CHAPTER EIGHT
LUKE WAS OUT of the truck and heading after Olivia before he had time to process what had just happened.
They had been kissing, of that much he was certain. An explosion of restraint that had reached its breaking point. At least on his end.
He was pretty sure he wasn’t the only one, though. Judging by her response to the kiss. If he wasn’t mistaken, she’d had an orgasm. And then she had tumbled out of his truck like he was an ax murderer chasing her down, and not the man who had just made her come.
“Olivia,” he called after her retreating figure. He could just barely make out the shape of her, fluttery and small in the darkness.
She didn’t stop moving away from him.
“Olivia Logan,” he called again, taking three steps and catching up with her, grabbing hold of her arm and stopping her progress. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m walking home,” she said, jerking out of his grasp and starting down the road again.
“You are not,” he said. “Get your ass back in the truck.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” she said. “I’d rather take my chances out here than get back into that truck with you.”
“Don’t do that,” he said. “Don’t act like I did something to you that you didn’t like. Don’t hide behind all your prickles and indignation. We both know you wanted that.”
She laughed, a kind of hysterical hoot, her brown eyes glittering in the pale light. Her hair was a wreck, and he’d place a bet her cheeks were flushed from the pleasure he’d just given her. She looked like a woman who’d been ravished. He imagined she wouldn’t like that one bit. “I did not want that. I have actively avoided things like that my entire life. Nothing in me wanted that.”
“Then why did you respond the way you did?”
“Good night, Luke,” she said, whirling away from him again and stalking down the road.
“It’s dangerous out here. You can’t see, any car driving on the road isn’t going to be able to see and you’re basically cougar bait.”
“The way I see it, it’s one predator or another, Luke, and I’m happy to take my chances on the ones with claws.”
“Olivia, I would never do anything you didn’t want,” he called after her.
She turned toward him. “I’m just going to go home,” she said, her voice tremulous.
“Let me take you home, Liv,” he said through gritted teeth. “The last thing I want is for something to happen to you because I let you run off having a tantrum.”
“I am not having a tantrum,” she said, stomping her foot in the dirt.
“Honey,” he said, “this is a tantrum. And I’m about over it. So either you get back into the truck, or I’m going to throw you over my shoulder and carry you back.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Try me, kiddo. Ask yourself if there’s one threat I haven’t made good on. I might be a jerk, Olivia, but I’m an honest one. And I swear to you if you don’t get that pretty ass of yours back in my truck I will put it there myself.”
He wasn’t bluffing. There was no way in hell he was letting her wander around in the forest without a flashlight, with her purse back in his truck... Hell, he doubted she even had her cell phone.
She stood for a moment, and there was no making out her facial expression in the darkness. But he could sense her rage. Had a pretty good idea she was staring daggers through him, even though she probably couldn’t see him very well, either.
“Don’t touch me,” she said, walking back toward the truck, careful not to brush him as she went past.
“I’d rather stick my hand in a badger den,” he commented, walking behind her.
“I’d happily watch.”
She climbed back into the truck and shut the door behind her. And he waited until she was buckled up before he got in and started the engine up again. He checked for headlights, and then pulled back out onto the highway.
His pulse was pounding, and only once they were back on the road did he realize that he was still hard and aching from that kiss. Olivia had come, but he had not. And he wanted to.
He gritted his teeth. He needed to get himself under control. Needed to get his libido reined in. Because he didn’t do things like this. He didn’t go after women who didn’t want him; he didn’t work this hard for a simple orgasm.
And he sure as hell wasn’t going to try and coerce Olivia into his bed. He could have most any woman back at the bar that he wanted. Why was he going to get embroiled in something this complicated? Sure. He wanted her. But he wanted a lot of things he didn’t have.
Life was tricky enough at the moment. He was not going to add her to the mix. Her and her uptight demeanor. Why the hell would he want to take a woman like her to bed anyway? He could have a woman who was enthusiastically on board with everything, rather than little miss prim and prissy.
Thankfully, they weren’t actually that far from her little house.
He saw the little half stone wall with the reflective address number on it and turned in. He followed the main drive for a while, then took a right, where he knew the road led to Olivia’s cottage, rather than to her parents’ house.
He pulled up in front of the little white-and-yellow cottage, illuminated by the small light on the porch, and didn’t even bother to put his truck in Park. Just pressed his foot down on the brake.
“See you later,” he said.
“Sure,” she said, opening up the passenger door, the overhead light casting a glow on her face.
She was pale. More than that, she looked terrified. Not just angry. But honest to God scared.
He groaned, putting the truck in Park. Then he reached out, brushing his thumb over her cheekbone. “Olivia...”
For a moment she froze. For a moment she just stared at him, and he could see a small war being waged behind those pretty brown eyes. Then she jerked away from him, away from his touch. “Don’t.”
She shook her head, climbing down from the truck and slamming the door, clutching her purse and her sweater to her chest as she walked up to her front door. He watched until she was safely inside, and then shook his head, throwing the truck in Reverse and pulling out of the driveway too damned fast. But if he didn’t leave now, he was going to be tempted to go after her, and he knew that would be a bad idea.
His heart was raging like he had just run a marathon, his whole body so on edge he had a feeling a strong breeze could push him over.
No. Only Olivia.
He gritted his teeth against that thought. That regrettably true thought.
There was no point wanting her. There never had been. She was Olivia Logan, of the Logans of Logan County. As close to royalty as you could find in rural Oregon.
He did not have an inferiority complex. That wasn’t the issue. He was sure on her end those would be on her list of issues. As far as his went... She wanted love. She wanted marriage. She had made that abundantly clear. She was twenty-five years old and he was thirty-six. He had a hunch that she was inexperienced, and he sure as hell was not.
He was wrong for her in a thousand different ways, and his damned body couldn’t seem to hold on to that reality.
No, he wasn’t going after her. He was going home. He was getting in a cold shower.
And then he was getting blind-ass drunk so that he could forget he had ever put his hands on Olivia Logan.
Because he sure as hell wasn’t going to do it again.
* * *
OLIVIA STUMBLED INTO the house on shaking legs. A great, gasping sob escaping as she shut the door behind her and locked it. She didn’t know if she was locking it against Luke, to keep him outside, or locking it to keep herself inside.
Apparently, she didn’t know anything. Not about herself, not about a man who had been in her life in some capacity for close to twenty years.
She hadn’t known she could want like that. She hadn’t known she wanted him like that.
But that word had played itself over and over in her mind. Finally. Finally. Finally.
She couldn’t scrub it out of her brain even now.
Even now, as she walked through the living room and dumped her purse and her sweater on the couch, unbearably conscious of the fact that her stomach felt nauseous and that she was wet between her legs.
She heard her phone vibrate and she scrambled to grab hold of it. She had three texts from her mother. Asking if she was home yet.
And then another one rolled in.
Why were you with Luke Hollister at Gold Valley Saloon tonight?
She threw her phone on the couch like it was a rabid varmint and took a step away from it, scrubbing her face with her hands. She couldn’t have this conversation. Not now. She couldn’t answer these questions she didn’t have an answer to.
There’s a very simple answer. It’s to get Bennett back.
She was a liar. Even her head was a liar. She certainly hadn’t made out with Luke in his truck to get Bennett back. She hadn’t...
She pressed a hand to her stomach. She had kissed him and had an orgasm.
She’d never had an orgasm before in her life.
She was a good girl. She had worked so hard to be a good girl. And to be everything that Vanessa wasn’t.
To justify her existence. To justify the fact that Olivia the tattletale had ruined Vanessa the rebel’s life. Hadn’t it been essential to be good after that? To show it was possible to live the kind of life their parents wanted them to have? That it led to better places?
Or she was a hypocrite. She had to keep everything locked down so tight. She couldn’t even let go of it in private.
But a few minutes in private with Luke, a few minutes in his arms, with his hands on her body, and she had let go of everything she had worked so hard for. Everything that she had trained herself to be.
Without thinking, she stumbled back toward the bathroom, flicking on the switch, flooding the room with light that was far too bright. Far too revealing of everything that had happened over the space of the last half hour. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips were swollen. Her eyes were bright and fevered.
She was suddenly aware of the fact that her neck burned, and she angled her head to the side, looking at her reflection, looking at the trail of red that ran down her skin.
Whisker burn, she realized.
Those whiskers that had been captivating her for all this time had left their mark, that was sure.
Who was she? She didn’t have an answer to that. Or at least, not one she liked.
She pulled her dress up over her head, whirling around and turning on the hot water knob in her shower. Then she wrestled with her bra, extricating herself clumsily before shoving her leggings and her underwear down her thighs.
She stepped beneath the spray of water before it was warm, shivering as it slowly grew hotter and hotter, sluicing over her bare shoulders.
She was determined to stand there until she felt normal again. Until she could no longer feel the impression of his lips on hers, his stubble against her neck, his hands on her hips.
She stood there until the water got cold again, and she could still feel his touch. She stood there until she was too miserable and exhausted to do anything but turn the water off, wrap herself in a towel and sit on the edge of her bed.
Slowly, she became aware of her body. Of the fact that her breasts still felt sensitive, of the fact that she felt achy and restless between her thighs still. That got her moving. Spurred her to dry herself off and get herself covered up in sensible, cozy pajamas.
She hoped that would make her feel more like herself.
But as she slipped beneath the covers and curled up into a tight ball, she still felt wrong. Still felt like somebody new. Somebody she didn’t want to be.
And she was afraid that good girl Olivia, the Olivia that was so essential, wasn’t someone she could simply get back to. Because she was afraid she had shattered that Olivia irrevocably in the cab of Luke Hollister’s truck.
As she finally drifted off to sleep, all she could think was that nothing was right. She didn’t know how it ever would be again.