Page 7 of Clayton (Bourbon & Blood #2)

I watch the play of muscle under the wet cotton of his shirt as he lugs everything toward the counter.

Everything about him looks good, and it’s killing me.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked you to come…

but I couldn’t get the water to shut off, and it just kept pouring out and—I’m sorry, Clayton. I just didn’t know what else to do.”

“It’s fine. I don’t mind helping out,” he replies. “I know I don’t live here, Annalee. And maybe it won’t be true for much longer, but right now, I’m still your husband.”

Yes. He is. And it’s killing me. I change the subject.

“I must have scared you to death with that text,” I continue, striving for a tone of normalcy, as if I’m not standing there torn between railing at him and ripping both our clothes off.

“I didn’t think about how it sounded at the time!

I was just so frantic. You’re a saint for coming so quickly. ”

“I needed to talk to you anyway…about helping out with Mama. I know it’s a lot to ask, but?—”

I shake my head immediately. This is not a question that even needs to be asked. “I’ll help with Patricia as long as you need me to. You know that! She’s Emma’s grandmother, for goodness’ sake.”

He shoves his hands in his pockets and leans back against the counter. He’s wearing his thinking expression and then, decision made, he opens his mouth and starts to speak. “Mia is still seeing Bennett Hayes. I expect it all to get ugly soon.”

I don’t know his stance on the issue. He was pissed enough when I’d told him about seeing Bennett climbing down from Mia’s window while driving Emma Grace to school one morning. But that is a touchy subject for a lot of people. “Are you going to intervene?” I ask.

He smirks. “I already have. I was the one who told Bennett that if he wanted her, he needed to do something about it…they’re not kids anymore.”

That was so not what I expected. “You—what the hell, Clayton?”

He shrugs in response, the movement emphasizing the breadth of his shoulders.

I realize he looks even better than he did when we first met twelve years ago.

There are just a few strands of silver in his brown hair, and his features have hardened, become more masculine and rugged rather than just being pretty the way he was as a younger man.

He walks over to where I’m standing and removes his loosened necktie, tugging it from his collar in a move that is so dead sexy I have to clench my thighs together .

“The night of Mia’s accident, he came back to see her…

and it just hit me that there really isn’t any reason for them to be apart unless that’s what they want.

” He explains it clearly, and while I know he’s talking about them, the look in his eyes, the way he’s staring at me, tells me he’s also talking about us.

I squash that little bit of hope. It’s pointless, I remind myself. He made a choice, and it wasn’t me.

“How’d that go over?” I ask, trying to keep the conversation focused on them, on anything but us.

Clayton laughs, really laughs in a way that I haven’t seen in so long it hurts me to think about it. “Before or after he told me to go fuck myself?”

I gasp, not because Bennett said it, but because Clayton doesn’t seem to mind it. “Did he really?”

“Thereabouts,” he admits, a grin curving his lips that makes my heart race. “Not that I blame him. The last time he came after my sister, I did beat the shit out of him…but I didn’t have a choice.”

I know the story. Clayton wasn’t a violent person. He could be when pushed, but he’d never been one to fight just for the hell of it. That was Quentin. Mad at the world and looking for a place to put it. But he’d beaten the hell out of Bennett the night he and Mia had been supposed to elope.

If he hadn’t, Samuel would have killed Bennett. It had nothing to do with Mia, nothing to do with protecting his daughter. Bennett’s only crime was having the last name of Hayes. Samuel hated him out of habit, out of spite, and out of pride.

“You’re a good big brother to her,” I tell him. “And you’re a good father. I give you shit a lot…more than I ought to because—I just didn’t see us here, Clay. I didn’t see us in this spot. But whatever it is, you’re a good man.”

His eyes darken, fill with shadows of things I just don’t understand. “I’m not,” he says. “I used to think that, but…I’m Samuel Darcy’s son. I can’t get away from that.”

I don’t know what this about. I’m afraid to know. Clayton has always been sure, confident. Steady and rock-solid. This man, with the darkness in his eyes and the banked fury I can sense in him, I don’t know this man .

Changing the subject, I say, “Mia is happy, I think. As happy as she’ll let herself be.”

He nods. “I don’t know who long it’ll last. Even if it’s not forever, it’s better than nothing, right?” His expression changes, shifts into something dark for a moment, then fades again.

He walks toward me and I can’t catch my breath. I know that look on his face, the tension in his jaw and the fire burning in his eyes. I’ve seen it more times than I can count. He stops just a few inches from me. “Are you happy?”

No. I’m lonely. I miss you. I miss the way we used to be.

I miss having you hold me and I miss being the one who could make you laugh.

“I have a good life.” The non-answer rolls off my tongue easily enough.

“I know how hard you’ve worked, Clayton, to give me this…

to stay home with our daughter, to keep this house for her. I will always be grateful for that.”

His jaw clenches, and I can see that underneath the desire still burning, there’s anger and hurt. I can’t understand why. He chose to leave, he chose to keep his secrets instead of sharing them with me .

“I didn’t ask if you were grateful. I asked if you were happy,” he growls. “Did my moving out, leaving you alone here with Emma Grace, make you happy?”

“We shouldn’t do this.” The protest is weak. A part of me wants to do it. A part of me wants to hash out everything, to lay out all our secrets and all our dirty laundry once and for all.

“Why not? It’s about damn time we said things that matter! I’m tired, Annalee!” As he speaks, his hands move up to my shoulders, his fingers dig into the tense muscles there, pressing in with that intense mixture of pleasure and pain that just turns my body to jello.

“Tired of what?” I ask the question striving to sound normal, to sound like I don’t want to just rip his clothes off and rub my naked body against his.

“Of pretending,” he says softly, and he leans in close enough that his breath is moving over the skin of my neck, waking nerve endings and impulses that have been dormant for so long. “Fuck being polite. Fuck being an adult. How about let’s just be honest?” he asks.

“No,” I admit in a whisper so broken it’s barely audible. “I’m not happy. I wasn’t happy before you left and I’m not any happier now. But I got tired, Clayton! I got tired of trying to fix what was broken between us when I couldn’t even get you to look at me!”

“I’m looking at you right now,” he insists, and his hands move from my shoulders up to my hair, dislodging my haphazard ponytail and threading through my hair.

He’s not gentle, but I don’t want him to be.

When he tightens his hand, tugging at my hair, tilting my head back, my whole body reacts.

My nipples harden instantly and I can feel the rush of heat between my thighs, that empty, aching feeling that will only be satisfied by him.

Even wanting him as I do, I know this isn’t a smart move. “You do realize what a disastrous mistake we’re making right now, don’t you?” I’m just poking at him now, pissing him off because I can. I don’t even understand it myself. There’s a well of pettiness inside me that I’m truly shocked at.

“Like that’s new,” he snaps. “Disastrous mistakes are kinda our thing.”

I don’t reply. It isn’t really an option.

His hands have tightened in my hair again, tugging my head back.

I don’t even have time to formulate a response before his mouth is on mine.

Hot, hungry, demanding. It’s a voracious kiss, consuming, needy, demanding, even a little rough.

It’s all teeth and clashing tongues. And I want him so fucking bad I could die from it.

It’s all here, I realize. The anger, the need, the hurt, the bitter loneliness and all the pent-up frustration of the last year are being poured into this kiss.

My arms close around him of their own volition, tugging him closer until we’re plastered to one another, impossible to tell where one body ends and another begins.

It’s still not close enough. It’ll never be close enough.

My hands roam over his shoulders, over impressively bulging biceps, and then down to his hips.

Clinging to him, I press my own hips forward, heightening the intimacy.

I can feel him through the damp fabric of our clothes—hot, hard, urgent.

I don’t want him to make love to me. I don’t want him to be sweet and tender.

I just want him to fuck me so hard I can’t think.

I am on the verge of making a huge mistake, of fucking my almost ex-husband in what was formerly our kitchen. He moves his hips, grinding against me, hitting a spot that makes me see stars. I don’t care if it’s a mistake.

I grab the front of his shirt, ripping it open, buttons scatter over the wet floor. He shivers against me and it feels like a victory. But Clayton turns the tables almost instantly. He grabs my hips, his fingers digging into my skin and pulls me toward the edge of the counter.

The hard length of him presses against me, but it still isn’t enough. The need to feel him inside me, to have him take me, is overwhelming.

His hands snake beneath my shirt, dragging the fabric up and then over my head.

He closes his hands over my breasts before the discarded garment even hits the counter behind me.

The sensation of his rough callused hands kneading my flesh, of his long, skilled fingers strumming my nipples to taut peaks, has me rocking against him, pressing my hips more firmly against his.

God above, his hands. He knows just how to touch me, but then he always did.

The ringing of his phone breaks the spell. It had just been the two of us, but now the world is intruding, pulling him away from me…again. “Don’t answer it.” I’m ashamed of how I sound, pleading and desperate.

He pulls back from me, takes his phone from his pocket, and looks at the screen. “It’s Mia,” he says. “She wouldn’t be calling if it weren’t important.”

The fact that it’s true doesn’t make it any easier to tolerate. Pressing my hands to the edge of the counter, I shifted backward enough to sit up without landing on the floor and watch as he drifts away from me all over again.