Undeniable (21 page)

“Listen,” Ned began, hanging his head, rubbing at his jowl with his gun hand. “Sorry to hear about your father. I know you
two aren’t exactly close, but it’s a shame to see a good man struck down.”

A good man? Really? When had that happened?
But Dax wasn’t interested in the sheriff’s cell, so he checked his sarcasm before saying, “Thanks. It’s appreciated.”

“Wallace has had a hard last few years, you know, ever since—”

“Sheriff?”

At the sound of Arwen’s voice, Dax and Ned both turned. She stood at the end of her walkway where it met the street. Neither of the men had heard her come out, and even though Dax pulled in a deep, searching breath, he didn’t smell her.

She was barefoot, rubbing the sole of one foot on the top of the other, her arms crossed to hold her bathrobe in place. It looked like silk, the light of the moon and that from the street lamp on the corner of Willowbrook shining off the pink polka dots scattered on the background of white.

Pink. He should’ve known.

Her hair tumbled around her face and shoulders, all rumpled and messy like she’d just left her bed. That reminded him that it had been way too long since he’d joined her there. Then he remembered the last time he’d seen her, what he’d done, the way he’d treated her.

He swallowed, a fist of remorse slamming into his gut and robbing him of air. Fucking her against the side of her truck had been a pretty shitty way to treat her when all she’d done was bring him news she thought important for him to hear.

He needed to make up for that. He owed her a better time. He owed her an apology, a big one, and realized that could be a problem. After his behavior, he wouldn’t blame her for not wanting to hear anything he had to say.

“Sorry for the disturbance, Ms. Poole.” Sheriff Orleans hitched up his belt, circling the bed of Dax’s truck. “Looked like this one might’ve been sleeping off a drunk, and I didn’t want him doing it on the street when the jail’s not but six blocks away.”

She mashed her hair to her cheek, sleepily tucked it behind her ear. “Your lights have my living room looking like a carnival ride.”

Dax wasn’t sure if she was pissed, telling off the sheriff in a way that wouldn’t get her arrested, or if she’d really had her sleep interrupted. He’d have to move closer to get at the truth, but until the lawman gave the word, Dax was married to his window for better or worse.

“Ah, let me get those turned off. Then as soon as Mr. Campbell here’s on his way, I’ll make a loop through the neighborhood and be on mine.” His good ol’ boy laughter bellowed into the quiet night and caused Dax to wince. “Gotta have the constituents feeling safe and sound in their beds.”

Right. Especially with elections coming up, because judging by the signs scattered along Main Street’s sidewalks, Ned had young blood looking to oust him from the cushy job he’d held for twenty plus years.

From where he stood, Dax heard Arwen’s sigh. She hadn’t been expecting him, and he wanted to tell her not to give up her privacy for his sake. He was happy to take the fall for loitering. But it was too late.

“It’s okay, Sheriff.” She motioned Dax forward with a wave. “He’s here to see me.”

Sheriff Orleans looked from Arwen to Dax and back a couple of times, then blurted out the obvious. “At four o’clock in the morning?”

She shrugged, wrapping her arms tighter. “It’s the only time our schedules don’t conflict.”

“So you two…” He waggled a finger from one to the other,
and Dax finally straightened with as sheepish a grin as he could manage.

After that, the sheriff ambled toward his car, shaking his head and muttering under his breath. The only words Dax—passing the other man as he crossed the street—was able to make out were, “Goddamn Dalton Gang.”

Kinda funny, that. Or it would’ve been if the look on Arwen’s face hadn’t been quite so ominous.

“Were you asleep?” he asked.

“Almost.”

“I thought you’d be in the tub.”

She shook her head, shoved her hair from her face with both hands. “I got home extra late. Was too tired. Got undressed and crashed on the couch.”

He took a long step in reverse. “I can go.”

“You’re already here,” she said, and he counted that as a good sign and moved toward her again, going so far as to join her on the sidewalk.

But he kept his hands to himself, not knowing how welcome he really was and not wanting to cross any newly drawn lines. “You know our secret’s out.”

“And thanks for that.”

“Sorry. It wasn’t intentional.”

She gave a shrug as she turned and walked off. He waited because she hadn’t invited him in, and only followed because she left the door open. Once inside, he shut it, and hearing her in the kitchen headed that way. “Thought you were tired.”

“Now I’m hungry,” she said, yanking open the refrigerator door.

“It’s four thirty.”

“And you came here in the middle of the night just to give me a hard time?”

Of a sort,
he mused privately, but then he frowned, leaning a shoulder on the doorjamb and stuffing his hands in his pockets. “The sheriff said something about my old man having a hard last few years. Any idea what he was talking about?”

“Do you care?”

“No, but I’m curious.”

She tore the top from a container of yogurt, stuck a spoon inside and stirred. “I assume it’s about you leaving and not letting anyone know where you’ve been all this time.”

“I don’t know. It sounded like something more.”

“Guess you’ll have to make a visit to the hospital and find out, won’t you?” she asked before sticking a spoonful of the yogurt into her mouth.

That got his goat. “When’s the last time you made a visit to see Hoyt, huh? Where is he these days?”

“I didn’t know Ned had mentioned my father. Or,” she added, lifting a brow, “that you’d come here to compare our paternal dysfunctions.”

“I came here to see you.”

“Then don’t dig for what I might know or might’ve heard.”

That made him want to pin her down until she cracked and told him. Until he stopped and realized what he was thinking.

What the holy
hell
was wrong with him?

He shook his head. “Sorry. No digging. I swear.”

“And no asking about my father.”

“If you say so.”

“But”—she gestured with the spoon—“I get to ask about yours.”

“How is that any kind of fair?”

“You’re what? Thirty-four? And you’re still looking for life to be fair?”

He bit down, ground his jaw, said nothing.

She arched a brow. “Why you haven’t gone to see him?”

Two could play at this game. “Why are you using your father’s old booth from the Buck Off Bar as a kitchen table?”

She slammed the half-eaten carton of yogurt on the table and flounced by. “I’m going to bed.”

“Is that an invitation?” He should go, hit the road. He didn’t need this shit in his life.

And then he changed his mind as she said from halfway down the hall, “Think about the last time you saw me and see if you can figure that out for yourself.”

J
UST INSIDE HER
bedroom door, Arwen closed her eyes and shuddered. Her body ached for her to call back that, yes, he was invited to join her. Her body, however, wasn’t in charge. Her body didn’t understand that she’d spent the last three days pissed off and worried and hurting and angry because he hadn’t been in touch.

And that was just stupid because now that he was in touch, she was blowing him off. She wanted to blame her reaction on being tired, but knew it was more about the tangle of emotions wrapped around her like a web of silk, strong and seductive and dangerous. Dax’s web. Dax’s silk.

She was the fly to his spider and no matter how relentlessly she struggled to escape his trap, she didn’t have strong enough wings.

At the side of her bed, she dropped her robe and stood naked, anticipating. She could hear his boots on the floor as he left the kitchen and entered the hallway. She counted—one, two, three,
four, five—until his steps stopped, and she knew he was at the door to her room. She breathed deeply, turned, waited.

He came in, holding her gaze as he unsnapped his one cuff then the other before moving to his throat and tugging at the snaps down the front of his shirt. He popped them slowly. One at a time. Each sound causing her to jump, to tremble.

With his shirt hanging open, he took another step, then balanced from foot to foot as he tugged off his boots. His next step brought him almost close enough to touch. But she didn’t. She stayed as she was, her nipples tight, her pussy wet, and watched him free his belt from its buckle then work on his fly.

He took his time. The first brass button. The second. The third. Inch by inch, his briefs came into view. His briefs and the heavy load they held to his belly. His erection was thick, straining against the fabric, the head of his cock a bulbous tease. And then he was done, his clothes open, his body ready, yet still he didn’t move.

She couldn’t stand it, seeing him there, the skin of his torso shadowed, his legs covered, his cock so close, so big where it filled the open vee of his fly. She wanted him. Desperately. But she kept her arms at her sides, kept her hands loose. She didn’t reach for him. She didn’t twist her fingers together to keep the nerves eating at her skin from burrowing deeper.

This was sex. Nothing else. Yet the look in his eyes told the truth of the tale. He’d come here looking for something he needed. Something he couldn’t find anywhere else, get from anyone else, and that responsibility weighed on her too heavily.

She was supposed to be working him out of her system. She was supposed to be putting every bit of her past behind her. Dax was making it impossible for her to do either. He was in her house, and in her head, and she feared he was in her heart.

Not just knocking at it, or playing with it, but worming his
way to a spot she wouldn’t be able to reach to remove him. Because she knew it would happen.

They would finish whatever this was between them and he would leave Crow Hill, and after he was gone she would not—
would not
—keep any part of him alive the way she had the first time.

He came closer, one step, then another, stopping in front of her, close enough to touch but doing so only with his eyes. They held hers as he shrugged out of his shirt, and she breathed deeply, scenting him, the hint of sun and heat that stayed with him.

The skin of his hands, his wrists, that of his face and neck was baked to a darker bronze than that covering the rest of his torso. A cowboy’s tan. A working man’s tan. His pectoral muscles and his shoulders and his neck telling the story of the manual labor he required of his upper body.

She couldn’t help herself, and she reached out, sliding her fingertips along his collarbone, the skin beneath resilient and firm. He kept his hands at his hips, but pulled in a sharp breath, and her stomach clenched in response. This thing between them…

“Hurry,” she whispered. It was all she could say, her chest rising and falling as she watched him shed his jeans and his briefs.

Then he was naked in front of her, his forehead against hers, his toes on hers, his hands holding hers at her sides, his cock between them insistent. They stood together, breathed together, let the room disappear as together they became one.

She closed her eyes and felt the sting of tears, but left them to well behind her lids. Wiping them away would mean taking her hands from Dax’s and she couldn’t bring herself to do that.

He lifted his chin, brushed his lips along her hairline, whispered, “Do you know how beautiful you are?”

A shiver ran like a river down her spine, pooled at the base, spread lower and worked its way between her legs to ready her.
“You’re the one who’s beautiful. Your mouth. Your hands. The way you touch me. The way you look at me.”

“Just not the way
I
look, eh?” he asked with a laugh.

She opened her eyes, lifted her hands, and threaded her fingers into his hair, holding him. “I didn’t know what to expect. When I heard you were back. I’d pictured you all this time as I knew you in high school. Cocky and brash and always with the sort of grin that turned girls to puddles at your feet. But now…”

“I hear I look really good in jeans.”

“In them, but even more so out of them.”

“Guess it’s a good thing you’re the only one who gets to see me this way. All those puddles might start a flood—hey, that might be the solution to our drought. I strut around naked, and the water flows.”

She shook her head, her lips drawn into a grin she couldn’t help. “And here I was trying to be serious.”

“Life’s too hard to take seriously.”

A dozen responses rose but she squashed them all.

“On the other hand,” he said, grinding his hips and rubbing his hard cock against her.

She stepped away, gripped both of his biceps and shoved him onto the bed. He bounced once, braced himself on his elbows and arched one brow, looking from his cock standing at attention to her then back again and again until all she could do was laugh and climb on top.

“Much better,” he said, his hands on her thighs. “I thought I was going to have to take care of this on my own.”

She thought of his hands stroking his cock. “Do it.”

“What?” He frowned, then his expression took on that look she loved, big bad wolf and black sheep all rolled up in one, and when she lifted his hands from her thighs, and moved them to the plane of his belly above his jutting cock, he didn’t argue.

Instead, he said, “I’m sorry. About the other day. About the way I treated you.”

Not this. Not now. “You made me come.”

“You know what I mean. I was thoughtless and selfish and my head was all fucked up. I took it out on you. I was an ass.”

She didn’t want to talk about the other day. She didn’t want him to be human and kind. She didn’t want to need him for anything but this. “Make me come now.”

She raised up onto her knees, lifted one thigh to accommodate his reach, and found the head of his cock with her pussy, sliding down until he filled her, leaning forward, her hands on his shoulders, until she couldn’t move.