Seven
Danielle’s heart was pounding in her ears. It was all she could hear. The sound of her own heart beating as she climbed the rungs that led up to the loft.
It was different than she had imagined. It was clean. There was a haystack in one corner, but beyond that the floor was immaculate, every item stored and organized with precision. Which, knowing Joshua like she now did, wasn’t too much of a surprise.
That made her smile, just a little. She did know him. In some ways, she felt like she knew him better than she knew anyone.
She wasn’t sure what that said about her other relationships. For a while, she’d had friends, but they’d disappeared when she’d become consumed with caring for her pregnant mother and working as much as possible at the grocery store. And then no one had come back when Danielle ended up with full care of Riley.
In some ways, she didn’t blame them. Life was hard enough without dealing with a friend who was juggling all of that. But just because she understood didn’t mean she wasn’t lonely.
She looked at Joshua, their eyes connecting. He had shared his past with her. But she was keeping something big from him. Even while she was prepared to give him her body, she was holding back secrets.
She took a breath, opening her mouth to speak, but something in his blue gaze stopped the words before they could form. Something sharp, predatory. Something that made her feel like she was the center of the world, or at least the center of his world.
It was intoxicating. She’d never experienced it before.
She wanted more, all of it. Wherever it would lead.
And that was scary. Scarier than agreeing to do something she had never done before. Because she finally understood. Understood why her mother had traded her sanity, and her self-worth, for that moment when a man looked at you like you were his everything.
Danielle had spent so long being nothing to anyone. Nothing but a burden. Now, feeling like the solution rather than the problem was powerful, heady. She knew she couldn’t turn back now no matter what.
Even if sanity tried to prevail, she would shove it aside. Because she needed this. Needed this balm for all the wounds that ran so deep inside of her.
Joshua walked across the immaculate space and opened up a cabinet. There were blankets inside, thick, woolen ones with geometric designs on them. He pulled out two and spread one on the ground.
She bit her lip, fighting a rising tide of hysteria, fighting a giggle that was climbing its way up her throat.
“I know this isn’t exactly a fancy hotel suite.”
She forced a smile. “It works for me.”
He set the other blanket down on the end of the first one, still folded, then he reached out and took her hand, drawing her to him. He curved his fingers around her wrist, lifting her arm up, then shifted his hold, lacing his fingers through hers and dipping his head, pressing his lips to her own.
Her heart was still pounding that same, steady beat, and she was certain he must be able to hear it. Must be aware of just how he was affecting her.
There were all sorts of things she should tell him. About Riley’s mother. About this being her first time.
But she didn’t have the words.
She had her heartbeat. The way her limbs trembled. She could let him see that her eyes were filling with tears, and no matter how fiercely she blinked, they never quite went away.
She was good at manipulating conversation. At giving answers that walked the line between fact and fiction.
Her body could only tell the truth.
She hoped he could see it. That he understood. Later, they would talk. Later, there would be honesty between them. Because he would have questions. God knew. But for now, she would let the way her fingertips trailed down his back—uncertain and tentative—the way she peppered kisses along his jaw—clumsy and broken—say everything she couldn’t.
“It doesn’t need to be fancy,” she said, her voice sounding thick even to her own ears.
“Maybe it should be,” he said, his voice rough. “But if I was going to take you back to my bedroom, I expect I would have to wait until tonight. And I don’t want to wait.”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t have to be fancy. It just has to be now. And it has to be you.”
He drew his head back, inhaling sharply. And then he cupped her cheek and consumed her. His kiss was heat and fire, sparking against the dry, neglected things inside her and raging out of control.
She slid her hands up his arms, hanging on to his strong shoulders, using his steadiness to hold her fast even as her legs turned weak.
He lifted her up against him, then swept his arm beneath her legs, cradling her against his chest like she was a child. Then he set her down gently on the blanket, continuing to kiss her as he did so.
She was overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by the intensity of his gaze, by his focus. Overwhelmed by his closeness, his scent.
He was everywhere. His hands on her body, his face filling her vision.
She had spent the past few months caring for her half brother, pouring everything she had onto one little person she loved more than anything in the entire world. But in doing so, she had left herself empty. She had been giving continually, opening a vein and bleeding whenever necessary, and taking nothing in to refill herself.
But this... This was more than she had ever had. More than she’d ever thought she could have. Being the focus of a man’s attention. Of his need.
This was a different kind of need than that of a child. Because it wasn’t entirely selfish. Joshua’s need gave her something in return; it compelled him to be close. Compelled him to kiss her, to skim his hands over her body, teasing and tormenting her with the promise of a pleasure she had never experienced.
Before she could think her actions through, she was pushing her fingertips beneath the hem of his shirt, his hard, flat stomach hot to the touch. And then it didn’t matter what she had done before or what she hadn’t done. Didn’t matter that she was a virgin and this was an entirely new experience.
Need replaced everything except being skin to skin with him. Having nothing between them.
Suddenly, the years of feeling isolated, alone, cold and separate were simply too much. She needed his body over hers, his body inside hers. Whatever happened after that, whatever happened in the end, right now she couldn’t care.
Because her desire outweighed the consequences. A wild, desperate thing starving to be fed. With his touch. With his possession.
She pushed his shirt up, and he helped her shrug it over his head. Her throat dried, her mouth opening slightly as she looked at him. His shoulders were broad, his chest well-defined and muscular, pale hair spreading over those glorious muscles, down his ridged abdomen, disappearing in a thin trail beneath the waistband of his low-slung jeans.
She had never seen a man who looked like him before, not in person. And she had never been this close to a man ever. She pressed her palm against his chest, relishing his heat and his hardness beneath her touch. His heart raging out of control, matching the beat of her own.
She parted her thighs and he settled between them. She could feel the hard ridge of his arousal pressing against that place where she was wet and needy for him. She was shocked at how hard he was, even through layers of clothing.
And she lost herself in his kiss, in the way he rocked his hips against hers. This moment, this experience was like everything she had missed growing up. Misspent teenage years when she should have been making out with boys in barns and hoping she didn’t get caught. In reality, her mother wouldn’t have cared.
This was a reclamation. More than that, it was something completely new. Something she had never even known she could want.
Joshua was something she had never known she could want.
It shouldn’t make sense, the two of them. This brilliant businessman in his thirties who owned a ranch and seemed to shun most emotional connections. And her. Poor. In her twenties. Desperately clinging to any connection she could forge because each one was so rare and special.
But somehow they seemed to make sense. Kissing each other. Touching each other. For some reason, he was the only man that made sense.
Maybe it was because he had taught her to ride a horse. Maybe it was because he was giving her and Riley a ticket out of poverty. Maybe it was because he was handsome. She had a feeling this connection transcended all those things.
As his tongue traced a trail down her neck to the collar of her T-shirt, she was okay with not knowing. She didn’t need to give this connection a name. She didn’t even want to.
Her breath caught as he pushed her shirt up and over her head, then quickly dispensed with her bra using a skill not even she possessed. Her nipples tightened, and she was painfully aware of them and of the fact that she was a little lackluster in size.
If Joshua noticed, he didn’t seem to mind.
Instead, he dipped his head, sucking one tightened bud between his lips. The move was so sudden, so shocking and so damned unexpected that she couldn’t stop herself from arching into him, a cry on her lips.
He looked up, the smile on his face so damned cocky she should probably have been irritated. But she wasn’t. She just allowed herself to get lost. In his heat. In the fire that flared between them. In the way he used his lips, his teeth and his tongue to draw a map of pleasure over her skin. All the way down to the waistband of her pants. He licked her. Just above the snap on her jeans. Another sensation so deliciously shocking she couldn’t hold back the sound of pleasure on her lips.
She pressed her fist against her mouth, trying to keep herself from getting too vocal. From embarrassing herself. From revealing just how inexperienced she was. The noises she was making definitely announced the fact that these sensations were revelatory to her. And that made her feel a touch too vulnerable.
She was so used to holding people at a distance. So used to benign neglect and general apathy creating a shield around her feelings. Her secrets.
But there was no distance here.
And certainly none as he undid the button of her jeans and drew the zipper down slowly. As he pushed the rough denim down her legs, taking her panties with them.
If she had felt vulnerable a moment before, that was nothing compared to now. She felt so fragile. So exposed. And then he reached up, pressing his hand against her leg at the inside of her knee, spreading her wide so he could look his fill.
She wanted to snap her legs together. Wanted to cover up. But she was immobilized. Completely captive to whatever might happen next. She was so desperate to find out, and at the same time desperate to escape it.
Rough fingertips drifted down the tender skin on her inner thigh, brushing perilously close to her damp, needy flesh. And then he was there. His touch in no way gentle or tentative as he pressed his hand against her, the heel of his palm putting firm pressure on her clit before he pressed his fingers down and spread her wide.
He made his intentions clear as he lowered his head, tasting her deeply. She lifted her hips, a sharp sound on her lips, one she didn’t even bother to hold back. He shifted his hold, gripping her hips, holding her just wide enough for his broad shoulders to fit right there, his sensual assault merciless.
Tension knotted her stomach like a fist, tighter and tighter with each pass of his tongue. Then he pressed his thumb against her clit at the same time as he flicked his tongue against that sensitive bundle of nerves. She grabbed hold of him, her fingernails digging into his back.
He drew his thumb down her crease, teasing the entrance of her body. She rocked her hips with the motion, desperate for something. Feeling suddenly empty and achy and needy in ways she never had before.
He rotated his hand, pressing his middle finger deep inside of her, and she gasped at the foreign invasion. But any discomfort passed quickly as her body grew wetter beneath the ministrations of his tongue. By the time he added a second finger, it slipped in easily.
He quickened his pace, and it felt like there was an earthquake starting inside her. A low, slow pull at her core that spread outward, her limbs trembling as the pressure at her center continued to mount.
His thumb joined with his tongue as he continued to pump his fingers inside her, and it was that added pressure that finally broke her. She was shaken. Rattled completely. The magnitude of measurable aftershocks rocking her long after the primary force had passed.
He moved into a sitting position, undoing his belt and the button on his jeans. Then he stood for a moment, drawing the zipper down slowly and pushing the denim down his muscular thighs.
She had never seen a naked man in person before, and the stark, thick evidence of his arousal standing out from his body was a clear reminder that they weren’t finished, no matter how wrung out and replete she felt.
Except, even though she felt satisfied, limp from the intensity of her release, she did want more. Because there was more to have. Because she wanted to be close to him. Because she wanted to give him even an ounce of the satisfaction that she had just experienced.
He knelt back down, pulling his jeans closer and taking his wallet out of his back pocket. He produced a condom packet and she gave thanks for his presence of mind. She knew better than to have unprotected sex with someone. For myriad reasons. But still, she wondered if she would have remembered if he had not.
Thank God one of them was thinking. She was too overwhelmed. Too swamped by the release that had overtaken her, and by the enormity of what was about to happen. When he positioned himself at the entrance of her body and pressed the thick head of his cock against her, she gasped in shock.
It hurt. Dear God it hurt. His fingers hadn’t prepared her for the rest of him.
He noticed her hesitation and slowed his movements, pressing inside her inch by excruciating inch. She held on to his shoulders, closing her eyes and burying her face in his neck as he jerked his hips forward, fully seating himself inside her.
She did her best to breathe through it. But she was in a daze. Joshua was inside her, and she wasn’t a virgin anymore. It felt... Well, it didn’t feel like losing anything. It felt like gaining something. Gaining a whole lot.
The pain began to recede and she looked up, at his face, at the extreme concentration there, at the set of his jaw, the veins in his neck standing out.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice strangled.
She nodded wordlessly, then flexed her hips experimentally.
He groaned, lowering his head, pressing his forehead against hers, before kissing her. Then he began to move.
Soon, that same sweet tension began to build again in her stomach, need replacing the bone-deep satisfaction that she had only just experienced. She didn’t know how it was possible to be back in that needy place only moments after feeling fulfilled.
But she was. And then she was lost in the rhythm, lost in the feeling of his thick length stroking in and out of her, all of the pain gone now, only pleasure remaining. It was so foreign, so singular and unlike anything she had ever experienced. And she loved it. Reveled in it.
But even more than her own pleasure, she reveled in watching his unraveling.
Because he had pulled her apart in a million astounding ways, and she didn’t know if she could ever be reassembled. So it was only fair that he lost himself too. Only fair that she be his undoing in some way.
Sweat beaded on his brow, trickled down his back. She reveled in the feel of it beneath her fingertips. In the obvious evidence of what this did to him.
His breathing became more labored, his muscles shaking as each thrust became less gentle. As he began to pound into her. And just as he needed to go harder, go faster, so did she.
Her own pleasure wound around his, inextricably linked.
On a harsh growl he buried his face in her neck, his arms shaking as he thrust into her one last time, slamming into her clit, breaking a wave of pleasure over her body as he found his own release.
He tried to pull away, but she wrapped her arms around him, holding him close. Because the sooner he separated from her body, the sooner they would have to talk. And she wasn’t exactly sure she wanted to talk.
But when he lifted his head, his blue eyes glinting in the dim light, she could tell that whether or not she wanted to talk, they were going to.
* * *
He rolled away from her, pushing into a sitting position. “Are you going to explain all of this to me? Or are you going to make me guess?”
“What?” She sounded overly innocent, her eyes wider than necessary.
“Danielle, I’m going to ask you a question, and I need you to answer me honestly. Were you a virgin?”
Joshua’s blood was still running hot through his veins, arousal still burning beneath the surface of his skin. And he knew the question he had just asked her was probably insane. He could explain her discomfort as pain because she hadn’t taken a man to her bed since she’d given birth.
But that wasn’t it. It wasn’t.
The more credence he gave to his virgin theory, the more everything about her started to make sense. The way she responded to his kiss, the way she acted when he touched her.
Her reaction had been about more than simple attraction, more than pleasure. There had been wonder there. A sense of discovery.
But that meant Riley wasn’t her son. And it meant she had been fucking lying to him.
“Well, Joshua, given that this is not a New Testament kind of situation...”
He reached out, grabbing hold of her wrist and tugging her upward, drawing her toward him. “Don’t lie to me.”
“Why would you think that?” she asked, her words small. Admission enough as far as he was concerned.
“A lot of reasons. But I have had sex with a virgin before. More accurately, Sadie Miller and I took each other’s virginity in the woods some eighteen years ago. You don’t forget that. And, I grant you, there could be other reasons for the fact that it hurt you, for the fact that you were tight.” A flush spread over her skin, her cheeks turning beet red. “But I don’t think any of those reasons are the truth. So what’s going on? Who is Riley’s mother?”
A tear slid down her cheek, her expression mutinous and angry. “I am,” she said, her voice trembling. “At least, I might as well be. I should be.”
“You didn’t give birth to Riley.”
She sniffed loudly, another tear sliding down her cheek. “No. I didn’t.”
“Are you running from somebody? Is there something I need to know?”
“It’s not like that. I’m not hiding. I didn’t steal him. I have legal custody of Riley. But my situation was problematic. At least, as far as Child Services was concerned. I lost my job because of the babysitting situation and I needed money.”
She suddenly looked so incredibly young, so vulnerable... And he felt like the biggest prick on planet Earth.
She had lied to him. She had most definitely led him to believe she was in an entirely different circumstance than she was, and still, he was mostly angry at himself.
Because the picture she was painting was even more desperate than the one he had been led to believe. Because she had been a virgin and he had just roughly dispensed with that.
She had been desperate. Utterly desperate. And had taken this post with him because she hadn’t seen another option. Whatever he’d thought of her before, he was forced to revise it, and there was no way that revision didn’t include recasting himself as the villain.
“Whose baby is he?”
She swallowed hard, drawing her knees up to her chest, covering her nudity. “Riley is my half brother. My mother showed up at my place about a year ago pregnant and desperate. She needed someone to help her out. When she came to me, she sounded pretty determined to take care of him. She even named him. She told me she would do better for him than she had for me, because she was done with men now and all of that. But she broke her promises. She had the baby, she met somebody else. I didn’t know it at first. I didn’t realize she was leaving Riley in the apartment alone sometimes while I was at work.”
She took a deep, shuddering breath, then continued. “I didn’t mess around when I found out. I didn’t wait for her to decide to abandon him. I called Child Services. And I got temporary guardianship. My mother left. But then things started to fall apart with the work, and I didn’t know how I was going to pay for the apartment... Then I saw your ad.”
He swore. “You should have told me.”
“Maybe. But I needed the money, Joshua. And I didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize your offer. I could tell you were uncomfortable that I brought a baby with me, and now I know why. But, regardless, at the time, I didn’t want to do anything that might compromise our arrangement.”
He felt like the ass he undoubtedly was. The worst part was, it shone a light on all the bullshit he’d put her through. Regardless of Riley’s parentage, she’d been desperate and he’d taken advantage of that. Less so when he’d been keeping his hands to himself. At least then it had been feasible to pretend it was an even exchange.
But now?
Now he’d slept with her and it was impossible to keep pretending.
And frankly, he didn’t want to.
He’d been wrestling with this feeling from the moment they’d gone out riding today, or maybe since they’d left his parents’ house last week.
But today...when he’d looked at her, seen her smile...noticed the way she’d gained weight after being in a place where she felt secure...
He’d wanted to give her more of that.
He’d wanted to do more good than harm. Had wanted to fix something instead of break it.
It was too late for Shannon. But he could help Danielle. He could make sure she always felt safe. That she and Riley were always protected.
The realization would have made him want to laugh if it didn’t all feel too damned grim. Somehow his father’s ad had brought him to this place when he’d been determined to teach the old man a lesson.
But Joshua hadn’t counted on Danielle.
Hadn’t counted on how she would make him feel. That she’d wake something inside him he’d thought had been asleep for good.
It wasn’t just chemistry. Wasn’t just sex. It was the desire to make her happy. To give her things.
To fix what was broken.
He knew the solution wouldn’t come from him personally, but his money could sure as hell fix her problems. And they did have chemistry. The kind that wasn’t common. It sure as hell went beyond anything he’d ever experienced before.
“The truth doesn’t change anything,” she said, lowering her face into her arms, her words muffled. “It doesn’t.”
He reached out, taking her chin between his thumb and forefinger, tilting her face back up. “It does. Even if it shouldn’t. Though, maybe it’s not Riley that changes it. Maybe it’s just the two of us.”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t have to change anything.”
“Danielle... I can’t...”
She lurched forward, grabbing his arm, her eyes wide, her expression wild. “Joshua, please. I need this money. I can’t go back to where we were. I’m being held to a harsher standard than his biological mother would be and I can’t lose him.”
He grabbed her chin again, steadying her face, looking into those glistening brown eyes. “Danielle, I would never let you lose him. I want to protect you. Both of you.”
She tilted her head to the side, her expression growing suspicious. “You...do?”
“I’ve been thinking. I was thinking this earlier when we were riding, but now, knowing your whole story...I want you and Riley to stay with me.”
She blinked. “What?”
“Danielle, I want you to marry me.”