LAUREN WAS EXHAUSTED by the time she was finished talking with Ava.
Ava tearfully promised not to do anything like that again. And Lauren, for her part, had tried to be honest with her daughter, trying to explain why she had needed a fresh start so badly.
She and Ava had cried together, and then she’d asked Grace to come and talk with them. They’d shared memories about Robert. Good and bad. Lauren had been careful, but she did try to come up with a way to honestly express why the situation with their father was complicated.
The fact of the matter was Robert had died driving his four-wheeler while under the influence. The death was preventable.
She needed to address that responsibility and choices mattered. She couldn’t just protect him and not use that to teach them. She had also tried to impress upon them that whatever they felt, it was okay. She was angry, but she also loved him. He was their father, and he would always be that. No one and nothing could change it.
She’d talked to her mother after, and cried more. She didn’t have time to be in the middle of an emotional meltdown but she also couldn’t ignore it all anymore either.
If this was going to be a fresh start, then it needed to be new. Open.
She also needed to go to her house and deal with Calder and all of the work still to be done. The sooner they could be in their house, the sooner everything would be fixed. Maybe.
It was so tempting to believe that. So tempting to believe that this one conversation might be the end.
Her rational self knew that wasn’t true. Her rational self knew that this was just one conversation of many that they would need to have. A part of her wanted to believe that for now things were settled.
She thought about that all the way back to the house.
Calder’s truck was still there. She honestly couldn’t believe it. He had said he was going to stay and work, but... It had been hours. She was sure he would’ve left. She didn’t understand this unwavering devotion he seemed to have to fixing everything.
It was alien to her. This kind of caring.
If he wanted sex, surely there were easier ways to get it. With a younger, more beautiful woman who wasn’t carrying her amount of baggage.
Women would line up to lick those abs.
God knew she would.
She didn’t deserve to think about that. Not now. Not when there was too much...
She sighed heavily and turned the engine off. She went inside and heard the sound of a hammer going. Walking into the bedroom, she saw that it was absolutely and completely done. She didn’t even know where he was working.
She followed the sound down the hall toward Ava’s room. There he was, putting up trim around the windows. “What are you doing?”
“There’s a lot more that needs to be done, beyond what needs to be done to satisfy the bank, I mean. Thought I would help.”
“Calder,” she said. “I mean, there’s no guarantee at all this is going to...”
“I wanted to help. And I figure, maybe, if Ava sees that she has a place that’s hers...”
“Calder, this is just scratching the surface on my life right now. I don’t know what else I’m going to be facing in the next few years with her. With Grace. Right now, Grace still feels like a kid, so I don’t have the same issues with her that I do with Ava. But Ava is... I mean God only knows what’s going to happen next, and then Grace is going to be a teenager. It’s going to be...two times that. It’s going to be ongoing like this. You’re twenty-nine years old. I don’t think you actually want to step in the middle of all this.”
He nodded, his blue eyes appraising her. He set the hammer down gently on the window box and began to walk toward her. He cupped her chin, holding her gaze.
“I don’t like to be told what to do,” he said. “Any more than I like to be told what I want.”
His touch made her tremble. The way he looked at her... It wasn’t fair.
“Why are you here?” she asked. “My life isn’t going to bars and having fun. It’s not...no-strings sex and getting to be naked in any room of the house. I have to be responsible and go to school functions, and any relationship I decide to have in the future will have to be contained to beds and bedrooms and possibly soundproof spaces so that I don’t scar my children for life.”
“You think I need it to be that? Sex in weird rooms and nights out at bars? Because I don’t. I don’t need that.” He slid his hand up to cup her cheek and she turned her head away, taking a step back.
“I wish I could have it,” she said. “I wanted to run away from home, too. That’s what I was trying to do coming back to Gold Valley. But it didn’t work. I thought maybe I could leave that life behind. Could leave trouble behind. But I can’t. I can’t.”
“Maybe you can have a life that’s not all or nothing. Did you ever think of that?”
“Only people who don’t have kids think that.” She shook her head. “She ran away. She was walking on the highway. Anything could have happened to her. She’s a fourteen-year-old girl. What if... What if some creep had been driving by and...”
“I would have hunted him down and killed him with my bare hands,” Calder said, his tone suddenly intense, fierce. “You wouldn’t have been alone. You’re borrowing trouble, babe. You shouldn’t do that either. Because everything was fine. But if ever there was a time when everything wasn’t fine, Lauren, I would be there for that, too. I swear it. I wouldn’t let you go through that alone.”
“Calder...”
“What do you need?” he asked. “Right now, what do you need?”
He was the only one who ever asked that. And she wanted to tell him.
She knew what she wanted. She wanted to be with this man, skin to skin. Feel his body against hers, in hers, again. She just wanted.
Wanted to feel like a woman, and not a rung-out husk like she felt now.
She wanted all these things she couldn’t have.
Desperately. Intensely.
Outside this house, outside this moment, she wouldn’t be able to. But maybe just for now. Just for tonight.
“I want you,” she whispered.
It didn’t matter if it made sense. It didn’t matter if it should work. Or shouldn’t work. She just wanted this.
She didn’t have to ask twice.
He held her against his body, kissing her hard, kissing her like he was desperate, a man starving for air.
His tongue was slick against hers, and his lips were so firm, fierce and decisive.
He was her whole world right in that moment.
The only thing that mattered.
The way those firm, masculine hands gripped her, the way they moved over her body.
She needed this man. Needed.
She couldn’t remember ever needing a man before, and that terrified her.
Sex had always been nice, but it hadn’t been this. This had sharp edges. It wasn’t just comfort. It was a challenge. It demanded as much as it gave, but she found she wanted it all the same. Maybe even more because of that.
She found that she kissed him back like he might be her oxygen, too.
In this moment, he damn well felt like it.
He lifted her up, cradled her in his arms and carried her out to the living room, where the blanket was laid out on the carpeted floor. He set her down, stretching out beside her, his blue eyes intense as he looked her over.
“Beautiful,” he said.
“Calder...”
“Listen to me,” he said. “You are the most beautiful woman that I have ever seen. I’ve always thought so.”
“You’re a beautiful man,” she responded. “I know that maybe men don’t want to be called beautiful, but you are.”
“Baby, you can call me whatever you want, as long as you keep looking at me like that.”
He stripped her shirt from her body, her pants, her underwear and bra and everything else. Then he began to work on his own clothes, slowly revealing that delicious body to her gaze.
All those muscles.
Every inch of him. She was desperate to touch, taste, to explore every dip, every ridge, every beautiful place on that masculine body that she hadn’t been able to before.
She knew exactly where she wanted to start.
She rose up on her knee, pressing her palm against his abs and kissing him right in the center of his chest. He groaned, and she continued her exploration, moving down his body, taking her time over those gorgeous abs. She darted her tongue out, tasting, taking a slow, leisurely tour of every inch of him.
His head fell back, breath harsh as his hands moved to grab hold of her hair, tugging, but she kept on tasting, her tongue swirling over him like he was a particularly sweet lollipop.
“Shit,” he said, his hips bucking upward as he thrust deep inside her mouth.
Arousal kicked her, and she couldn’t remember ever being so turned on by this act before. Usually it was a gift. And if anyone deserved a gift, it was Calder. But she found that it was more than just that. It turned her the hell on.
His surrender. His enjoyment.
His flavor.
Everything.
She tormented him and teased him until he was shaking, until he forced her away from him, words on his lips that she couldn’t quite understand.
“My turn,” he said, growling at her as he pushed her back onto the blanket and lowered his head, taking one nipple into his mouth and stroking the other one, then trailing down her stomach, tracing a circle around her belly button before going lower.
Lower.
His broad shoulders forced her legs apart, and he looked at her. The open, carnal appreciation on his face sent a wave of desire through her. He wrapped his arms around her hips, pulling her toward his mouth, lowering his head and taking a deep, long taste that nearly had her coming with the first from.
She gasped, crying out. He didn’t stop. He kept going. Fingers joining in with his lips and tongue. He thrust deep inside her, her orgasm swift and shocking, crashing over her like a sneaker wave. But he didn’t stop there. He didn’t stop until she came again. Until she was shaking and sobbing, until she had lost sense of everything. Everything except who he was. Who she was. Who they were together. In this world that contained nothing but the two of them.
Where nothing but her next climax mattered at all.
He collected a condom, then moved so that he was positioned over her, thrusting inside her in one easy stroke. She gasped at the invasion. So welcome, so intense. She felt like they were one body. Like she would never again be quite certain of where he began and she ended again.
She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
And she had a hard time imagining what life would be without this. How had one man come to mean so much to her so quickly? It had nothing to do with a fixed floor, and nothing to do with anything half so simple as an orgasm. It had everything to do with this feeling of completion that she felt very deep inside her.
And each stroke, each thrust of his body brought that truth back home harder. Deeper.
She needed him. She needed this. Everything he had to offer. Everywhere. Every part of her. She loved him.
It was as true as it was impossible. As unwanted as it was all-consuming.
Her face was wet with tears.
She couldn’t love another person. She didn’t have the room. She didn’t have the strength inside her to love one more person, and yet here was Calder Reid. Inside her body. Inside her heart.
As he came, the sound feral and low, reverberating inside her, she found her own release, wiping away everything but that moment. While they lay there together, tangled on the floor, their naked bodies resting against each other, it seemed like maybe it was possible.
She held her breath. In that space, in that moment, it seemed like this was real. Like it was her life.
She was going to hang on to that moment for as long as she could because she knew that when her breathing became normal again, and when her heart rate settled, she would remember all the reasons that it wasn’t.
She rested her hand over his heart and felt the steady beat against her palm.
And pretended it was the only thing in the whole world.