Chapter Eleven
Kane yanked on the shower. The water was ice cold and cascaded over him, all three jets—one on the top and two on the sides—but still his blood raged. He’d come back to the room determined to apologize to Sky and to tell her why he was having so much trouble forgiving, but she’d been asleep on top of the bed. The hotel robe had been loose around her body, leaving one small, perfect breast exposed. Her dark hair had been wild across the white pillow, and he’d been seized with a lust so hot and dark that he’d barely been able to drag himself away.
Stupid. Primitive. She’d cried herself to sleep, and instead of holding her, showing her she could trust him, she could rely on him to be there for her and Montana, he’d walked away rather than expose himself. Like he’d done four years ago when he’d dropped her off at the airport instead of asking her to stay with him. He’d never once let her know what she’d meant to him all those years ago. He’d kept it casual—in his comfort zone, not hers. He kept blaming her for taking their child, but if he’d followed his heart, let himself be vulnerable, Sky would have had no reason to protect her heart and their child from what she’d perceived as sexual interest but emotional indifference.
He would have been his child’s acknowledged father.
He balled his fist and barely resisted smashing it against the unforgiving shower. He welcomed the cold water. It soothed his aches and cooled the self-fury that rode him so hard.
He didn’t hear Sky step into the shower until her chilled body was pressed against his back. Her hands soothed down his back and then wrapped around his waist. She stayed like that a moment, and then reached out and turned the handle to warm and then warmer. She laid her cheek against his back. He thought she pressed a kiss to his spine.
They’d often showered together in his small shower stall in his trailer. He’d loved washing her, letting his hands wander freely down her silky pale skin. He’d loved their differences. Her short to his tall. Her tender to his hard. Her full heart to his empty. Her sweet to his cynical. She had been light to his dark, and he’d been able to finally feel like he had a home when he’d been in her arms. He hadn’t had to prove anything to her.
Except he should have. She’d deserved so much more than he’d given.
He didn’t know what to say to her. How to apologize when he was still so raw and vulnerable to anger and the pain that sawed through his heart over and over. He did not want to be that man, a victim of his rioting emotions. His mom had been loving, but exacting and also always on the edge—happy, sad, angry, calculating, raging. She’d cycled so quickly. It had been exhausting and sometimes, terrifying. Luke had always dealt with their mom better. He’d been the calm son. Careful. Kane had been reckless and volatile, but determined to keep himself controlled. Sky had taught him how to meditate and how to find his center and stay there.
“Sky.” His voice cracked.
“Shshsh,” she soothed. She reached around him and snagged the shower gel. Soon fragrant suds slid down his body with her hands. She traced the lines of the bull tattoo that she had designed and drawn so many years ago. She kissed a line down his spine. He kept his back to her, head bent, ashamed.
She turned him around. Her hands strong and sure, and he didn’t have the energy to stop her. She rubbed more gel in her hands, and then smoothed the suds over his shoulders, down his arms, and then across his chest, his abs and down his thighs. Her eyes stayed on her hands, her expression serious and a little shy.
He wanted to drop to his knees and beg her forgiveness, promise he could let the past go, but he didn’t want to lie to her. He sucked in a fractured breath as she squatted before him, her hands spreading the gel suds up and down his thighs to his calves and feet.
Even gutted, his dumbass cock had to turn everything into an opportunity, the arrogant bastard. Sky paused then she looked up at him, her eyes midnight blue, the water streaming off her own body, turning her hair into a dripping curtain of black silk. She kissed the tip of his cock, but before he could figure out what he should or shouldn’t do about that, she kissed a scar he had on his thigh, and then the bruise on his hip and the other bruise spreading large and purple low on his side and up to his ribs.
The steam in the shower made everything seem unreal. She looked ethereal. Sky held out the gel to him. Dumbly he took it. Then she turned around, giving him the long unmarred line of her back. She flipped her hair over her shoulder. So he washed her. He couldn’t see any changes Montana had made on her body. He washed her hair. When he turned her around to face him, she stepped into him, and sighed, her cheek on his chest, and something inside him broke open. Jagged.
“What did it feel like to nurse her?” he asked into the drumbeat of the water.
“Painful for the first month,” she said. “The pregnancy book says it hurts for the first week or so. Total understatement. Sometimes I wanted to scream when she’d latch on and I’d pinch my leg to make something else hurt, but using chilled silicon inserts in my nursing bra helped alleviate the pain as did olive oil on my nipples.”
He closed his eyes. He was an asshole because the thought of spreading olive oil on her nipples was a turn-on, but the knowledge that he hadn’t had the opportunity to help her still burned.
“I should have been there to help you,” he said helpless to shut up.
“I know.” She kissed first one of his nipples and then his other, then she took both of his hands and led him to cup her small, perfect breasts. “You would have. I never doubted that, Kane.”
His mind reeled. She was talking. She was touching him. Giving him something of herself to work with. He closed his eyes. Tried to find his center. Shove his anger and his fear of exposure aside.
“But you didn’t think I would welcome a baby,” he said thinking back to his twenty-two-year-old self. It had been all about him. Building his career. Building his body stronger, more flexible. The money. The image. He’d loved having the girlfriend, but he’d kept her on the sidelines deliberately. Hadn’t wanted to share her with his rough world. “That’s my fault.”
He hadn’t told her how much she meant to him. He hadn’t wanted to tell himself.
Sky laced her fingers with his and brought their hands low on her body. He opened his eyes, and thought that Sky had tears mingling with the shower water. She took one of his fingers and traced a thin white line so low on her belly. “I had a C-section,” she whispered, and he winced. “She was too big and breach and her legs were splayed wide. Wonder where she got that from.”
Kane swallowed hard. Sky had had surgery, and he hadn’t been there.
She smiled.
“But you can hardly see the scar, and I didn’t get stretch marks. I gained fifteen pounds. Not enough, but I had morning sickness that definitely was not limited to morning or the first trimester.” She made a face. “Montana weighed eight pounds ten ounces so I’m glad I didn’t have to push her out.”
“Why Montana?” Why not his last name? She should have his last name. She would have his last name. Tomorrow.
She stood on tiptoes to kiss him, but he didn’t bend down and help her so she contented herself with kissing his sternum where his heart thumped.
“You’d told me once that your mom had grown up on a ranch there, that the Wilders were early settlers in the Montana territory. It was a way for her to connect with you.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. Fuck. How was he going to get past this anger and pain when it continued to rear up ugly and hungry between them?
“I am so, so sorry for hurting you,” she whispered. “I didn’t want to hurt you. I wanted to protect her, and…and…myself.”
“From me?” He felt like he was in agony.
She covered his hands with hers and linked her soapy fingers with his.
“I was so crazy about you,” she said. “So, so crazy in love, but, Kane, I’m not the girl you thought I was,” she said so softly that he could barely hear her. She turned off the water and then reached for a towel. To Kane’s astonishment, she began to towel him off, her movements tender. “I know you thought my family was perfect, Kane. You saw what my parents wanted people to see—members of our church, my father’s law practice, our neighborhood, the country club, our private school. And when Bennington was alive it was like that. For him.”
Sky bent, toweling off his legs, and he sucked in a breath wondering if she would kiss him again, take him in her mouth, bring him to paradise. Sky had always been so uninhibited and generous giving him pleasure, seeming to enjoy pleasuring him as much as he did her.
He’d missed that: the intimacy he’d felt they’d had.
She dried his calves, his feet, even his toes.
“My dad cheated,” she said. “A lot. It destroyed my mother. Her confidence. Her trust. She started to drink. More and more. She hid it well for a while, but…” Sky gulped in a breath and then looked up at him quickly and then away. He wanted to hold her, to not make her relive all of the ancient history. Hers. His. “And then probably to get some kind of revenge, she cheated with the husband of a friend of hers.”
Sky wrapped him in the towel. She rested her head on his chest again, and then her hands smoothed down his arms. “She wanted to divorce my father and marry the other man, her lover. But he didn’t want to leave his wife. And my mother’s husband didn’t want to get divorced. He was Catholic although ‘marriage is forever’ was the only belief he followed.” She laughed but there was no humor.
“Sky.” He bent to look in her eyes. “The time we were together, I never cheated on you. Never. I didn’t even notice other women.”
Hell. He’d not been able to stomach the thought of another woman for months after her. And afterward they had to be the opposite of her. Not surrogates.
She didn’t meet his eyes. “The man stayed with his wife. They moved. Then my mom realized she was pregnant. With me.”
Sky stood up like she wasn’t just blasting open the world he thought she’d lived in.
“Sky?”
“My parents stayed together. My mom more miserable because I think she loved the other man, who wanted nothing to do with her.” Sky swallowed hard. “Or with me.”
Kane jerked. That one came too close to home.
“But they sucked it up. Pretended. For Bennington mostly. They both loved Bennington. The sun rose and set by him. He was golden. I was a shadow. I loved him. He was a great big brother, but honestly he just sucked up all the air. There was none left for me. My mom couldn’t look at me without remembering her affair and feeling guilty and probably rejected, and my dad just saw another man’s child he was stuck raising.”
“Jesus, Sky.” He pulled her close. He couldn’t help it. He took the towel from her and wrapped it around her and he pressed a kiss to her sopping hair. He snagged another towel and, bending her forward, he wrapped her hair.
“You thought I was a princess, prized and pampered because Bennington took me so many places with you both, letting me tag along, but it was because I was only an apology at home. He didn’t understand my parents’ attitude toward me, but he tried to make up for it in any way he could.”
She met his eyes, her expression sad and wry. “I didn’t even know my dad wasn’t really my dad until I was thirteen. I tried so hard to get my mom and dad to love me, and to treat me like they did Bennington.” Her voice shook, but she steadied it quickly. “I was taken care of physically, but…” She shrugged her shoulders as if she could forget her heavy burden. “I never understood why my dad went to all of Bennington’s games, award ceremonies, all of it when he never went to one school concert or play or dance recital or horse show to watch me.”
“How did you find out?” Kane didn’t feel right asking, but they needed to know each other.
“I heard Bennington and my dad arguing. He was yelling at my dad about the way he treated me and my dad confessed it—that I wasn’t his, that I was only Bennington’s half-sister. That I was only a mistake.”
Kane pulled her back into his body, but both of them were chilled from the blast of the air conditioner and the rapidly cooling air in the shower. She was shaking in his arms. Or maybe he was. His stomach churned sickly.
A mistake.
Like he had been. Like he’d been made to feel his whole life by his father’s continued cool rejection. Not even to his face but through a legal team. He didn’t want Montana to ever feel like she was a mistake.
“I didn’t want that for my child—to feel like she wasn’t wanted, like she was a mistake.” Sky turned a clear gaze up to him, her heart and soul radiating in her expression.
“She’s wanted,” he said hoarsely. “She would have been wanted from the first moment you told me.”
Sky’s gaze clouded and dropped. He tilted her chin up so that she was forced to look at him.
“You have to believe me, Sky. I would have been happy about the baby.”
Her dark blue eyes searched his. “You say that now, and maybe you think it’s true,” Sky said. “But you were so careful all the time,” she said. “Safety first. You even said that more than once. I thought you’d freak out when I was late.”
“I would have been surprised, but we would have made the appropriate adjustments.”
“How?” Sky laughed, a catch in her voice. “You were twenty-two. Really starting to hit it big on the AEBR. No way did I think a baby would make you go to your happy place. You’d even check that I took my pill each morning. You were obsessed.”
“Hell yes,” Kane said. “I wanted to protect you. Of course, I was careful. You were nineteen. Still in school. Wanting to go for your MFA. I didn’t want to fuck up your life with lapse in birth control.”
Sky stared at him for long moments, and he wondered how she could look at him so tenderly when he’d failed her on such a fundamental level—exactly how she’d expected to be failed, he realized with insight, considering her family history.
“I was older. I was the man,” Kane said. “You should have relied on me.” He couldn’t quite let that go, but it was now, he realized, a moot point. What man had been there for her? Not her biological father. Not the man she’d believed to be her father. Even Bennington had died on her before she’d been out of the house. Enter Kane Wilder, arrogant idiot, he thought. He’d been her first lover and had dragged her around on the tour for three months in a trailer rocking her body every chance he got, but not once had he opened up to her about his feelings. A future with her. Or discussed why he risked his life and health weekly—what drove him.
Sky took his hand and led him back to the bedroom. She kept her towel wrapped around her body as she sat down on the bed and pulled him down to sit beside her.
“You said you didn’t want to dwell on the past, but maybe we need to,” she said pensively. “But you can’t rewrite history. You couldn’t wait to drop me off at the airport to go back to school.”
“I hated dropping you off,” Kane admitted. “But I thought that asking you to stay was unfair. I wanted you to live your dream as I was living mine. The finals were in October. You being at school meant I could keep my focus absolute so yeah, even though I missed you, the timing was perfect. In my mind we’d be apart five or six weeks, and then we’d have almost three months together when I wouldn’t be working. I thought I’d buy us a condo or something near your school so I could be with you off season and on breaks.”
Her eyes searched his, and he felt he must be coming up short. If he’d asked her to stay or if he’d told her he’d spend his break with her, she probably would have thought she could count on him. The estrangement from Sky and his child had been of his own making at least halfway if not more. He hadn’t bothered to find out about Sky’s life other than what he’d seen superficially as a self-obsessed teenaged boy and then later as a young, horny bull-rider. She’d been fun and kind and beautiful and hot as hell and so giving.
“I just took and took and took,” he admitted to himself and to her.
Kane caught up his bag and pulled out a T-shirt for her. If he didn’t get her covered, he would touch her. He’d always loved touching her. Holding her in his arms, having the freedom to feel her satiny skin beneath his hands had always floored him on an elemental level.
The summer they’d spent together had been beyond any heaven he’d ever imagined. He’d been able to live out all his fantasies and create more. Sky had been so physically affectionate and so sexually responsive it had fed his needs, even as it created more and a sense of belonging to someone that had been heady. He had loved coming back to the trailer to find her waiting for him. It had been addictive and filled a hole in him that he’d never acknowledged existed until she was gone.
He helped her into the T-shirt, but couldn’t help the way his fingers lingered down her neck. He breathed her in. They’d showered together, used the same shower gel, but she still exuded that elusive fragrance that was so her—and that made him hungry for her. Mentally pushing down his need, which did nothing for his monster hard-on, he pulled on a pair of boxers.
So much of their relationship had been about sex. Now it had to be about communication. And discipline. He had to forgive. She had to trust.
“I did keep you separate from the tour deliberately,” he confessed, his lips against her collarbone. “I knew you were shy and didn’t like crowds, but I used that to my advantage.” He cupped her face. Intensity bled from him. “I told myself I was protecting you, but really I was a jealous idiot. I was afraid of all the other riders hitting on you. You’d been so innocent when we first got together, and I thought that when you met some of the other more seasoned riders…”
“Kane.” She covered his hands. “There’s only been you for me. Just you.”
“I hated that I was jealous. It’s an ugly and unacceptable trait, but I…”
“Stop.” She kissed his mouth fiercely, and then withdrew, but her eyes were nearly purple with intensity. “It was always you for me. No one else. Not then. Not now. Not ever. Just you.” Her voice trembled.
And this was when he should tell her the rest. His past that rode him so hard. His anger. The sorrow that yawned inside him, hungry for more of his soul. But everything bottled in his throat. Choked him. Made him weak and ashamed. Habits were hard to break, and silence was the hardest.
Fighting the tremble in his hand, Kane unwrapped the towel from her hair and it tumbled down over her shoulders. Sky stared blankly at some unseen point in front of her, and after hesitating for a moment, wrestling with his conscience, Kane got up and retrieved her hairbrush from the bathroom.
He sat cross-legged behind her and began to brush, smoothing the brush through her hair in long, gentle strokes. He continued to brush long after the thick, dark mass hung like a silky curtain down her back. She sighed her pleasure, and his fingers ached to take over. He remembered the slide of her hair through his fingers. His cock remembered how her hair would glide across him when she’d kiss her way down his body, or massage him or rub arnica into his bruises, or suck him dry.
Fuck! Why’d he think about that now? Why couldn’t he brush Sky’s hair without thinking about all the ways he’d had her or she’d had him? They had done a lot of other things that hadn’t involved sex—hiking, dancing, swimming, visiting art galleries, concerts, even a Cajun cooking class in New Orleans. But after all of those had been mind-blowing, body-melting sweaty marathon sex that would leave him charged up and hungry for more. He needed a cool head and finesse. Not his overeager cock charged up by memories.
Sky’s breathing hitched, and his cock stirred. That had always been an invitation before—the way her eyes would darken to indigo, almost glowing, and her breathing would catch in her throat. His brother Luke would have handled this situation better, although maybe not. Luke had definitely acted like a crazed drunken bear when he and his now wife Tanner had had a fight at Montana’s Copper Mountain Rodeo last September, and she’d run out on him. There’d been no reasoning with his usually unflappable brother until Tanner had settled down enough to listen to Luke’s explanation and forgive him.
And now they were married, expecting twins. He wanted that. Marriage. Sky pregnant. He just needed to get through this shitty part. She’d said she’d loved him that summer so many times. He just had to get her there again. Keep her there.
But how if he weren’t going to use sex?
“Thank you.” Sky’s whisper sent a shiver down his spine that went straight to his cock. He was an animal, all instinct and lust when he had to stay in his frontal lobe. He stood up quickly to return the hairbrush, but Shy caught his hand. He didn’t dare turn around. He wasn’t just tenting the boxers, he pointed out of them like his dick was a compass needle. He should probably jerk off so he could let her asleep or talk more if she wanted. He needed to corral his brain to form words instead of images of him and Sky busy on the bed.
She traced the lines on his palm, and his eyes shut as he let the sensations skitter through his body. Then her palm was to his, lightly skimming in a circle, back and forth.
“Sky,” he choked out, wanting to tell her that he was already at the end of his rope, and then she sucked one finger into the hot, wet paradise of her mouth.
Every cell in his body leapt toward hers, and he swore under his breath. He saw his T-shirt fall on the ground next to him. She was naked. On the bed. How the hell was he supposed to not act on that? Think pure thoughts? He hadn’t had a pure thought around Sky since she’d turned sixteen. Even then he’d known it was wrong when she’d been so young. He’d told his imagination and his cock to shut the fuck up, and he’d mostly stayed away from her limiting contact to texts until her brother, his best friend, had died. Then he’d checked in with her more often, even visiting as if to prove that he could look and talk and not touch. And he’d broken his no-touch rule the minute she’d slid across his truck seat and hooked one arm around his neck and breathed his name at a drive-in movie he’d taken her to as an old-fashioned lark. They hadn’t even stayed long enough for the damn thing to start.
Sky licked the length of his finger and then around, mimicking an act far more potent, but Kane was already so aroused he was leaking. Sky’s other hand reached around his hip and gripped him, and he gave up trying to pretend he could resist her.
Her thumb smeared the little bead of moisture. Heat and desire crashed through him shutting down his last struggling thoughts.
“I know we need to talk,” Sky said, her grip firm as she pumped him slowly.
“Later,” he growled but made a last grab for sanity. “I promise.”
He covered her, caging her body with his elbows, keeping his full weight off her.
She tilted her chin for a kiss, but he held himself just out of reach.
“My way,” he said letting her see that he meant it. Already her thighs had parted, cradling him like four years hadn’t passed. “Everything my way.”
“Kane,” she whispered looping her arms around his shoulders.
He slid down her body and she arched against him. Her gasp was music to him. He nuzzled his way across the small scar low on her abdomen that she’d showed him. He nipped the line with his lips. Sky cried out and writhed against him, trying to get closer, connect them.
“You haven’t answered. My way.”
He waited at her entrance, mouth close, hands on her hips.
“You. Don’t. Play. Fair,” she gasped grapping his hand, and trying to move it to where she wanted it most.
“Not playing here, Sky. My way. Say it.”
“Your way,” she agreed.
He was a dick because she sounded dazed and desperate and probably didn’t know what she was agreeing to. Tough. He was beyond desperate to have her. To get past the giant, enormous roadblock she and he had erected between them. He needed to push past his anger and hurt and her distrust and fear. He just needed to hold on until the bell.