Slow Burn Cowboy(54)

That someday, she might reach him. That she wouldn’t feel like she was standing on the outside of Finn Donnelly, wondering who he was for the rest of her life.

Suddenly, frustration, anguish swamped her. This man she had known for a decade, this man she considered her best friend, felt like a stranger right now. A stranger she wanted to be closer to. A stranger who meant the world to her.

She was physically as close to him as it was possible to be, and she felt isolated.

He gripped her hair harder, urging her up, and she followed the motion, getting to her feet. When he took her mouth, it was fierce, rough. He opened the door to the shower, not bothering to turn the water off. They tangled together, and he walked her backward into the bedroom, laying her damp body down on the bed, rising over her, kissing her as he settled between her legs.

Then he hooked his arm around her waist, reversing their positions and bringing her down on top of him, his arousal pressed against the softest part of her. She rocked her hips, gasping when he came into contact with her.

At least there was this. And this made it feel simpler. Made it easy to forget. Made him feel like less of a stranger.

Even if it was fake, even if it was manufactured, a trick of the arousal coursing through her veins, she would take it. The other option was breaking apart, and she didn’t really want to break apart. Not right now.

“Take me inside you,” he said, his voice strained.

She lifted her hips, positioning herself over him and guiding him slowly inside of her. She clenched her teeth, letting her head fall back as he filled her inch by inch. She trembled, and she realized that if she had been hoping to avoid breaking apart, this was probably the worst way to go about it.

Because when he had filled her completely, when she braced her hands against his strong shoulders and looked down at his eyes, at the intensity in his expression, she felt like he could see all of her.

And she couldn’t see anything of him. Nothing but need. But heat and desire.

She knew what he didn’t want. And that was about it. It wasn’t enough. And at the same time, his body, buried deep inside of hers, was too much.

“Ride me,” he said, the command husky.

She rolled her hips, establishing a steady rhythm that was designed to torture them both. Rising up so that he was just barely inside of her, then teasing him there for a moment before taking him in deep. He gripped her hips, his blunt fingertips digging into her skin.

She couldn’t think anymore. She was lost in this. Lost in him.

Her arousal built inside of her like storm clouds, rolling in over the ocean, getting darker and darker until there was no choice but for it all to break open and rain down. When she broke, she clung to him, crying out her release, not caring if anybody heard.

She could barely acknowledge that there was anyone else in the world, let alone anyone else in the house. The only thing that mattered was the two of them. The only thing.

She was still shaking, shuddering when he turned her back over, settling between her thighs and thrusting deep, his rhythm wild, feral, as he chased his own pleasure. She was sure that she was done. That every last bit of pleasure had been wrung out of her. But she was wrong.

He froze against her, pressing right against that sensitized bundle of nerves as he pulsed deep within her, his release hitting hard and fast, and triggering another one for her.

She turned her head toward his neck, scraping that tendon there with her teeth, biting down hard. He groaned, his hips jerking forward, creating another spasm of pleasure deep inside her.

And if she’d had any doubts before, they were gone now. She loved him. And she needed to tell him.





CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

WHEN THEY FINISHED, they were still breathing hard. And she didn’t feel relaxed. Didn’t feel satisfied. She felt needy. Like an endless, aching well of need.

She rolled over onto her side and looked at him. He had his eyes closed, his face turned toward the ceiling.

And she felt alone.

She reached out, pressing her fingertips against his chest. “Please,” she said. “I need you to talk to me. To help me understand why you feel the way you do about...everything. Why you think you can’t have children. Why you think you can’t get married. Because I love you, Finn, and if I didn’t then maybe I wouldn’t need to know. But I do. And I need to feel like maybe you might love me too.”

She had expected that he wouldn’t immediately burst forth with declarations. What she hadn’t expected was for him to roll away from her. The sudden movement was so shocking, left her so cold that she shivered.

“Lane...”

“It’s not ridiculous. Actually, what’s ridiculous is saying it like it’s a revelation. I’ve always loved you, Finn.”

He turned back to her, one dark brow raised. “Right. And that’s what you mean. You love me, because I’m your friend.”

She sat up, moving to the edge of the bed, putting even more space between them. She picked at the top of the bedspread. “No. I just mean... I’ve always loved you. And over the past few weeks, it changed. I should have known that was a possibility. I think actually I always did. That’s why I didn’t want you to know anything about me. It’s why I didn’t share my past, why I never... Why everything was so strictly platonic. Because I knew. I knew what it could become. At least, somewhere deep down inside of me where I keep all of my excellent self-protective instincts. And trust me, I am excellent at self-protection.”

“You’re rambling,” he said, his tone completely flat now.

“Well,” she said, standing up and stomping her foot. “You probably aren’t going to like what I have to say anyway, so maybe don’t rush it. Maybe we can take a detour into something ridiculous like Robert the mouse.”

“You have two options. You can stop talking, or you can finish.” He stood too, crossing his arms over his broad, bare chest. “We are not going to draw it out like this.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you’re going to go, if that’s going to be the bottom line of this little conversation, then I need you to hurry up and fucking go.”

She felt like she’d been slapped. He was angry, that was obvious. And to a degree she had expected some pushback from him. After all, she had been enraged when he kissed her. When he had confessed his attraction to her. When he had pushed her into this space that she hadn’t felt prepared for. That she had been hiding from.

So yes, she had expected something of the same from him. But not this. Not this outrage.

“You think I don’t know what this is?” he asked, his expression drawn, angry. “You think I don’t know what it looks like right before somebody walks away? I am an expert in abandonment, Lane Jensen. I know exactly what it looks like when someone gives up.”

“Do you? So you recognize that that’s what you’re doing,” she said, not caring that her tone was accusatory.

“You think I’m the one giving up? That’s where you’re wrong. You’re changing the rules. Changing the rules so you don’t have to play the game anymore. If that’s what you want, because you’re too scared to keep doing this...”

“You really do have your head so far up your own ass,” she said. “I told you everything. I laid my pain out right in front of you, and you won’t give me anything back. All you do is throw up defenses, throw up walls. Everything you’ve ever accused me of and more. And you do your very best to sidestep by turning it back around on me.”

He looked stunned. Like she had hauled off and hit him. Well, it might just come to that.

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

“If there was nothing, then you would tell me what was going on.”

“Why? We’ve managed to have a friendship for the past ten years without you knowing all the details of my childhood. If you want to trade, if that’s what you need to feel okay about your own past, I guess I can see the point. But otherwise...”

“You’re not an idiot, Finn. Regardless of the fact that you’re doing a really great impression of one right now. It has nothing to do with me wanting to feel like I’m not alone in having a really crappy past. It’s because... It costs me to let go. Because I’m trying. Because there’s still this big ball of pain and fear in my chest, but I’m trying to move past it. I’m trying to make sure it at least doesn’t control my life. That it doesn’t control everything I do, that it doesn’t dictate who I love, or what I can have. I lived that way for too long. With one foot in the past. Pretending that I was moving on while I did everything—absolutely everything—in deference to that pain. To coddle it, to keep it precious and safe, and in its own little place where I could go back to it, remind myself of why I needed to be safe, and not demand anything, not love anyone too much. I don’t want you to do the same. I don’t want the man I’m with to be stuck in that place I’m trying so desperately to get out of.”

She pushed her hair back from her face, suddenly very aware of the fact that she still didn’t have any clothes on. But she didn’t make a move to collect them either.

“Do you think that a few moments of confession down by the lake healed everything inside of me?” she continued. “It was just a start. And this is me trying to continue. This is me trying to be healed.”