“BENNETT...”
“Thank you. For today. For coming with me. For having dinner with us. For the last few weeks. And no, I’m not thanking you for sex, like I did the first time. I learned from my dumbass mistakes. But I am thanking you for being there like this. Without you none of it would have gone right.”
Kaylee shook her head. “That’s not true. You’re his dad, Bennett. He needs you. He doesn’t need me.”
“That’s not true. You’re the one who connected with him quickly. It took me longer. He understood you. You understood him. That means something. It matters. Honey, it matters a hell of a lot.”
He had meant it to come out light, but it didn’t. All he could think about was tasting her again. Holding her again. He didn’t understand how this day, this person, could be so many different things. The intense triumph and abject terror of taking the step to legally becoming Dallas’s guardian. The intense desire to have Kaylee there as a friend. The sadness he’d felt seeing not just Lucy in pain, but Dallas in pain as a result. And also in a strange, twisted way, the pride that the depth of his son’s caring made him feel.
And now this.
This desire. Deep and unending, and somehow all part of the same few hours.
Part of the same woman he had wanted at the courthouse, had needed to come to dinner. Needed to help find the right words to ease his son’s distress.
The same woman he wanted in his bed. Naked and screaming out his name.
He was used to simple. His life, on his terms. But now it was so much more than that. Life was just happening, all around him. And the people that he cared about were changing the decisions he was making. Changing what he wanted.
Before, he had made a plan and he had set about making it happen. He had seen certain holes in his life, and wanted the puzzle pieces to fit in them. Wanted a friend puzzle piece. A wife puzzle piece. Kids, house. All of it to complement the career puzzle piece.
But now, he had all these pieces, and he wasn’t sure where yet to put them. And he didn’t even mind. Because it was better. So much better than what he had thought he needed.
He wanted to call Luke Hollister and get down on his knees and thank the man for seducing Olivia. Because if he had gone ahead with things as they had been... It wouldn’t be like this now, that was for sure.
More than that...
He wanted to be what Kaylee needed.
He needed her, no question. In so many different ways. But he wanted her to be able to need him. To be able to count on him.
To call him when she needed furniture moved. Or needed to be held.
He wanted to give to her as much as he’d ever taken.
She’d used it to shelter her, he understood that now. She’d let herself be the giver, so she would never be disappointed. He didn’t want that. Not anymore.
He took Kaylee’s hand, weaving his fingers through hers, and he led her through the front door, down the hall and to his bedroom.
He brought her inside and closed the door behind them. She looked around, shivering lightly.
“What?”
“I’m in your bedroom.”
“You’ve been in my bedroom hundreds of times.”
She looked uncertain. “Not for this.”
Her voice was so small, so feeble. He wanted to make her feel better. Wanted to put her at ease.
“I think we’ve had sex about a hundred times now too.” He tried to lighten the tone but the exasperated look on her face told him it was the wrong move. That was the problem with being friends first. He knew what to do when he was a friend. He knew less what to do now.
“We have not.” She scowled at him. “It’s only been a few weeks. We can’t have had sex over a hundred times.”
He shrugged. “I think it’s possible. I think we might have broken some records.”
She shook her head. “I’m serious. Anyway... I’ve never been in your room for this. It feels...significant.”
There was a heavy note to her voice and he wanted to translate it. Wanted to find a way to figure out exactly what she meant. Exactly what was hidden beneath the surface of each and every word she spoke.
Right in that moment, he wanted to know everything about her. He remembered that day in the barn, the day after the first time they’d made love, when she had suddenly felt the need to question him. About how many partners he’d had, what kind of sex life. He understood it. Understood that feeling beyond a moment of passing curiosity. That need to see it all. The desire to be able to read her mind.
He wanted to know it all. Every last bit.
The details of what it had been like growing up in her family. All the things that she had hidden from him, kept from him. And the things she was hiding from him now. Like why it mattered that they were in his bedroom. Why it made her feel insecure or vulnerable, or whatever had brought on the shiver.
“What made you decide to become a veterinarian?” he asked, taking a step back from her and taking his shirt off.
Kaylee frowned, her eyes darting from his stomach, to his face, his chest, his face. “What kind of question is that? Especially when you’re stripping.”
“An important question, Kay. Because I don’t think I’ve ever asked you. Because we were...together when we decided, so in a lot of ways I felt like I kind of knew why, but we never really talked about it. We went to school together for veterinary medicine. We planned and plotted this practice together. And I don’t think I ever asked you why you wanted to do it.”
She shrunk slightly, her shoulders folding inward. “I...I like animals.”
He didn’t believe that was the whole truth. Not at all. But like he’d figured with Dallas earlier, he couldn’t take without giving.
“When my mom died I felt like I didn’t have any power. I couldn’t fix it. I didn’t know what to do. Along the way I figured out that I wanted to do something to stop some of the suffering in this world. I wanted to find out some way to be the person who could control the outcome some of the time. And even if it is for animals, and not for people, it’s something I feel like I can do. It’s in impact I can make in my community. In the lives of the ranchers, and in the animals. It matters to me on a deeper level than just liking animals. It’s the way I found to help when I feel helpless. A way I found to feel in control in a world that I really can’t ever hope to control.” He reached down and started to undo his belt.
“This is an odd conversation to have while you’re getting undressed.”
“No, it’s not. It’s the perfect conversation to have while I’m getting undressed. Because it’s me. It’s who I am. I want to know why.” He stripped off the rest of his clothes. Left them on the ground. “Why did you do it, Kaylee?”
She said nothing, so he moved over to her and pushed his fingers against the hem of her dress, tugging it up over her head. She stood there wearing nothing but her bra and panties, goose bumps rising over that pale skin.
He slid his thumb across her cheek, down to the edge of her lips and back again. “Come on, Kay. Tell me.”
She looked away from him, and when she spoke, her words were small and halting. “Because you wanted to do it.”
He took a step back, shock hitting him like a battle-ax. “Me?”
“You wanted to do it, and I wanted to follow you. I...”
She looked like she was about to cry. Like she wanted to crawl underneath the bed and hide from him. Hide from this confession.
For his part, he could hardly believe it. That she had gone to school for something, started a whole career in something, in part because of him. To...be with him.
“My parents had me to fill a void in their life, Bennett. I was supposed to fix things. And you... You had the fullest life of anyone I knew. A father who loved you, brothers, a sister. That beautiful ranch. All the animals. And you still wanted me. You had friends already. I didn’t. You had all of these things, and you still wanted me. It meant more to me than you can possibly know. And of course you know I love being a veterinarian. It’s my passion. When you’re a lonely neglected kid you can’t help other people. All you can do is hope that someone will help you. Well, you did. You came into my life and you made me believe in myself. You were the one who exposed me to ranch life, to animals. You made me the kind of person who could think about helping others. The kind of person who could be more than small and selfish and mean, needing every good thing in life to come to them, instead of being able to give any of it back. You made me into the kind of person who wanted to help, who loved helping. So yes. What I am now, who I am now, is because of you. So much more than just because you encouraged me to go to school.”
He moved closer to her, rested his hands on her slender waist, moved them down to her hips. Then he slid one of them up her back, along the line of her spine and rested his hand between her shoulder blades. He drew her forward slowly, torturing them both with the slow press of her breasts against his chest.
What he wanted to do was crush her up against him, hold her there, not let her go. But instead, he kept it a leisurely pace. Slow. Deliberate. He took his time as he moved his hand from her hip to her chin, as he tilted her face upward. As he spent three heartbeats bringing his lips down to hers.
He pressed his lips to hers slowly, achingly so. Taking his time as those empty spaces between them filled in with each breath. Their mouths together, the ends of their noses brushing, tongues. Teeth. Chest to chest, her stomach against his hardening arousal. Even her legs pressed against his, so that not even the air in the room could come between them. And he just kissed her.
Like he had all the time in the world. Like there was nothing else that came next. Like kissing was the beginning and end of everything.
Not just of sex, but of his entire reason for being.
He cupped her face, worked his fingers back through her hair, silken strands sliding through his fingers. Then he brought his hands down her back, traced a line down to that dip in her spine just above her ass. He slid his hands down farther, beneath the waistband of her underwear, luxuriating in the feel of her soft-as-silk skin.
He pushed those panties down her hips, taking his time to feel every inch of her legs as he went down, taking the kiss down with him, down the center of her breasts, her belly, her center. Then he moved back up, unhooking her bra and freeing those beautiful, perfect breasts.
She looked up at him, and he could sense that there were a thousand different things swirling through her mind. That there was so much she wanted to say, but wasn’t. And he would have been content to let that lie all these past seventeen years. But for some reason now he wasn’t content to let her have her secrets. Because he didn’t much care about keeping his own. She knew him. Every stupid thing he’d ever done now. Knew the ways in which he felt he had failed Marnie. Knew about the pregnancy. About Dallas. Knew about why he had become a vet, about how his mother’s death was responsible for it. And it was all fine. Fine to have given her all of that. It felt better.
More real.
He felt more real.
What he really wanted to know was why she had kissed him that day at Get Out of Dodge. The need to know hit him suddenly. It was what had started all of this. Or maybe that was an oversimplification. But still. It was the broken barrier. That first press of her mouth against his. It had been her move. And she had said it was because she felt sorry for him. But when they had kissed after that, and every time since, it wasn’t pity that he tasted on her tongue.
Hell, no.
“Why did you kiss me?”
“I kiss you all the time,” she said, her cheeks turning a delicate shade of pink when she spoke those words.
“No. Not why are you kissing me now. That day at the ranch, when I was hiding back by the river. Why did you kiss me?”
“Because I felt bad. I wanted to comfort you.” But she looked away when she said that. And he knew that if he could see her eyes he would see that it was a lie.
“No,” he said. “Don’t lie to me, Kay. We’re naked here together. Be naked with me.”
Tears shone in her eyes, and regret kicked him in the stomach. For whatever reason this was a hard ask. But then, the regret faded away. Because all of this was hard. The past weeks of transitions and changes had been hard. But it was better on the other side.
“I wanted you,” she said. “And I didn’t know how not to kiss you anymore.”
The breath left his body in a rush. “You wanted me?”
“Do you think I offered to handle your dry spell out of the blue? Do you think I was acting on some kind of crazy sex whim? I...I’ve been attracted to you for...forever. And suddenly we were so close, and you looked so sad, and I just forgot that it wasn’t what we did. I forgot that it wasn’t natural. Because it felt natural to me. It felt easy. It felt like something we were supposed to do.”
He remembered then, remember saying to her in that rough voice how good it was they wanted each other at the same time, because it would be hell to be in it alone.
Kaylee had been in it alone.
“But you... You’ve dated other men.”
“I’m not pathetic,” she said. “I mean, maybe I am. But I wanted to protect our friendship. And I did. I did until the moment I couldn’t anymore. I was... The day you came over and I was frantically building furniture I was really trying to figure some things out. Trying to make some choices. My date with Michael was a disaster and I didn’t care. I had hoped he would...fix me. My feelings for you. Feelings I had decided I wouldn’t act on. I put myself in a box and then resented it, and it...hit me that I was the only one who could fix it. So I thought maybe if I just...spent some time thinking. If I changed my clothes and my house a little, maybe I’d feel differently.”
She laughed. “It was silly,” she continued, “and as soon as you showed up I realized that. And when you said you were going to try to hook up... I... Bennett, I knew I couldn’t sit there and watch it again and I had to make a choice about you.”
Suddenly, he saw the foolishness of his own behavior through her eyes and he wanted to punch himself in the face.
“Kay, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. That makes it worse. Don’t apologize for not seeing me as attractive until I offered you sex.”
“That’s not it. I told you, I noticed you that way before. Little bits here and there. I thought I was losing my mind. Because you’re supposed to be my friend. And you keep talking about how important I was to you, but Kaylee, you mean the world to me. I...”
He closed his eyes and swallowed hard, then continued. “I think if it weren’t for you I would have closed everyone out. I think I did for a long time. And then we met. Your first day of school. You were white-faced and nervous, I remember that. Like it was yesterday. But I wanted to...”
“You wanted to fix me. Because that’s who you are. It’s what you do.” She looked at him, her expression a challenge.
“No.” He denied it.
“It’s okay,” she said, her eyes shining, making it perfectly clear it wasn’t okay at all. “I understand that. But don’t pretend that I wasn’t just another wounded bird to you.”
Kaylee knew all about that bird. The one he’d tried to save. The one that he credited with changing the course of his life. And in that way, Kaylee and the bird had something in common. But only to a point.
Still, he couldn’t deny that at first his feelings had been all about fixing her. Helping her. It was who he was on a fundamental level.
But that wasn’t all.
“You know what? Maybe it started that way. But unlike the bird, you didn’t need me to save you. You changed my life. You became more than a rescue mission. So, maybe at first that’s what I wanted. To hold you close and bandage your wing, metaphorically. But in the end... That’s not how I see you. And it isn’t how I saw you for long. But you know how I am. You know I like to control my life. Everything in its place. That way I know how to fix it when it all goes wrong. I have to understand all the gears, all the mechanics of it.”
“Well, that’s romantic. I have gears now?”
“So that when something is wrong I can figure out what to do.” She looked away, and he grabbed hold of her chin. Turned her focus back to him. “I went out of my way to not look at you as a beautiful woman. Until I couldn’t anymore. Until it started sneaking through anyway.” He shook his head. “Wyatt said I had to be delusional not to notice that you’re sexy.”
She lifted a brow. “Wyatt said that?”
“Wyatt knows we’re sleeping together,” he said by way of explanation.
She let out an exasperated breath. “Of course he does.”
“He figured we already had been.”
She snorted. “Well, it would have been handy. Easy stress relief.”
Except there was something false about those words. He had a feeling she didn’t see their situation as stress-free at all. He sure as hell didn’t.
He didn’t see any of this as easy. Not Dallas and all the feelings his son stirred up inside of him, not Kaylee and his newfound need for her, as a friend, as a woman. As a lover.
Not easy, no. But...worth it.
Still, he wasn’t quite sure why Kaylee didn’t want to admit that.
But hell, they were in his bedroom, and he didn’t know why he was insisting that they talk.
“I can’t make up for what an ass I’ve been all this time.”
“You haven’t been an ass. It’s not like I told you I wanted you and you were cruel to me. I was pining because I was scared. Until I was finally more scared of wanting you forever and never having you than I was of messing up the friendship.”
“I hope I don’t scare you now.”
“Of course you scare me,” she said. “Wanting is scary.”
He didn’t have anything to say to that. Because she was right. Wanting, needing, were scary as hell. So he said nothing. Instead, he captured her lips with his, wrapping his hand around the back of her head and drawing her close, sliding his fingers through that silken hair, luxuriating in the feel of it. The feel of her.
It was Kaylee. His Kaylee.
There was nothing off-limits between them. Not anymore. There were no walls. There were no barriers. No dividing lines between friendship and love.
Love.
It wasn’t a word he’d thought about before. Wasn’t one he’d seen coming. But there it was.
Of course he loved Kaylee. He always had. It was just that there had been boundaries to it. Ways that he could express it, and ways that he couldn’t. Because he had loved her as a friend. That had a certain set of rules to it. Clear borders. But they’d left those behind weeks ago in the bed of his truck, out on a deserted mountain road.
Without them...
Now he just...loved her.
As everything. There was no boundary, no wall.
Just love. Pure and raw and blinding, burning its way through him like a sword right from the forge.
He’d have fought it, just a few weeks ago. He’d have pushed it all down.
Not now.
He wrapped his arm around her waist, crushed her bare body against his as he kissed her with everything he had.
There was no being careful. There was no setting up careful fence lines that he couldn’t cross.
These feelings were free-range, dammit.
Desire without borders. Feelings without parameters.
And a few weeks ago he would have found that unthinkable. Terrifying. The exact opposite of how he wanted his life to be.
He would have trapped both himself and Olivia in a marriage that didn’t have passion. Didn’t have feeling. Sure, he had been attracted to her, but in that way that he was attracted to pretty women. Not in a special way. Not in a deep way. Not in this all-consuming brushfire way that he wanted Kaylee.
This was like nothing else. Because she was like no one else.
She was stiff in his arms for a moment, until he traced her lower lip with the tip of his tongue. Then she went pliant, soft curves melting against him. How had he been friends with her this long and not known that she was the one who would fit perfectly in his arms? Fit perfectly against him? How had he missed this?
On purpose. Just like Wyatt had said.
There was only one way a man could be that blind. And that was if he covered his own eyes. Tied his own blindfold. And he sure as hell had.
Because Kaylee could never fit neatly into a compartment. She could never be that puzzle piece. Could never be the best friend piece if he let himself see just how lovely she truly was. Could never be that wife piece the way that he had imagined a wife. Someone who would be at home waiting for him when he got through with work. Someone who would have his children, raise them. Someone who would make a home for him. Basically, somebody to be that image he’d had of what his mother had probably done for his father. But it was a hazy and vague image, because he had been so young when his mother had died.
Love... Well, it looked a lot more like the relationship between his father and Freda. Unexpected. And probably not what his father would have chosen if he had a choice in the matter. Freda was bold, and she certainly didn’t spend the days doing his laundry or cooking him dinner—unless she felt like it. Freda, who he cared about enough to leave the ranch, which Bennett would have said his father had never wanted to do.
His father had left the ranch because he wanted to give Freda whatever she needed. Because he wanted to follow Freda to the place that made her the happiest. They compromised. They split their time between Gold Valley and New Mexico, because it made them both happy.
Maybe that was it. Love was the one thing strong enough to entice you to do the things you’d said you’d never do. But also wouldn’t ask it of you.
Love was what Olivia Logan and Luke Hollister had found together. And he knew for a fact that Olivia had been spitting mad that Luke was the man for her. She had wanted safe, just like Bennett had. She had wanted to be in charge of that decision, had wanted to create a perfect life. Based around ideals rather than around an actual person.
That wasn’t love. It wasn’t how it worked.
These feelings that were riding through his chest were messy. They were jagged. And he didn’t know how they fit neatly and with anything. He didn’t know what he wanted. He had a teenage son that he had to figure out. He had a future that looked like... Well, he had no idea what in the hell his future looked like.
But he had two people in his life that he loved fiercely. And he wanted to figure out how to do the best he possibly could with those feelings.
Whatever it cost.
He kissed her, guiding her over to the bed, laying her down gently on top of the comforter. He propped himself up on his knees, looking down at her body. At all that beautiful, pale skin. At her slight, enticing curves.
She had a freckle just beneath her left breast, another one right next to her belly button. He pressed his thumb against the one beneath her breast, traced it down toward the other. Then he followed the same path with his tongue.
“What are you doing?” she gasped.
“I thought I would spend some time connecting your freckles.”
“Don’t.” She protested. “I don’t like my freckles.”
She didn’t like him looking at her this close. Didn’t like sex being all about her. That was why it needed to happen.
“I do.” And he spent the next little while finding all of them. No matter how pale. No matter how faint. And he kissed every last one. Until he just started kissing wherever he felt like it. Until he had her shivering and shaking beneath him. Until he forgot exactly what he was supposed to be doing other than tasting her. He forgot if there was any other thing on earth he was supposed to do ever. He wanted to get lost in this. In her.
In that concept of loving Kaylee without walls and fences.
But now that he’d realized that, it was like discovering just how vast the Oregon countryside was beyond the confines of Get Out of Dodge.
That the mountains were endless, the terrain too rough to ride in a day, or two or twenty. That a man could probably spend a lifetime searching for the end and not find it. That he could spend years exploring and still miss some of the wonders.
That brought with it a kind of desperation. To find more time. To find a way to keep her with him so that he could at least come close to reaching the limits.
Or maybe, that was the beauty. That it was limitless.
Like trying to find an exact number in a sky full of stars. Or in the freckles on her body. Infinite. Impossible.
This was life without walls inside of him. Life without protection. Life without borders. Submitting to the fact that there were things he couldn’t plan, things he couldn’t control.
But as long as he could hold on to Kaylee it would be all right.
Whatever happened, if he had her, it wouldn’t be impossible.
The corner of his mouth tilted up into a smile, and he wondered if she could feel it against her skin, against her hip bone as he pressed his fingers between her legs and traced all that slick beauty. As he teased her, teased them both.
He smiled because he realized that as long as he had Kaylee, anything was possible. That was the truth of his life all the way back seventeen years. What he had always known, even if he had been hiding the truth from himself all this time.
He kissed that hip bone, then her stomach, that freckle beneath her breast again and the tender skin right next to her nipple. Her collarbone. Then he captured her mouth again. She grabbed hold of his shoulders, and he slid his hand around her lower back, sliding them both down the bed so they didn’t end up smacking against the headboard. Then, he collected one wrist in his hand, followed by the other, squeezing her arms together before he drew them up over her head, held her down, tilted her hips upward with his other hand.
He grabbed hold of some protection and settled himself between her legs.
She looked up at him, those green eyes searching his. For what, he didn’t know. He tried to give it to her. He would give her whatever she wanted. He didn’t have words. He didn’t know how to emote with his facial expressions, or whatever the hell.
“Tell me you need this,” he said, pressing against her, denying them both what they wanted.
She arched against him, her body language a silent plea. But he wasn’t letting her get away with silence.
“Kay,” he said, gripping her chin, tilting her face so she had to look at him. “Tell me what you need.”
“I...”
“Tell me, sweetheart.”
Her lip trembled. “You. I need you.”
Hellfire. He couldn’t wait anymore. Not after that.
He surged into her, groaning as he did. He could show her how much he wanted her. How much this meant. He pressed himself inside of her, slowly. Gritting his teeth as need rolled over him like the wind down a mountain, swift and fierce, cutting straight down to the bone.
It wrapped around them like a tornado, carrying them both along, wrapping them up in a storm that was beyond their control.
Destructive. Beautiful in its power.
Kaylee let her head fall back, tossing it back and forth, her wild red hair spread out on his pillow. Kaylee. In his bed. On his pillow, his comforter.
His.
Color crept into her cheeks, and he could feel her drawing close to her release. Once he felt her unravel beneath his touch, he let himself go too. Letting himself get caught up in the torrent.
When it was done, he lifted up the covers and encouraged her to get beneath them. Then he went to the bathroom and took care of the practicalities, before returning and sliding beneath the sheets with her.
He had slept with her in the stall, but it hadn’t been on purpose. They had fallen asleep, and woken up together quite by accident. But not tonight. She was staying with him. In his house. In his bed. In his room.
She was right. This was significant. This was different.
This was a step forward to a future.
And he might not know exactly what that looked like, but right now, he didn’t mind.
For the first time in his life, he didn’t need to see it all planned out.
He only needed to see her.