CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
WHEN FINN GOT to Lane’s she immediately ushered him down to the dock and thrust a cold beer into his hand. That wasn’t particularly unusual. When it came to food, and feeding people, Lane spread her favors around pretty evenly.
All of this wouldn’t have been terribly out of place back before they had started sleeping together. A cold beer, a steak on the grill had always been sweet. The assurance of sex later made it all a little bit sweeter.
“Just sit down,” she said as she bustled around, preparing a salad and placing it at the center of the little picnic table that was just by the water’s edge. “I’ve got everything.”
He wasn’t going to argue. Instead, he lifted his beer to his lips and watched Lane walk, those little cutoff shorts she wore showing off the tanned, toned length of her legs. And now he knew exactly what it was like to have those legs wrapped around him.
Male satisfaction gripped him. Probably inappropriate, and definitely objectifying. But he couldn’t bring himself to care.
He had saved up a lot of time wanting. Wanting, longing, desiring and not having. Well, now he had her. He wasn’t going to embrace any inhibition now. He’d had a decade of it. He was over it.
She came over to the table, placing a plate in front of him that had a glorious-looking steak topped with blue cheese on it and some mashed potatoes on the side.
“Salad isn’t optional,” she said, setting a plate in front of herself and taking a seat across from him. “Because it’s so good.”
She smiled, the breeze ruffling her hair, the orange glow from the slowly sinking sun making her look like she was an angel. Except what he wanted to do with her was decidedly not angelic.
“For you,” he said, grabbing the tongs and dishing himself a portion of salad that seemed to have cheese, fruit and nuts in it. “For you I will eat greens.”
“That’s the nicest compliment you could have given me. I feel like it’s a true show of your devotion that you’re willing to eat a vegetable to placate me.”
She looked down at her plate, then without lifting her face, she looked back at him, her lashes veiling her eyes slightly, the expression impish and so damn sexy it made him hard. Then she smiled, just a hint of one.
Something in his chest expanded to a painful proportion, making it difficult to breathe. He wanted to capture this moment, capture the smile and hang on to both for as long as possible.
This feeling, this feeling that was taking over his entire body, didn’t feel much like friendship. But then, he wasn’t sure his feelings for her had ever been that simple.
It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter what it was called. If it was dinners by the lake and nights spent in bed with each other, what did he care? A label wouldn’t help.
They ate in silence, but it wasn’t awkward. The breeze was blowing over the top of the water, leaving little ripples in the dark surface, the trees that stood tall and proud around the perimeter rustling slightly, the scent of wood and pine and warm earth riding the top of the wind.
“I’ve never had a guy out here, just so you know. Actually, I’ve never had a guy spend the night at my house before.”
That simple, bland admission hit him hard in the stomach.
“You haven’t?” She had invited him to stay over easily enough. In fact, it hadn’t even been a discussion. He had slept in her bed until he’d had to get up at an ungodly hour to be home in time to do the ranch work.
She hadn’t indicated that his spending the night was a big deal.
“No,” she said, shifting uncomfortably on the bench, her gaze focused on the lake, and very much not on him. “I like my space. And I didn’t really feel like I could invite any of them over here. Then I would remember them being here. You... You’re in every part of this place already. You came with me and the real estate agent when I bought it. You helped me get everything in livable condition. I don’t know this place without you.” Her eyes met his then, something shimmering there, something that he reacted to on a visceral level. “This whole place. The house, the town.”
“Well,” he said, doing his best to defuse the tightness in his throat by taking another bite of steak. “I can’t deny that I like the idea of being first in some ways.”
“Really?”
“Men are simple creatures, sweetheart. We like what we like. And I think I’ve proven that I’m more than a little possessive where you’re concerned. But it does make me curious,” he said, hesitating for a moment before pressing on. “What were those relationships for?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “What were any of yours for?”
“I’m different. I don’t have girlfriends—you know that. I hook up. That’s different. What I do, I do for the sex.”
She bit her bottom lip. “I kind of do the same thing. It’s just that I wrap it all in a low-key relationship to make myself feel better about... I don’t know. My choices?”
“Why didn’t you invite any of them over? Why did you know they were never going to be anything serious?” He didn’t know why he was pressing, except part of him needed to know. Needed to know why he was here with her now, and why no other man had been before.
What she’d already said made some sense. There was no keeping him out of her memories of the house because he was already in them. But he didn’t know very many people who started relationships knowing they were never going to go very far.
It was one reason he didn’t do them. Oh, he’d tried his hand at relationships a couple of times, but he’d learned pretty quickly that women got involved emotionally, and he had never wanted that kind of attachment.
“I don’t... I can’t,” she said, sounding helpless. She put her fork down, pinched the bridge of her nose. “I just... I start thinking about that kind of thing, about having a real relationship. Marriage. Children. And I just... Can’t move on from it. I don’t feel like I... I don’t deserve it, Finn.” Her eyes glittered, and she stood up quickly, moving away from the table and down toward the shore.
He just sat there, watching her for a moment. Watched as she wrapped her arms around her body, held herself tightly like she was trying to keep from falling apart.
He stood slowly, crossing the space between them and making his way toward her. “Why don’t you deserve to move on?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know how. Everything inside me is all walled off, put in these different sections. So that I can function without... I don’t even know how to explain it. But you know what makes me angry? When I see him on TV?”
“What?” She didn’t say anything for a moment and he pushed. “What makes you angry, Lane?”
“His family. The fact that he moved on. The fact that he got married, that he has children. That he doesn’t... That he probably doesn’t even think of me. Of everything that I went through. That he somehow feels like he deserves all of this and I just... I can’t.”
“Honey,” he said, his tone soft, “isn’t that the entire point of giving a child up for adoption? So that everybody can have the best life?”
She swallowed visibly. “I gave him away. And what if I could have made it work? What if I could have...”
His chest clenched tight. “Lane, you didn’t give him away. You gave him up. You gave him up so that he could have a better future. And so you could too. And take it from somebody who really was abandoned by his mother. Not so he could have a better life, but so she wouldn’t have to deal with him anymore... It’s not the same thing.”
She looked startled, looked like she wanted to ask questions. Well, he didn’t want to answer them. He gritted his teeth, ignoring the voice inside him that labeled him a hypocrite. For wanting her to share everything, for wanting to share nothing himself.
But this was different. It was different for her. She thought that she was beyond redemption somehow, thought that she deserved to live defined by her past.
It wasn’t too late for her to move forward, and she damn well deserved to.
His situation was completely different.
“I just wish...” She trailed off, looking out at the lake.
He bent down slowly, searching for the smoothest, flattest stone he could find. Then he curled his fingers around it, testing the edges for imperfections. “What do you wish?”
“I wish I could be certain I made the right choice. Or at least, accept the choice I made.”
He pulled his arm back, then let the rock fly, watched it skip three times over the surface of the lake. “Okay,” he said, “that’s wish one. And now you get two more.”
She looked at him, her face crumpling slightly, tears sliding down her cheek. She wiped them away, took a deep breath that sounded halfway between a gasp and a sob. “I wish... I don’t wish that he would forgive me. I wish he would never think of me at all. That there was never anything for him to forgive. That his life is so full, so full of wonderful people that love him, that he can hardly spare a thought for the teenage girl who gave birth without her family there. Without his father there.” She stopped talking for a moment, another tear chasing the first. Her shoulders shook, her whole body shuddering.
He wanted to move closer to her, wanted to wrap his arms around her, but he had a feeling if he did, she would shatter completely. She seemed so fragile right now. Like she was made from spun glass. But she was also strong.
The wind whipped up over the water again, invisible, but changing everything around them. That was Lane, he realized. Soft, sweet. But with the power to move mountains inside of him.
No, she wasn’t breakable. No matter how she might seem now. She had been carrying this impossible weight for more than ten years. And for all that time, it had raged inside of her.
Now she was caught up in the last gasp of the storm.
He wanted her to lay every single one of her burdens down here at this lakeshore. Wanted her to give them all to him. Because he could carry them. He wanted to. He had never wanted to be that for somebody, had never wanted to know someone like this. But with her... He wanted everything she had to give.
“I wish that I could be one person,” she said, looking over at him. “I wish that I didn’t have so many pieces of myself, all kept hidden, kept separate. I wish I wasn’t hiding here. I wish I was living.”
Then he did close the distance between them, wrapping his arm around her waist and pulling her to him. “You’re not hiding with me,” he said, taking hold of her chin, brushing his thumb over her lower lip. “You don’t have to hide anything from me.”
It was a desperate kind of offer more than a generous one. He needed it. Needed her stripped bare in every way. He wanted to possess her, to own her. To know her. He didn’t know what the hell made that desire so intense, what the hell made it so necessary; he only knew that it was.
He had been fine with the idea that maybe they would sleep together until it burned out, but he knew full well that wasn’t good enough anymore.
He wanted more than that. He wanted all of her. Possibly forever, because he was never going to be able to accept her being with another man. He would have to kill that man, and he didn’t particularly like the idea of spending the rest of his life in prison.
He wanted her in his bed. Maybe even in his house, which he knew was going to take some convincing on her end. But that was what he wanted. In this moment, he wanted it more than his next breath. He didn’t know where that fit with his vision for his life, what he’d always thought about himself. He didn’t know if it could ever work. He only knew he wanted it. Right now, he couldn’t imagine the end of this.
If he could just stay in this moment.
She looked scared, terrified, actually, all the color drained from her cheeks, tears glistening on the ends of her dark lashes. “I don’t know how. I only know how to hide.”
“I know where we can start.” He moved his hands down to the hem of her shirt, pulling her top up over her head, leaving her standing there in the sunshine in her bra and a brief pair of shorts. Then he reached behind her and unclipped her bra, exposing her breasts.
“Leave it to a guy,” she said, laughing shakily, “to decide my emotional healing requires showing my boobs.”
“No,” he said, reaching out, sliding his thumb over her nipples slowly until she shivered beneath his touch, “it’s going to take a lot more than that.”
He wasn’t going to let her joke her way around this, wasn’t going to let her ramble about French fries or pumice stones or mice named Robert.
“It isn’t that I don’t want things,” she said, her voice a whisper now. She pressed her breasts against his chest, rested her palms on his shoulders. “I want what everybody wants, I guess. I’m just afraid I shouldn’t have it.”
He gripped the back of her neck, then slid his hand up to her hair, pressing her face against the curve of his neck. “Stop punishing yourself, honey,” he said, his voice almost unrecognizable even to his own ears. “You don’t deserve it.”
“But what if I...”
“Let me tell you something,” he said, the words torn from him. “I know what it’s like to watch your mother walk away because she can’t cope.” He gritted his teeth. The reasons his mother had walked away were entirely different from Lane’s. It was him. It was always him. But he didn’t need to have that discussion with Lane. He was already fucked-up. And saying that, knowing her, she would try to reassure him. Would rush to tell him it wasn’t true, no matter what he’d witnessed in his life.
But he would be damned if he ever threw any of his shit down on her. “That hurts. When you’re left behind and there’s no one there to take care of you. That’s not what you did. And maybe you could have raised him, Lane. Maybe. But that’s not the life you chose. It doesn’t make you bad. You did the very best you could with the situation you were in at the time. You were alone. You were afraid. You hadn’t lived life. Of course you feel now like maybe you could have taken care of him. You’re almost thirty years old, you own a business, you own a house. The life you have now, the woman you are now, has nothing to do with the girl you were then. That girl, she could only do what she did. Don’t be mad at her.”
A sob shook her frame, and she let it all release. Started to cry right into his shirt, leaving her misery all over him. And he just held her right through it. Not because it was what a friend should do. But because it was what he had to do for Lane. What he had always wanted to be for her. It was clear to him in that moment. Why friendship had never been enough. Because he never wanted only part of her. And part of herself was all she ever gave to her friends. He wanted all of her. All of this.
He made quick work of the rest of her clothes, and then took care of his own. Then, he picked her up, holding her against his bare chest as he walked down into the water. He held her tightly as he went deeper. “Ready?”
She nodded, and he submerged them both up to their shoulders, paddling out farther from shore. She wrapped her legs around him, tangling their bodies together.
She shivered slightly, but didn’t ask him to take them back out to land. She lifted her hand up out of the water, touched his face, droplets trailing down his skin. He didn’t know why he was doing this. Or maybe, just maybe he did. Maybe he was trying to wash it all away.
He wasn’t into all the symbolism stuff. Didn’t really buy into trust exercises and all of that. But something had to be done for her. He had to do something for her. He was all out of words, all he had was touch, all he had was this. This demonstration. Skipping rocks, making wishes and hoping it all came clean in the lake.
Slowly, the sadness in her eyes faded and was replaced with something else. Heat, desire, longing. Everything that he felt down deep. Every slick slide of their bodies ramped it up further. Then she pressed her hand between them, curling her fingers around his cock, squeezing him tight before moving her hand up and down, the lack of friction beneath the surface of the water making it a smooth ride.
“That’s right,” he said, his gaze never leaving hers, “show me everything. Give me everything.”
“It felt weird the first time,” she said, her voice hushed, but amplified out here in the water, “to be with you. Because you were my friend, and the two things felt like they didn’t fit. But it’s not weird now. Nothing is funny.”
She looked deadly serious. He didn’t know if he’d ever seen Lane be so serious for such an extended amount of time. Didn’t know if he’d ever seen her exist in a moment quite like this one without trying to make it lighter, make it easier.
He kissed her then, with everything he had in him. Everything he could bear to show her. All that pent-up longing from the past ten years. Every ounce of need he’d carried around for her and done his very best not to show.
And when she kissed him back, there was no reservation. There was nothing but pure need, pure desire. It was as if the floodgates inside her had been opened, and she was suddenly able to pour it all out onto him. He had never been kissed like this. With a desperation that bordered on insanity. But he was more than able to give the same right back. He held on to her tightly, did his best to keep his legs moving, so they didn’t sink beneath the surface of the water.
She shifted and slid against him, his cock making contact with that soft cleft at the apex of her thighs, brushing just hard enough against her to make her gasp. To make her roll her hips against him and beg for more with each needy breath on her lips, each soft moan deep in her throat.
He paddled them back over to the dock, lifted her up out of the water, depositing her carefully on the sun-warmed surface. And then he hauled himself up after her. It reminded him of that last day they’d come down here. When she had looked at him and he could feel, for the first time, her eyes roaming over him with no small measure of interest, no small measure of heat.
He had wanted to do this then. But he hadn’t. He’d pushed it down deep, just like he always did.
But that wasn’t what he did now. There was no room for that here, no room for restraint at all. Their clothes were on the shore, and her pain was sunk down to the bottom of the lake. There was nothing between them now. Nothing at all.
Lowering her down onto her back, he brushed her damp hair off her face. Her nipples were tight from the cold, and from arousal, water sliding down her pale skin, pooling at the center of her stomach.
He put his hand on her thigh, moved it down behind her knee, spread her thighs apart. He had made her keep the lights on that first time they were together, so he’d seen her naked. But this was different. Seeing her like this outdoors, with the sun shining down on them. Nothing to hide. Nothing at all.
His hand between her thighs, he sucked in a sharp breath as he watched himself pleasure her, watched as he rubbed his thumb over the sensitized bundle of nerves there. She gasped, rocked her hips upward, silently begging for more. So he obliged. He groaned as he slipped two fingers into her wetness, feeling just how much she wanted him, just how much she wanted this.
He just stroked her for a while, watching her face as her desire built. As the color mounted in her cheeks, as her internal muscles began to pulse with her need. And then, it broke over her, broke around him, her release undeniable against his hand.
He withdrew his fingers, drawing them slowly into his mouth, wringing every ounce of evidence of her release out for himself, because it was all his, after all.
Need was roaring through him like a storm, but he realized he didn’t have a condom.
“I don’t have any protection,” he said.
“It’s okay,” she said, her voice shaking. “I’m on the pill. And I... I trust you. I never do this. But I want to. I want to with you.”
He shuddered, the full impact of that statement, of that trust, of this moment, rocking through him.
Then he moved his hands to her breasts, resting his palms there for a moment before sliding them down to her narrow waist, then down farther to her hips. He squeezed her tight, pulled her forward, pressed the head of his cock against the slick entrance to her body. He tested her slowly, flexing his hips, teasing them both with a little taste of what they wanted.
Then he slid into her, slowly, gritting his teeth to keep himself from going off as her sweet, tight heat closed around him.
He forced himself to keep his eyes open, forced himself to watch her face. To take in every aspect of the moment. The way she looked, the scent of her skin—water, woman and something that was sweet, unique to Lane—and the way she sounded as he pushed himself in all the way to the hilt. The way she felt all around him, like he was made especially to be here, inside of her.
He didn’t want to miss anything. Because if he knew one thing for certain it was that if there was a perfect moment to be had in his life, it was going to happen when he was inside of Lane Jensen.
Her fingertips fluttered to his shoulders, tracing lines down the front of his chest, over his muscles, down to his stomach. Then she put both hands on his ass, urged him forward, whispered commands in his ear. And he couldn’t deny them.
He gave himself over to this. To her. Lost himself in the steady rhythm he established. In her softness, in her heat. Her breath on his neck, her fingernails digging into his skin.
He wanted to hold off. Wanted to make it last. Wanted to make sure that she got to come again before he did. But that was a level of control he didn’t have with her. There was no finesse here. There was nothing but need.
Maybe someday he would be able to impress her with his staying power, but this wasn’t about that. Wasn’t about impressing anyone—least of all himself. All he could do was ride that hot tide of release as it swept through him. He couldn’t control it, couldn’t delay it. Couldn’t do anything but surrender to it. To her.
As he lost himself completely, he was dimly aware of her shuddering around him, his name an unsteady whisper on her lips.
And he knew that, as satisfying as his release had been, as beautiful as she looked naked, as amazing as he felt in the wake of all that pleasure, the one thing he would always remember forever was his name on Lane Jensen’s lips like he was an answer to her every prayer.