Untouched Read online

  “By ‘he,’ you mean his whole family.”

  “Collateral damage.”

  “Lark too?” Jill said softly.

  “She’ll be fine. She’s a smart girl.”

  “Girl being the key word there,” Sam said.

  “Girl being the wrong choice of words,” Quinn said. “She’s a woman. She’s not a child, in spite of what you and her brothers might think. In spite of what she might think. She’ll be fine.”

  “She’ll want to kill you.”

  He shrugged. “Fine. Her personal feelings for me don’t matter. All that matters is getting back in the circuit.”

  “There are other things than that, Quinn,” Sam said.

  “Not for me. That was my life. And it was taken from me by some jackass having a tantrum. I’ll be damned if I let it stand. And I’ll be damned if I stand here and justify it to you.”

  Quinn turned and walked out of the house, inhaling a deep breath of the fresh morning air. It was crisp, an edge of cold clinging to the air even though the sun was shining. It cut through the chill in places, direct sunbeams providing shafts of warmth.

  Too bad he was cold all the way through. And he didn’t care.

  Fine for Sam, standing there with his wife, to say there was more to life. Everything in Quinn’s life had been bad. Until ranch work. Until the rodeo.

  It had given him purpose, and now that purpose was gone.

  Idle hands had been a problem in Quinn’s early years, and Cade Mitchell was going to find out that Quinn’s idle hands were most definitely the devil’s workshop.

  Chapter Eleven

  Lark managed to make it through the entire day without kissing her boss, talking dirty to her boss, or receiving an orgasm from her boss. Considering her recent track record with him, that was no mean feat.

  When she walked back into her house and breathed in deep and smelled dinner cooking, she felt absolutely no shame.

  Well, no new shame, which was pretty good, all things considered.

  She felt light. Free. Free of the tyranny of her ridiculous desire for Quinn. Well, not so much free as . . . on parole. It was still there; it was just that she’d made her case clear, and she’d taken a stand instead of letting it all just happen. She’d told him no more, and he’d said he would respect it.

  And she’d cried like a baby, but hey, this was big stuff. Her first time doing any of this with a man on the physical plane. Her first time really wanting a man. It was like Lark’s Sexual Awakening, Part II: This Time, It’s Not on the Computer.

  So of course it had had impact. New was scary. And wanting someone made you feel vulnerable. And wanting a man so far beyond her in years and experience hadn’t helped. And neither had the fact that he was the man her brother hated more than anything in the entire world.

  So yeah, complicated. Emotional. Tears were merited, and not embarrassing, really.

  And now she was going to skip that amazing-smelling dinner, grab a gallon of ice cream for her room and bawl her eyes out because she felt like someone had hollowed out her chest with a pumpkin scoop. Which she was sure was also merited and not embarrassing at all.

  She hung her purse and coat up on the rack and walked into the kitchen, stopping right outside the door when she heard Cole’s voice. She would have walked in or walked away if she hadn’t her name. But she did hear it, said in a low hushed, tone. The kind you used when you didn’t want people listening, and since she was the object of the sentence—at least, she thought she was—she thought she would pause and listen for a second.

  And since her conscience was already seared, what the hell was a little more scarring?

  “She’s not home yet.”

  “Good.” Cade’s was the other voice. And they were whispering like a couple of gossiping women in the general store. “So, when did she call?”

  A different “she,” Lark was assuming.

  “This morning. I’ve never actually talked to her before, so that was weird.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Nothing, she just . . . she was thinking about coming out here.”

  “Shit.” Cade breathed the word like a prayer.

  “I know, but what am I supposed to tell her?”

  “Tell her to stay the hell away.”

  “Oh what grounds?” Cole asked. “This is . . . dammit, Cade, this is hers too.”

  Lark’s mind scrolled through a litany of potential “hers.” Cole’s ex-wife? A woman Cole had secretly fathered a baby with? But no, that was too many accidental pregnancies for one man, especially one as responsible as Cole. A woman Cade had knocked up, maybe?

  “It isn’t hers. Do you know what’s hers? That house in Portland.”

  “The one that got repossessed because dad was a dick who overspent and gambled too much?”

  She sucked in a sharp breath, feeling like she’d been punched in the stomach.

  “I don’t see why she’s owed anything of ours. Dad didn’t leave anything to her or to her mother. Dad clearly didn’t want her involved in our family.”

  “She is our family, Cade, whether we like or not. She’s our . . . she’s our sister.”

  “Nicole Peterson isn’t our sister. She’s a stranger, and I don’t care if we do have the same father, it doesn’t make her a sister. Lark is our sister. Our real sister—and we have to protect her from this.”

  The world tilted under Lark’s feet, and she pitched forward, one hand on the wall, the other on her stomach.

  “I agree with you there. That’s why I haven’t told her.”

  “If Nicole comes here, there won’t be anymore protecting her.”

  Protecting her. They were protecting her. From something huge. From the truth. Except now she’d overheard pieces of it and she knew. She knew that a huge chunk of her life wasn’t true. She knew her brothers had let her believe lies.

  She took a step into the kitchen without realizing she’d done it, took another step and another.

  “What?” She heard herself ask the question, but it sounded like it was from far away.

  “When did you get home?” Cade asked.

  “I’ve been standing there long enough to hear you say I’m not home. And also something about having a . . . a sister.”

  “She’s not our sister,” Cade said.

  “Cole?” Lark asked.

  Cole lowered his head, dragging his hand over the back of his neck. “It’s a long story, little girl.”

  “I am not a little girl!” She practically screamed the words. “I am an adult. And I do not deserve to believe lies.”

  “Lark . . .” Cade’s voice was rough, shadows under his eyes. “You deserve to have good memories of dad.”

  “I don’t deserve to have memories that are lies, Cade. I don’t deserve to believe things that aren’t true. That’s not fair. You’re making an ass out of me.”

  “Lark, that is not it,” Cade bit out, “and you damn well know it. We’ve spent our whole lives protecting you—”

  “And I’ve spent my whole life trying not to be a bother to you. Trying to make things easy on you. But I guess all I did with that was teach you that you didn’t have to respect me as a human being.”

  “We respect you,” Cade said. “Don’t you dare turn it around like we don’t. It’s because we respect you that . . .”

  “That you lied to me.”

  “We didn’t lie to you,” Cole said. “We didn’t tell you.”

  “Tell me. Now. Everything. All of it.”

  “It’s better if you don’t know,” Cade said.

  “Really? After I just heard half of it, that’s what you’re going with? Screw you, Cade, honestly. Don’t treat me like a child. Do I ever treat you like a cripple? Have I ever coddled you? Or did I treat you like a human?”

  “This isn’t not treat
ing you like a human,” Cole said. “This . . . this shit? It tore me up, Lark. I didn’t exactly want to pass it on to you.”

  “Because you still think it’s your job to protect me. Because you don’t think I’m a whole person, you think I’m a child.”

  “You are a kid, Lark,” Cole said, his voice gruff. “When you get to be my age—”

  “Bullshit!” she shouted. “You’ll treat me like a kid then too.” She thought of Quinn, who pretty much was Cole’s age and who hadn’t, in any way, treated her like a child. Who had treated her more like a thinking human than either of her brothers ever had.

  “You have no idea what this was like for us.”

  “And I have no idea what it would have been like for me,” she said. “I have no idea what it would have been like to find out in a normal way. As normal of a way as I could. Dad has another child?”

  “Lark—”

  “You still don’t want to tell me about it?” They looked at each other, then back down. “Fucking cowards,” she spat, then turned to the fridge, grabbed a gallon of ice cream and stalked to her room. She was halfway up the stairs when she realized she’d forgotten a spoon.

  She shook her head and laughed, pushing her bedroom door open and slamming it closed again, then throwing herself on her bed, her ice cream clutched against her chest, a block of frozen awful against her skin.

  But it wasn’t as bad as the pain inside of her chest. And maybe it would freeze it out. Numb her. She didn’t know what to think. How to process. She was sick. Sick over this idea that her dad had a secret life. Sick over the fact that Cade and Cole had kept it from her. That they’d been content to let her believe lies.

  My dad was the best.

  She’d said that to Quinn just a few days ago.

  And now she’d heard about secret children. Gambling. Houses being repossessed.

  How old was Nicole? Was she a child? A cold feeling trickled through her veins. Was she older? Old enough that it meant her father had cheated on her mother?

  She curled up into a ball with the ice cream at the center and gave in to her misery. All of it. This new revelation, the anger at her brothers and the loss of Quinn.

  She didn’t know how long she lay there. A ball of soggy sadness, clutching melting ice cream. Cole and Cade didn’t come knocking on her door, and it was a good thing too. She would have thrown said ice cream at their heads.

  She pushed into a sitting position and set the ice cream on her nightstand, then looked down at her phone and picked it up, her fingers numb from the cold. She scrolled through her recent calls, then tapped on Quinn’s number, pulling up the window for a new text message.

  Do you at least know how to text, you dumbass?

  She hit send before she could think better of it.

  It only took a second to get the response.

  A little bit.

  Know how to sext?

  His response came quick. I didn’t think we were doing this.

  Maybe I changed my mind. What are you wearing, big boy?

  There was a pause, and then Quinn’s next message came in. Been drinking?

  Nope.

  Calling.

  No.

  And then her phone rang.

  She punched the green button and lifted it to her ear. “Hello?”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, sitting up. “I don’t know. I . . . I . . .”

  “Come here.”

  “It’s late.”

  “Now,” he said, the command impossible to deny.

  “I’m on my way.”

  ***

  Quinn was awake now. He’d been ready to fall asleep after a long day of work, and trying not to think about Lark and the fact that he’d determined never to touch her again.

  Sure, it was early, but it was tiring walking around with a hard-on that could cut glass. And he’d been ready to work out his frustrations with his right hand. He hadn’t had to help himself this much since he’d been a teenager. But damn, Lark Mitchell made him feel like a horny sixteen-year-old.

  Then she’d texted him. And offered to sext with him. Well, that was something he’d never done before.

  He wasn’t about to start now either. If he was going to have her, he wasn’t doing it with this kind of distance between them again. He wasn’t coming on his sheets again, or going unsatisfied again. If she wanted him, she was going to have to have him, in the flesh.

  He paced the length of his living room, in front of the windows. It was dark outside, the lights from inside creating a reflection that obscured the view and only let him see himself. Pacing. Like a man who was thoroughly hooked by a woman. Like a man who was caught by the balls.

  Basically, he was acting like what he was.

  How had this happened? How had he gone from intending to seduce this geeky, awkward girl to feeling like he was the one who would die if he didn’t have the woman? It was ridiculous.

  Headlights pierced through his reflection in the window, aiming straight for his heart, which jolted like it had been hit.

  She was here. And he was shaking inside.

  What the hell was his problem?

  She was. She was his problem. And he was about to solve it.

  The knock on the door was hardly that of the bold, brazen woman who filled his imagination. It was hesitant. Soft. If he hadn’t been expecting it, he might not have heard it.

  He went to the door and saw Lark standing there, clutching a tub of ice cream. Her eyes were red, her nose was red, her hair hanging loose and tangled around her face. She was in the same clothes she’d worn at work today. The only difference between then and now was how thoroughly rumpled she looked. How miserable.

  She took a deep breath, her shoulders rising and falling with the action. Her breasts probably did too, and he would have been more interested in that. But he breasts were covered by the ice cream.

  “Can I come in?”

  “Of course.” He moved back from the door and she walked in slowly, dark eyes wide, searching the room.

  “There are no ninjas hiding behind my furniture and preparing to ambush you, so stop looking so nervous.”

  She looked at him, a crease between her eyebrows. “I was more afraid you were going to ambush me. And a little afraid you wouldn’t, considering our talk earlier.”

  “What’s going on? A meaner man might call you a tease, you know?”

  “I’m not meaning to be. I’m not teasing. I’m confused.”

  “There’s nothing confusing about sexual attraction. If you’re attracted, you want sex. It’s that simple. The complication comes with emotions.”

  “I agree.”

  “That’s why I don’t deal in emotion.” A disclaimer, because, true to at least one of his words, he didn’t want to hurt her. He was about to be, he had a feeling, steadfastly untrue to some of his other words. Especially of the “I won’t touch her” variety.

  He would make a note to keep sharp objects away from Jill next time he saw her. Or to keep tonight from her for as long as possible. Maybe forever. There was really no need for her to be in his business, after all.

  “Right. Well. Can I put this . . . Is there a place for it?” She held out her ice cream.

  “The freezer? Unless you want to eat it.”

  “Could we?”

  “Gimme the tub, and tell me what’s going on.”

  He took the bucket from her and headed into the kitchen, setting it on the counter and opening the lid. It was chocolate dairy soup.

  “How long has this been out?” he asked.

  She looked a little dazed. “What time is it?”

  “Eight.”

  “Two hours?”

  He turned and shoved it into the freezer and slammed the door closed, then turned back to La
rk, his hands planted on the island countertop. “What’s going on, Lark?”

  “I’ve spent my whole life being good, Quinn. Not causing any trouble because my sainted”—she laughed bitterly—“brothers were doing their best to raise me and that was trouble enough on its own without me being rebellious. So I’ve been good. I’ve been trying to honor memories that might not even be real. I’ve been trying to be something I thought I was supposed to be, but now . . . who am I supposed to be?”

  “Whoever you want,” he said.

  Silence hung between them, thick and heavy. Then she lifted her head. “I want to make a mistake, Quinn.” She started pacing, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. “A big one. I want to do something that’s bad for me, without caring. I want to do it because I want to. Because they’re allowed to. They’re allowed to do whatever they want, and I’ve always just tried to be . . . good. I’m tired of it. I thought . . . I thought honor and family was what the Mitchells were, but I don’t even know the Mitchells.”

  Quinn knew there was something deep happening with Lark right now. Something bigger than the two of them. Something that had broken a fragile, tenuous thing deep inside of her.

  And he would be a bastard to do anything to her under the circumstances.

  Too bad he was a bastard. Too bad for her, anyway. Because she might regret it. He sure as hell would not.

  “I want you to be my mistake,” she said, meeting his eyes, licking her lips. “I know you’ll be one. But . . . but I never thought . . . a man like you . . . I’ll get to look back and say, ‘I made that mistake.’ Because . . . damn, Quinn.” She sucked in a breath and looked him over. “You’re going to be the most fun a girl ever had screwing up.”

  He chuckled, the sound strangled even to his own ears. “That’s pretty flattering.”

  “I’m not trying to insult you, but . . . but you said that you just wanted to . . . to . . .”

  “To fuck you.”

  “Yes, you said that. Which . . . let’s face it, most people would say I was making a mistake taking you up on that. But right now . . . it’s what I want. I don’t really care if you were the one who put the spike under Cade’s saddle”—she tilted her chin up, her eyes glittering—“because this has nothing to do with him. Nothing to do with anyone but . . . but us. I want you. I think that’s pretty clear. I think it’s been clear from the moment we met. I wasn’t resisting for me. I wasn’t resisting because I was afraid of getting hurt. Or because I was afraid at all. I was resisting because I didn’t want to betray him. It had nothing to do with me. And I’m so tired of that.”