Page 29 of Small Town Hero
Why had she run from him? From this. When he began to kiss her neck, making his way down to the curve of her breast, she knew.
Because it wasn’t just pleasure that rioted through her when he took her nipple into his mouth and sucked hard, it wasn’t just pleasure she felt when he stripped the rest of her clothes off and put those rough hands between her thighs and began to stroke her.
Her heart hurt. Her whole chest ached. Because he was so impossibly, wonderfully beautiful. Because he was everything that she had ever wanted, that she hadn’t even been brave enough to fantasize about.
Was that what had always been between them? At least on her end? Had he hurt to look at because she wanted him to look at her? Had she been angry about how good he was only because she had known that she could never be good enough for him?
Had she wanted him all this time?
Suddenly all the years felt like a waste. All the struggle, all the men.
Everything felt like a waste except this. Except him.
But you’re here now.
Yes, but it didn’t erase who she was. She was a Lennox. And the Parsons family had always hated the Lennox family.
But he doesn’t hate you.
She clung to that, clung to him, held on to his shoulders as he kissed his way down her body, and then settled himself between her thighs. He looked feral.
“I don’t . . . No one has ever . . .”
He growled, pressed his mouth where she was most sensitive, where she wanted him most. He licked her, until she was in a frenzy, until she knew nothing other than his name.
And after her climax hit her like a wave, he did it again.
Until she was begging him to stop. Because it was too much. She would never be able to repay him. Not ever.
What if it isn’t a transaction? What if he needs it as much as you do? What if he’s the mountain and you’re the river?
She sobbed his name, but this time it wasn’t just from pleasure. It was the desperate sadness of that question inside her. Of her longing that it be true. She longed to be someone who could complete another person. To be something they needed.
But how could she give anything to a man like him?
He was so strong. So solid. And she had tried to steal his horse.
“Hey,” he whispered when he moved back to her mouth. He kissed her. “Don’t look sad.”
“I’m not sad. I am so, so good.” She felt bad that she was lying to him, but she didn’t want to tell him the truth. Not right now. Not about what she was feeling.
It was too raw. Too personal.
As if what he’d just done wasn’t personal . . .
Then he kissed her, deep and sure. She could tell that he was reaching for something, but it didn’t matter what. Except then she realized it was a condom, and she realized it mattered quite a lot.
He protected them both and held her while he slid deep inside her.
She had never really understood the way people talked about sex. There was a nice, physical quality to it, sure. But the making love stuff, that had never really resonated. Until now.
Now, she understood. Now, he was holding her as if she was something precious, moving deep within her as if she belonged with him, and that was the single most beautiful experience of her life.
It went beyond pleasure, though there was certainly that too.
There certainly was.
She clung to his shoulders and arched against him, shivered as desire took her over.
And the most powerful thing of all was when this mountain of a man trembled with his own pleasure.
He pressed his forehead against hers, kissed her on the mouth, and she realized she didn’t want to let him go.
Not for anything. Not for anything in all the world.
When he held her afterward, she didn’t have the urge to slip away.
“You should come to the house with me,” he said.
She imagined that for a second. Going to sleep in his bed, coming downstairs, having breakfast with him, coffee with him.
Like she belonged. Like it was her place too.
“No,” she said. “I shouldn’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m . . . This isn’t anything. I know that.”
“That’s not true,” he said. “There’s a lot of ground between nothing and forever, you know, Birdie?”
Well, no. She never had.
“You can let me take care of you,” he said. “You can let me treat you like something more than . . . I’m very uncomfortable with you being out here. Working here and . . .”
“We’ve crossed into difficult territory, haven’t we?”
“I expect we have, a little bit. Because I still want to make sure that you get what you’re owed out of working here, but I need to also be clear that your job isn’t contingent on sharing my bed.”
“So I could tell you no, and kick you in the butt, and send you right on out of here, and tomorrow you would act like nothing had happened?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t treat people like objects. Anyone. But most of all, I care about you, and I’m not going to treat you that way. I understand that you don’t want to stay here. I understand that there’s no real future for the two of us.”
His words hurt more than they should. She didn’t want to have a future with him. She didn’t want to have a future with anybody. So there.
She was certain of that. She was the one who had said it. So there was no call for her to go feeling upset about it now.
She felt touchy. Testy. Annoyed.
“Right,” she said.
Because she was touchy and testy at herself, she had no call to go acting that way toward him.
“I mean it. You can trust me.”
“You understand that I’ve never been able to trust a living soul in this world before.”
“Yeah. I do. I also know that sometimes things happen that are beyond people’s control. I mean, my mother died, so she didn’t get to keep her promises to stay with me. But I know that I have control over whether or not I treat you like you’re something to buy. There’s no transaction here.”
Her stomach felt tight. “Then maybe I’ll go inside with you. Maybe I won’t kick you in the butt.”
“I would appreciate that.”
“But what’s going to happen in the end?”
He lay on his back, throwing his forearm over his forehead, and stared up at the ceiling.
“You know, losing people like I have, I’ve never thought I had any idea what was going to happen in the end.
None of us have control over that. But we can choose what happens along the way.
I’d like to walk with you along the way for a little while. What do you think about that?”
It was the single most romantic thing anyone had ever said to her. Honestly. Truly.
She wanted that. To walk a little way with him. Eventually, her path would take her elsewhere. Maybe that was part of the ecosystem thing too, though. Maybe he was a path in her personal woods. Necessary. A journey she had to walk in order to get where she needed to go.
Most of the walking had been hard. Most of it had been almost unbearable. But not this. Not him. He was teaching her that there were different kinds of people than she’d ever encountered before. That men like him existed. Who just wanted to be good because they could be.
She had only ever met men who were bad because they could be.
This was an entirely altering experience.
She took a deep, sore breath. “Yeah. I’d like to go inside.”
“Good.” He wrapped his arm around her and kissed her temple. And she felt as if she was glowing from the inside out. She got dressed, and so did he, which made her feel slightly mournful, because a man who looked like him should honestly never cover his body up.
Then she went with him downstairs and crossed the open expanse of gravel that led to the ranch house.
“What would your dad say,” she said as they walked inside. “Inviting a Lennox to the house.”
He looked at her, his eyes intent. “I don’t know what he would say, not precisely, but I would tell him that you’re one of the best people I’ve ever known. And that you have every right to be in this house. That you’re with me.”
Oh, that did make her feel warm and fuzzy in a way that nothing ever had.
She didn’t hug herself, but only because she was standing right in front of him, and that seemed a little bit of an embarrassing thing to do.
“All right. That’s . . .”
“My dad was a good man. But I’ve been thinking a lot about how rigid he was in his views. I think I can take goodness and go a little bit further with it. That’s what I want, anyway.”
“Well, I don’t especially want to stretch my dad’s meanness.”
“You’re not. You’re stretching your own wings.”
Then he lifted her up off the ground as if she weighed nothing and carried her on up the stairs.
And for the first time, when she went to bed with a man for the whole night, it wasn’t because she didn’t have a better place to sleep. It was simply because she wanted to be there.