CHAPTER FIFTEEN
SUDDENLY, THE LIGHT seemed too bright. He was the one who had insisted it be on. He stood by that. Because he would be damned if he was going to let Lane pretend it was some other man bringing her pleasure. Would be damned if he allowed her to hide from him when he had spent so long fantasizing about her naked body.
Oh yeah, he had wanted to see everything.
But now, in the aftermath of his release, it all felt a little too sharp.
All of his nerve endings were fractured, on fire. His orgasm had nearly blown his head off. Among other things.
This was a new experience for him. Wanting somebody for so long and finally having them. Lane was the only woman he had ever wanted for an extended period of time. Usually, he mostly wanted sex, not one woman in particular.
She was the exception. She always had been.
And now she was pressed against him, her full, soft breasts crushed to his chest, her thighs parted, cradling him inside of her body.
He flexed his hips lightly, the shock of pleasure assaulting him.
He looked down at her face. Her eyes were closed, her chin tilted upward, as though she was resolutely not looking at him. But there was a smile tilting her lips upward.
He lifted his hand, brushing her hair away from her eyes, then let his fingertips drift down her face. He stroked her lower lip, like velvet beneath his touch. Her eyes fluttered open then, a glassy, dazed expression in them.
It hit him with full force, like a horse kicking him in the chest.
He moved away from her, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.
She didn’t say anything, but a moment later, he felt a hesitant touch against the center of his back. He didn’t react. He was still trying to catch his breath.
For the first time he questioned himself. He wondered what the hell he had been thinking. What he had hoped to accomplish with this. Because one thing was certain, sleeping with her hadn’t dealt with his desire for her.
All he wanted to do was kiss her again. Sink into her body again. Again and again and again.
This hadn’t even been a Band-Aid to put over the throbbing, insistent desire he felt for her. Nope, it hadn’t done a thing to lessen it at all.
And when you slept with your best friend, you kind of had to know the end game. With other women, Finn knew the end game. Sex a few times, and then a mutual parting. He didn’t deal with ex-lovers, and if he ever did, it was easy. Done in passing, and without any difficulty because both of them had dealt with their need for each other. Were likely satisfying that generic need with other people.
His need for Lane had never been generic. It had always been specific. It had never been about sex. He could be sleeping with another woman and still be caught off guard by how beautiful Lane was. Occasionally get stabbed, deep and low in the gut when she turned to smile at him in the sunlight filtered through her dark hair, illuminating it like some kind of halo.
Which had always seemed somewhat ironic to him since the thoughts he had about her were anything but angelic.
What was wrong with him? He had finally gotten the one thing he’d wanted for years, and he didn’t feel any closer to satisfaction. If anything, it had opened up to a deeper, darker and even more fathomless cavern of need inside of him.
He felt like the world’s biggest jackass. Sitting on the edge of the bed, having experienced the most explosive sexual encounter of his life—and brooding, instead of reveling in his physical satisfaction and his conquest.
He didn’t feel like Lane was a conquest. Maybe that was a problem. He felt much more conquested than anything else.
He got up and walked into the bathroom on unsteady legs, disposing of the condom. He looked up at his reflection in the mirror and wanted to punch it. He had thought—because hell, he’d wanted Lane long enough—that being with her would be the resolution to something.
Instead he felt like there was something large lodged in his chest keeping him from breathing.
He walked back into the bedroom and looked at her. She was still lying down, naked and sleepy looking. Soft and warm. “You okay?” He didn’t know what else to say, but that seemed like a caring angle to take.
He slid back into bed beside her, his gut going tight as he did. Getting into bed with Lane, bare-ass naked, was not a usual occurrence.
She nodded slowly. “Yes.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “Are you?”
There was no good answer to that. So he leaned forward, then wrapped his arm around her waist, shifting his weight and bringing her beneath him again. “That’s a complicated question.”
Her cheeks turned red. “Is it?”
“Do you mean am I satisfied?”
“No, that’s not what I meant. But, are you?”
“Not by a long shot. I have a feeling it will take more than once to accomplish that.” For some reason, as soon as he said those words, some of the tension in his chest eased. Maybe that was the problem. He wanted more. And as he sat there on the edge of the bed, he had seen himself plunge right back into the hell he’d been living in for the past decade. Wanting her, but not wanting to push her.
Because once wasn’t enough. It wouldn’t be. He knew that.
What he didn’t know was whether or not she was going to retreat back inside of herself again. Whether or not she was going to try and put distance between them. It was her modus operandi and they both knew it.
But he wasn’t having that bullshit.
“We have all night,” she said, brushing her fingertips against his face.
A night. Yeah, right. She was trying to control it. Trying to put a limit on it.
Hell no.
He curled his fingers around her wrist, drawing her hand forward and kissing her palm. Not an innocent kiss. The pressure was firm, and he darted his tongue out so that he could taste her skin. It didn’t matter that it was only her hand. Every single part of her was a sensual delight. A feast he intended to sate himself on for as long as he could.
“You think tonight is going to do it?”
She wiggled. He was hard again already. All of Lane Jensen, every soft, supple inch was pressed up against his body. Damn, it felt good.
“Something has to,” she said, her tone laughably pragmatic given their positions at the moment.
“What if it doesn’t?” Might as well ask the question.
“I don’t know.” She frowned, a wrinkle appearing between her brows. “Can you not be on top of me when we talk about this?”
He moved his hands down to her ass, squeezed her tight and drew her up against his arousal. “Are you sure about that?”
She gasped. “I’ll take What is I can’t talk with my best friend’s penis pushing against my hip for five hundred, Alex.”
“Is that your final answer?”
“Unless you want delicate appendages to be in jeopardy...”
“Your flawless game show metaphor leads me to believe that your brain is working just fine. Perhaps even too well.”
“I need...” She wiggled out from under him, moving up to the top of the bed and sliding beneath the covers. “Just for a second.”
“Suit yourself,” he said, rolling to the side and getting up from the bed. He moved back against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest.
The color in her cheeks got darker. “I’m also not sure I can talk to you while you’re naked.”
“You have a lot of rules.”
“I’m making them up as I go. Sadly, there is a dearth of rules for how to handle having just had sex with your best friend.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Dammit. I had sex with my best friend.”
“I know. I was there.”
“Aren’t you going to...get dressed?”
“I’m fine,” he said.
She clearly wasn’t, but he wasn’t interested in making her feel comfortable. He wasn’t interested in cutting the tension that stretched between them. He knew it was what she wanted. But she wasn’t in control here. He didn’t have to give a wide berth to her denial. Not anymore. He had spent long enough doing that. But now? Now he had been inside of her.
He wasn’t interested in games now.
“I’m going to tell you some things, and they’re kind of personal,” she said.
“This is kind of personal,” he said, gesturing to his naked body.
“You are such a guy.”
“I think that’s very evident at the moment.”
She laughed, flopping onto her back, covering her face with a pillow. “You are ridiculous right now. Aren’t you supposed to be serious and making bedroom eyes and whatever else you normally do after sex?”
He pushed off the wall, moving back toward the bed. “Well, I can’t do what I would normally do after sex. Because this wasn’t normal sex.”
She uncovered half her face, looking at him with one wide brown eye. “It wasn’t?”
“You’re being ridiculous, Lane. You know it wasn’t.”
She shrugged one enticing bare shoulder, and he found himself taking extra time to notice the freckle there. He wanted to lick it.
He wanted to lick her. Again. All over. One taste of that magic between her legs hadn’t been enough. He had a feeling if he said that to her now she would disappear beneath the covers, never to return.
“Okay, maybe I know it wasn’t.”
Without waiting for her permission he joined her on the bed, stretching out beside her. She scooted about half an inch in the other direction, but he didn’t take it personally. “This is the part where you tell me I was the best you’ve ever had,” he said, propping his face on his fist.
“Maybe you weren’t,” she said, tilting her chin up.
He took hold of it, lowered her face so that she was forced to make eye contact with him. “Try again.”
Her pupils expanded, the ring of brown in her eyes nearly disappearing. “Okay,” she said, her voice trembling. “Maybe you were.”
“Good. Because you were definitely the best I’ve ever had.”
“Really? Me? You’ve been with so many women.”
“Not that many,” he returned.
“Still sounds like an indeterminate figure.”
“I’d stop and count for you, but I can’t remember anyone else at the moment. All I can think of is you.”
She laughed again, but this time she sounded subdued, lowering the pillow completely and wrapping her arms around it, clutching it to her chest. Some of the tension in his own chest eased. But the tension in other parts of his body remained.
“What were you going to tell me?”
“Oh,” she said, waving her hand, “it’s not that important.”
“You thought it was really important a few minutes ago.”
“Yeah, well. Your abs are compromising my thought process.”
“You’re welcome to touch them while you talk.” That wasn’t the only place he wanted her to touch. But he would start with whatever he could get.
She smiled, mirroring his position, propping her cheek up on her closed fist. “This doesn’t feel all that weird.”
It didn’t feel weird at all to him. But then, this attraction wasn’t new for him. He had a feeling it wasn’t really new for her either, but acknowledging it was new.
“Why would it be?” he asked, reaching out and tracing her face from her cheekbone down to her chin. “It’s you and me.”
“It’s just always seemed to me... That it’s best to keep things separate, you know?”
“Is that another rule from the Lane Jensen guide to life?”
She pushed his shoulder. “I just mean... When I left Massachusetts, when I left my parents, I was broken. I was broken in part by my romantic relationship, but it was more than that. I had the baby when I was sixteen.” She closed her eyes. “I don’t know if we should talk about this now, after all.”
He studied her profile, the way her lashes rested against her pale skin. The slight tension in her forehead. The only indication of just how badly this topic hurt her. He wanted her to tell him everything. He wanted her to open up and pour all her pain out onto him. To give it all to him. To let him carry it. He wanted that so badly it shocked him. It was a physical ache, a need that went beyond logic, beyond sex.
He cared about Lane. He wanted to protect her. From everything. And for a long time, that had included himself. But now, now that he knew even more about her, the need had intensified.
“Tell me,” he said.
She kept her eyes closed, but she continued talking. “It was decided right after I found out about the pregnancy that we should give the baby up for adoption. And when I say it was decided, I mean our parents told us exactly how it would be. We were both scared. He was my first boyfriend, and while I definitely had thought about marrying him, it wasn’t like I was anywhere close to being ready for that. We both had college to look forward to. We both had our whole lives ahead of us. Cord’s parents just wanted it all to go away. Him being a part of the child’s life was never an option, as far as they were concerned. If I had the baby, they didn’t want him involved. So having my parents say that we would put the child up for adoption was...a relief in a way. I didn’t have to make the decision. They made it for me.”
She took a deep, shuddering breath, holding even tighter to the pillow. Then she continued. “But all throughout the pregnancy I had my doubts. Still, we went forward with the process. The baby was placed with parents before I had him. And I did my best not to think of him as mine. He was theirs. He was theirs because they were the ones who were going to raise him.”
“It wasn’t that simple in the end, was it?” Finn prompted, trying to keep his tone gentle.
She shook her head, biting her lip. “Sometimes I can’t believe that really happened to me. It’s like a scene out of someone else’s life. And then other times... It’s way too real. Way too close to the present. Sometimes I think I feel a flutter in my stomach. And I think it’s the baby kicking. But of course, it isn’t. I haven’t been pregnant for more than twelve years. But it’s just... Those reminders. That experience... I can’t just forget it. I can’t let go of it. It all seemed so simple. You give the baby up for adoption, and then you move on with your life. But there’s more to it.”
“Tell me,” he said.
The image of Lane, so young, going through something that terrified women twice her age, made his heart clench tight.
“My parents told everybody that I was going to study abroad for a year. That wasn’t true. I went to a special school with pregnant unwed mothers. Like it was literally the nineteen fifties. And I kept up with my schooling that way.”
“Your parents hid the pregnancy from everybody that way.”
She swallowed visibly, nodding. “It was for the best,” she said, like she was repeating words she had heard before but had never really internalized. “You know, especially for Cord. Because he had political aspirations, like I said. Like you can see. And really, nobody could know that his girlfriend was pregnant. I mean, it was out of consideration for me too. As my mother told me, over and over again, nobody can respect a girl who gets pregnant.”
He swore. “That’s awful.”
“It was really awful. I was so lonely, and everything was scary. I couldn’t even talk to my boyfriend. And, anyway, at a certain point I didn’t want to. I just wanted to forget that I’d ever had a relationship with him. We broke up over the phone when I was about five months along. I was the one who ended it. I wanted to forget him. And also to never have sex again.” She laughed a little. “Clearly I didn’t stick to that. But after I had the baby I only ever talked to him once. We didn’t talk about the pregnancy. Or the birth. I didn’t tell him we had a boy. He doesn’t know. He didn’t want to know. I did. Sometimes I wonder if that was a good decision.”
She cleared her throat. “Anyway. After I had him I went back home, I went back to school. I was going to finish my senior year.” She stopped for a moment, biting her lower lip. She let out a long, hard breath. “I tried. I tried to be normal. I tried to forget that anything had happened. The only person who knew about it was Cord, so it seemed like it should be easy. But I couldn’t forget. I couldn’t feel normal. I couldn’t catch his eye from across the school and not remember. I didn’t want him to ask about the baby—his son—and yet I was so angry every time he didn’t. I couldn’t feel like myself again. I couldn’t look at my parents and pretend the last year hadn’t happened. I just... I didn’t feel like I could move on there.”
“That’s when you came to live with Mark.”
“Yes. He had moved away back when I was in junior high. So we weren’t all that close, but he knew how Mom and Dad were. He understood. The minute I told him I was having issues with them... He didn’t ask questions. He just bought me a plane ticket. And I think... I think my parents were relieved to have me go. Because at the end of the day I think it was a lot harder for them to deal with the fact that I’d had their grandchild, and that they never met him, than they wanted it to be.”
“So you came to Copper Ridge. And that’s when we met.” No wonder he had found her so vulnerable. She had been wounded. Wounded deep. Much more than he had imagined. Mark had made it sound like it was the typical conflict between parents and a teenager.
“Yes,” she said. “And this place was... Everything. It was where I really started healing. Where I put all that distance between myself and my mistakes. All that pain. I couldn’t live in it. But here... The air, the ocean, the mountains. It started to heal me. I made friends. I found my independence. Who I was. I learned to make my own choices, and that making my own choices wasn’t a burden.” She looked at him for a moment, then away just as quickly. “I never even wanted to think about being attracted to you. You are too important to me. And I had already lost too much.” The words grew tight, small. “That hasn’t really changed. It’s just that my ability to deny everything clearly decreased.”
“Tell me more about that,” he said.
“Big ego much?”
“Yes.” He moved closer to her. “There is a little bit of ego involved in this. You spent ten years treating me like a Ken doll.”
“What?” she asked.
“Like I had nothing but smooth plastic between my legs.”
She guffawed. “Lies.”
He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her up against him. Sadly, the blanket bunched between them and he was denied what he was after, the press of her skin against his. “Not a lie. That’s what started all of this. The fact that I couldn’t stand you pretending I wasn’t a man. And that I couldn’t spend another day pretending I didn’t want you. I couldn’t pretend there was nothing between us. Not anymore.”
She reached out and pinched the blanket between her thumb and forefinger. “Right now there is a very fuzzy blanket between us.”
“Not for long.” He leaned in, kissed her. Not a simple kiss either. He took it deep. He made it last. When they parted, they were both breathing hard. “But this is what I meant. Not the blanket.”
“Okay, when I met you I thought you were hot. But I was kind of off guys then. Plus, I would have gotten you arrested.”
“True.”
“And I... Well, when I finally did get back into dating it was because I was lonely. Because I had some needs. You know, like you do. But the further I went down the dating road, the clearer it became to me that I wasn’t going to have a normal future. I just... I can’t. There’s too much stuff. I don’t want to get married. I can’t...think about having another child. It just feels wrong somehow.”
He didn’t want those things either. And he had his own set of pretty good reasons. But for some reason hearing Lane say that, so definitively, twisted his stomach. He didn’t want that for her. It was a funny thing, to feel so confident in his own decision to avoid entanglements, and yet to hate that she was so affected by her past she was doing the same.
But then, another part of him found immediate pleasure in it. In the fact that this association with him wasn’t actually holding her back from anything. That it meant they could share an objective. In fact, part of him found it pretty damn satisfying.
“The way I see it,” he said, “there’s no reason the two of us can’t keep being friends.”
“Well, we better be able to stay friends. Otherwise, I’m going to take tonight back.”
“You can’t.”
“I would figure out time travel. That’s how important it is to me.” Her face was serious, so serious he might have laughed if she wasn’t so grave. “You’re right. I’ve been attracted to you for a long time. But it was so important to me that we keep what we have that I buried it as deep as I possibly could. That’s why I was so mad at you when you kissed me. Not because I never thought about it before, but because I had deliberately forced myself to never, ever indulge any thoughts about what it might be like. Mark helped me so much when I came to Copper Ridge. But you... You were the one that saved me, Finn. Our friendship. You’re the most important person in my life.”
Why? The question burned in the back of his throat, but he refused to allow himself to ask it. “Because I fix your stuff?”
“No,” she said, “just...because.”
“The way I see it, the two of us have been playing pretty elaborate games for the past while. Pretending we don’t want this, when both of us do.”
“You make it sound silly.”
“It’s not. Our friendship is important to me too, Lane. And not just that, but you. Your feelings. I’m limited in what I can offer a woman. I don’t want to get married either. I don’t want to have kids. I don’t want to have a family. I don’t want love.” He reached between them, casting the blanket aside. Then he pulled her up against him. “This,” he said, rolling his hips forward, letting her feel his hardness. “This is all I have to offer you. That, and what we have already.”
“So, you’re proposing an arrangement. With multiple orgasms and steady companionship?”
“Yes.”
She blinked, the expression on her face turning ponderous. And everything in him seized up, froze. All of him, every cell in his body, waiting on her response.
“That sounds... Dangerously simple and exceedingly attractive.”
“What if it’s both?”
“Is it ever?”
He ignored the voice inside of him that said it couldn’t be. “Why not? We both want the same things.”
“More accurately we both want to avoid the same things,” she said, her tone dry.
“Yeah, fair enough.” He pressed his forehead against hers. “You’re not going to forget this. Don’t pretend for one second that me leaving tonight means we can go back to the way things were tomorrow.”
She blinked, a sheen of tears in her eyes. He hated himself for that. But not enough to tell her to forget it. Not enough to make this easy. “That was what I was planning. That was why I drove you back here.” She laughed, a shaky sound. “I thought that if we could just...do it once we would maybe take care of it.”
“I’m afraid not.”
“So we do it. Until we don’t.”
He couldn’t imagine a time when he wouldn’t want to. But, there was no point in saying that. “Exactly.”
“And we’re friends first.”
“Always.”
She let out a sigh of relief and her body melted against his. “I’m so... I don’t know. Just relieved. All of this has been hard. Everything. Cord being on TV all the time. Everybody acting like he’s a god when I know for a fact he’s underwhelming if anything.”
Finn laughed, more than a little satisfied by that estimation of her ex.
“It will be nice to... To be with somebody who knows. And to not have to try so hard,” she said, putting her hand on his face. “To pretend that I feel normal. And not to pretend that I’m not attracted to you.”
That was the biggest source of relief as far as he was concerned. The fact that he didn’t have to channel all his restraint into resisting her, and resisting the attraction that had only grown more intense over the past few weeks.
“Yeah,” he said. “Now all we have to deal with is a lifetime of emotional scarring and issues.”
She laughed, and the sound did a lot to ease the tension still lingering inside him. “Well,” she said, “thank God for that.”
“But first,” he said, looking down at that freckle on her shoulder, “I need to taste your skin again.”