me.”

“I do,” he said, pressing his forehead against hers. “Now and always.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

She bit her lip. “Do you think Quinn is going to leave Lark alone?”

“Knowing him? No. I knew the minute I found out he’d hired her he didn’t have any kind of good intentions. And it’s not because I don’t like him . . .”

“I don’t.”

“I know. But I do. He’s had it rough. It doesn’t give him license to use her, but it’s a fact. He goes about things in his own way. He doesn’t listen to me.”

“Then what good are you?” she asked, only kind of teasing.

“I’ve kept him from getting killed. And he hasn’t been arrested since I’ve known him either, so maybe I’ve done some good.”

“Yeah, well, I just hope he doesn’t hurt her. She’s a sweet girl. A lot sweeter than he is.”

“Reminds me of a couple I know,” he said, kissing her on the cheek. “A sweet girl and a cowboy who doesn’t deserve her.”

***

Lark stepped onto the first floor with one foot, the other lingering on the last stair, and froze. She didn’t want to run into any of the other ranch workers. She didn’t really want to sneak up on Quinn. And she didn’t want him to sneak up on her.

Last night had been . . . amazing. Incredible. So many adjectives.

It had also been transformative. Which she was aware was a virgin thing. This idea that she was different somehow because she’d slept with someone.

But as silly as it might seem, it was the truth. She felt like there’d been this whole section of herself that had been pushed down, shoved way deep inside of herself. She’d had tastes of it. Little bursts of it during her online liaisons. But now it was like the flood gates had opened and she was just so fully aware.

Of every temptation a man’s body presented, and why. Of just how intoxicating it was to have masculine hands on every inch of your skin. Of why she ached deep inside when she was turned on. Of all the places on her body that could be used to give her pleasure.

She shivered and put her other foot down on the hardwood floor, wrapping her arms around herself. She was wearing yesterday’s clothes, and yesterday’s makeup. And her hair had seen better days.

It had seen better days prior to the tumbling she’d received the night before. And prior to sleeping on it for five hours. At this moment in time it looked more than a little bit like a potential habitat for baby rodents.

“Good morning.”

She jumped and scrambled back to the step. “Hi.” She leaned against the wall and put one hand on her hip.

“You okay?” Quinn walked out of the kitchen, a cup of coffee in his hand.

“I’m fine. You startled me is all.”

“You’re jumpy.”

“Yeah. And? You were sneaky. Do we need to go over sneaky again?”

He shook his head. “Not for my benefit. Though I fail to see how walking out of my kitchen and into the living room qualifies as being sneaky. And I brought you coffee.”

“Sweet nectar of life.” She stepped down from the stairs again and reached out for the mug. And he drew it back, just out of her reach, her hands following the trajectory. She froze when she nearly touched his chest. “What are you doing?”

“Not yet.”

“Coffee tease.”

“Kiss me.” He pulled it back further and she followed the motion, her lips a whisper from his. “Lark. If you want the coffee, you have to kiss me.”

Heat suffused her cheeks, then flooded through the rest of her body. He wanted a kiss. From her. “If you insist.”

She pecked him on the cheek.

He growled, the glint in his eye dangerous and sexy. “Not good enough.”

“You’re changing the rules,” she said.

“When did you start thinking I was the kind of man who played by the rules?”

“Good point.” And because rebellion would only hurt her, and because he smelled like soap and skin and Quinn, and that was a combination she couldn’t resist, she leaned in and pressed her lips to his.

“Mmmm,” she said, reaching out and snatching the cup from his hand. “Good morning, indeed.”

“I made breakfast.”

“Oooh.”

“Come with me.”

“I did that last night,” she said, feeling way too proud of her use of double entendre as she followed him into the kitchen and sat at a little square table that was positioned by the window.

“I see what you did there.” He picked up a plate of waffles from the counter and brought it, along with two other plates and a jug of syrup, to the table. He sat across from her, the expression on his face odd.

“What?” she asked, pulling three waffles off the stack and putting them on her plate, putting syrup between each one.

“I’ve never had breakfast with a woman before.”

“Really?” She picked up the fork that had already been sitting on the table, waiting for her, and cut a bite off of her waffle stack, shoving it into her mouth. “How is that possible? And wow, these are good.”

“Because breakfast comes after sex. And after sex, I leave.”

“And I didn’t let you last night.”

“No. You didn’t. You tempted me back into bed.”

“That makes me feel like a wicked siren. I kind of like it. Lark Mitchell, scarlet woman. Enticing men to make her waffles. Not quite enticing men to their doom on the rocks, but hey, it’s still pretty good.”

“I think this is why I don’t normally have breakfast with women,” he said, taking a bite of his own waffle.

“Oh, really, why specifically?”

“Because then I have to talk to them. Although, I actually like talking to you. I don’t think I could have talked to those other women. But then, maybe I could have. Maybe they weren’t all airheads. Maybe they were just playing a part.”

“We all kind of do that, right?”

Quinn shifted in his chair. Lord knew he did that. He’d played the rough, simple bad boy for all the women he’d slept with in the past. And they, for all he knew, had just been playing the part of dumb buckle bunny for the evening. A chance to be stupid and have fun.

Boy, didn’t he bring out the best in people? And himself. He was an ass.

Not that that was a huge surprise.

“I guess so. What’s your role?”

“Um . . . I don’t know that I have one anymore. I think I left it on your bedroom floor. With my panties.”

“Yeah, you never did tell me why.”

“I wanted you?” she said, her mouth full of waffle. She was so damn cute. And since when had he been interested in cute women?

Vampish. Sexy. Sexual. Yes, all those things—but cute?

Well, except all of those descriptive words could be used for her. It’s just that she was cute too.

“You’ve wanted me since you met me,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “What I want to know is what brought you here, last night, clutching a tub of ice cream like it was a magical talisman.”

“I . . .” she leaned forward and put her elbows on the table. “It’s bad.”

“What happened?”

“I got into a fight with my brothers, who are massive idiots and deserved every bit of my rage. I basically told them to go to hell, and I came here to make sure I was headed in that direction too.”

“I see. And what was the fight about?”

She let out a long breath, her nostrils flaring a little bit and why the
hell
was he noticing that? More to the point, why did it fascinate him?