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  Giving in to wanting Knox, to having him...that would have destroyed the girl she’d been.

  So she’d kept a distance between them. She’d done what she’d had to do to guard her heart and their friendship. And now he was demolishing all of that good work. That restraint she had shown, that diligence she had practiced all these years.

  She was furious. Something more than furious. Something deeper. Something that compelled her to do what she decided to do next.

  She shifted, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt, and angled her head, tasting him.

  Because it wasn’t fair that he was the one who had done this. When she was the one who had spent so long behaving. When she was the one who had worked so hard to protect what they had—to protect herself.

  He had no regard for her. No regard for her work.

  And he had to be punished for that.

  She nipped his lower lip and he growled, pressing his hard chest against her breasts as he pinned her to the side of the shed. He gathered her hands, easily wrapping one of his hands around both her wrists, holding them together and drawing her arms up over her head against the wall.

  Bastard.

  He was trying to take control of this. Trying to take control of her.

  No. He was the one who was ruining things. He was the one ruining them. She hadn’t gotten the chance to do it. She had been good. She had done her best. And now he wanted all the control?

  No. Absolutely not.

  She bit him again. This time her teeth scraped hard across his lower lip, and he growled louder, pressing her harder against the wall.

  His teeth ran across the bottom of her lip. He nipped her. And somehow, the anger drained out of her.

  There was something primal about having her best friend’s tongue in her mouth. She had to simply surrender. That was all. Beginning and end.

  A wave of emotion washed over her, a wave of need. The entire ocean she had been holding back for more than a decade.

  Knox. It had always been Knox that she wanted. Always.

  She had messed up everything when she married Will. Everything. And when they had divorced it had been too late. Knox had been with Cassandra. And their relationship had been real and serious.

  That still bothered her. He had found something real with someone else. She never had.

  It would never be the same. Because she had never... She had never loved anyone but him.

  And he had loved someone else.

  That internal admission hurt. More than that, it made her heart feel like it could shatter into a million pieces with each beat.

  But then it just beat harder, faster as Knox shifted, curving his arm around her waist and drawing her against him. She could feel his hardness. Could feel the insistent press of him against her hip that told her this kiss wasn’t about teaching her a lesson. Wasn’t about anger.

  Yes, it had started with anger. But now it was just need. Deep, carnal need between two people who knew each other. Two people who knew exactly what each had been through. There were no explanations required between her and Knox.

  That isn’t true. There are no explanations required on his end. But I haven’t been honest with him. And he knows it. It’s why he’s angry.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and ignored that internal admonishment, parting her lips and kissing Knox deeper, harder.

  She was ready for this. Ready to let him undo her jeans, push them down her thighs and take her virginity right there against the side of the shed.

  And there was a phrase she had never imagined herself thinking.

  Her virginity. Oh, damn it. That would be a whole other conversation.

  But then suddenly, the conversation became irrelevant, because Knox wrenched his mouth away from hers and wheeled back, his lips set in a grim line, those gray eyes harder than she could ever remember seeing them.

  “What?” she asked, breathing heavily, trying to act as though her world hadn’t just been tilted on its axis.

  “What the hell?”

  “You kissed me, Knox. You got mad at me and you kissed me. I’m sure there’s some kind of Freudian horror that explains that kind of behavior, but I don’t know it.”

  “You bit me,” he pointed out.

  “And you pinned my wrists against the wall.” She gritted her teeth and turned away from him, hoping to hide the mounting color in her cheeks. Hoping he wouldn’t know just how affected she had been by the whole thing. She was dying. Her heart was about to claw its way out of her mouth, her stomach was turning itself over, and she was so wet between her thighs she didn’t think she would ever live down the embarrassment if he found out.

  “I didn’t realize,” he said.

  “That you pinned my hands?”

  “That that was there.”

  “What? Attraction?” She tried to laugh. “You’re a hot guy, Knox. And I’m not immune to that. I mean, maybe I’m not up to your usual standards...”

  “What usual standards?” he asked. “I was married for ten years, Selena. I had one standard. The person I made vows to. I haven’t been with anyone since.”

  “Oh,” she said. “So I guess that explains it.” Her stomach twisted in disappointment, then did a free fall down to her toes. “You are super hard up.”

  “I was angry,” he said.

  “Awesome,” she said, planting her hands on her hips. “Angry and hard up apparently translates into kissing women you didn’t know you were attracted to!”

  “I knew I was attracted to you,” he said. “But I don’t dwell on it.”

  She paused for a moment, tilting her head to the side. “You...knew you were attracted to me.”

  “Yes. I have been. Since college. But there’s never been any point in exploring that attraction, Selena. You were not in a space to take that on when we first met.”

  She knew what he was saying was true. She had been attracted to him from the moment they’d met, too, but she’d also built a big wall around herself for a reason.

  “I wanted to focus on school,” she said, the words sounding lame.

  “Until Will and a trust fund came into play?”

  “Whatever. You didn’t make a move on me. And then our friendship became the thing. And...our friendship is still the thing.” No point spilling her guts about what a sad, insecure person she was.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “That’s good. I can have sex with any guy,” she said, waving her hand as if she had simply hundreds of men to choose from to satisfy her appetites. “You’re my only best friend. You’ve known me for so long and let’s just not... Let’s not make it weird.”

  “I just think...”

  “You haven’t had sex in a while—I get it,” she said. Which was pretty damned laughable since she hadn’t had sex ever and he was the one who had jumped on her.

  “I’d like to think there was more to it than that,” he said. “Because there’s more to us than that.”

  She lifted a shoulder. “Fine. Whatever. I’m not that bothered by it. It was just a kiss. Nothing I can’t handle.”

  She was dying inside. Her head was spinning and she was sure she was close to passing out. She would be damned if she would betray all those feelings to him.

  She felt like her top layer had been scraped back, like she was dangerously close to being exposed. All of her secrets. All of herself.

  She cared about Knox, she really did, but she kept certain things to herself. And he was poking at them.

  “So that’s it?” he asked. “We kiss after all these years of friendship and you’re fine.”

  “Would you rather I light myself on fire and jump into the river screaming?”

  “No,” he said closely, “and that’s an awfully specific response.”

  “Knox,” she said, “you don’t want me to be anything but fine. Beli
eve me. It’s better for the two of us if we just move on like nothing happened. I don’t think either of us needs this right now.”

  Or ever.

  She wanted to hide. But she knew that if she did hide, it would only let him know how closely he’d delved into things she didn’t want him anywhere near. Things she didn’t want anyone near.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I guess so.”

  “You don’t want to talk about our feelings, do you?” she asked, knowing she sounded testy.

  “Absolutely not. I’ve had enough feelings for a lifetime.”

  “I’m right there with you. I don’t have any interest in messing up a good friendship over a little bit of sex.”

  Knox walked past her, moving back into the shed. Then he paused, kicking his head back out of the doorway. “I agree with you, Selena, except for one little thing. With me, there wouldn’t be anything little about the sex.”

  * * *

  Knox wasn’t sure what had driven him to make that parting comment to Selena after they had kissed against the shed wall. But she had been acting strange and skittish around him ever since.

  Not that he could blame her. He had no idea what in hell he’d been thinking.

  Except that even though he was angry at her, she also looked soft, and tempting, and delicious. Finding out she had violated his trust, that there were things about her he didn’t know, made him feel like their friendship was not quite what he had imagined it was. And in light of that realization, it had been difficult for him to figure out why he shouldn’t just kiss her.

  Asshole reasoning, maybe, but it had all made perfect sense in the moment. In the moment when he had brought his lips down on hers.

  Yeah, it had all made perfect sense then.

  The next few days had been incredibly tense, in a way that things never usually were between them. But he could at least appreciate the tension as a distraction from his real life. It was strange, staying with Selena like this in close quarters—that kiss notwithstanding. Because it reminded him a lot of their Harvard days. It wasn’t like he’d been blind to how gorgeous she was then. But he’d made a decision about how to treat their friendship, due in large part to Will.

  In many ways that decision had made things simple. Though the kiss was complicated, it was nothing compared to loss or divorce or any of the other things he had been through since.

  But now they had that party for Will, and they had to actually go be in public together. And she had to try and act like she was at ease with him rather than looking at him like he might bite her again.

  Though she had started the biting.

  Knox buttoned up his dark blue shirt and tried not to think overly hard about all the biting. And the fact that it had surprised him in a not-unpleasant way.

  Damn. He really did need to find a woman.

  But every time he thought about doing that he just felt tired. He didn’t want to cruise bars. He didn’t want to find strangers to hook up with.

  If he was that desperate for an orgasm he could use his right hand.

  He had been in love with Cassandra, once upon a time. Though it was hard to remember the good times. Not because they had faded into memory, but because they hurt.

  They also ruined the idea of anonymous sex for him.

  He was over that. Done with it. He knew what sex could be like when you knew someone. When you had a connection with them. He didn’t have any interest in going back to the alternative.

  He knew a lot of guys who would kill to be in his position. Away from the commitments of marriage. Knox just didn’t see the appeal.

  He had never found it monotonous to be with the same person. He had thought it offered far more than it took. To know somebody well enough that you could be confident they were asking for what they wanted. To just know what they wanted at a certain point.

  He’d been with his wife for over a decade. The only woman for all that time. It had never seemed a chore to him.

  The idea of hooking up—that seemed like a chore.

  But damn, he needed to get laid. He was fantasizing about getting bitten by his best friend, so obviously something had to change.

  That was the funny thing. Because while he remembered and appreciated the married sex he’d had with Cassandra, he didn’t specifically fantasize about her. Possibly because she was bound up in something too painful for him to fully relive.

  He and Cassandra were over. Done. Everything in him was done with what they’d had.

  But he still found himself in the midst of a sex paradox.

  He gritted his teeth, walked out of the bedroom he was occupying at Selena’s and stopped still.

  She was standing in the middle of the living room wearing a bright red dress that conformed to her glorious figure. Her long black hair was styled in loose waves around her shoulders, and she had a flower pinned on the side, part of her hair swept back off her face. She looked beautiful, and effortless, which he knew wasn’t the case.

  She had spent a good while affecting that look, but she did a damned good impression of someone who hadn’t tried at all.

  He wanted to kiss the crimson lip color right off her mouth. Wanted to pull her into his arms and relive the other day.

  And he knew he couldn’t. Knew he couldn’t touch her again, and he couldn’t look like he was standing there thinking about it, because they had to get to that party. And he had to manage to get there in one piece, without Selena chewing him up and spitting him out because he was acting like an ass.

  He reached over and grabbed his black cowboy hat off the shelf by the door. “I’m ready,” he said, positioning it on his head. “Are you?”

  “You’re wearing jeans,” she said.

  He lifted a brow. “I’m a cowboy, honey. We wear jeans to parties. Plus, it’s Texas.”

  “I’m wearing heels,” she said, sticking out one dainty foot and showing off the red stilettos and matching toenail polish on her feet. As if he hadn’t already taken stock of that already, with great interest. “The least you could have done was throw on a pair of dress pants.”

  “I have cowboy boots on,” he returned. Then he stuck his arm out, offering it to her. “You go with me as is or you go by yourself, babe. Up to you.”

  She sighed, an exasperated sound, and reached out, taking hold of his arm before moving to the front door with him. This was the first time she had touched him since the kiss. And damn it all if he didn’t feel a hard shock of pleasure at the delicate contact of her hand against his arm, even though it was through fabric.

  Selena, for her part, seemed unaffected. Or at least, she was doing a good impersonation of someone who was.

  “I’ll drive,” she said, producing her keys and moving to her little red car before he could protest. He had a feeling he would hate butting up against Selena’s temper right about now even more than he hated letting someone else drive, so he didn’t fight her on it.

  “You can drive in those shoes?” he asked when Selena turned the car out onto the highway.

  She waved a hand. “You know, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did backward and in heels. I can drive a car in stilettos, Knox,” she said, her tone crisp and dry like a good Chardonnay.

  He would like very much to take a sip of her.

  “Good to know,” he said.

  “You’re not impressed with my logic,” she said, sounding petulant.

  “The fox-trot isn’t driving, so no.”

  “Don’t worry, Knox.” Her tone was the verbal equivalent of a pat on the head. “I’ll get us there safely. You can be my navigator.”

  He grumbled. “Great.”

  “The Chekov to my Kirk.”

  “Come on,” he said. “I’m Shatner. Everyone knows that.”

  She laughed. “No one knows that. Because it isn’t true.”

  “Cle
arly I’m the captain of the starship Enterprise, Selena.”

  “O Captain! my Captain! I’m the one driving.”

  “Technically, as you are the one in red, I would be very concerned by the metaphor.”

  “This is going into serious nerd territory, Knox.” She chuckled. “Do you remember we used to stay up all night with the old Star Trek, eating ice cream until we were sick when we were supposed to be having study group?”

  “We studied,” he said. “We all took it pretty seriously.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “But at a certain point there was just no more retaining information, and we ended up vegging.”

  “Our college stories are pretty tame compared to some.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “But I don’t think you and I ever wanted to compromise our good standing at the university by smoking a lot of weed. We had to get out there and make our own futures. Away from our families.”

  “True,” he returned.

  “Which is why we are the successful ones. That’s why we’re the ones who have done so well.”

  He felt like he was falling into that great divide again. He wasn’t sure what those words meant anymore. Hadn’t been for some time. “I guess so.”

  Tough to think that he had spent all that time working like he had. Through school, and in business, only to reach existential crisis point by thirty-two. It was surprising. And a damn shame.

  “Well,” she said. “I think anyone who ever doubted us has been proved wrong. How about that?”

  He shook his head, watching the familiar scenery fly by. It was so strange to be back here in Royal. He’d met Cassandra in Royal when visiting Will, and he’d decided he’d move there after college to be closer to her. They’d started their life here, their family.

  He took it all in. The great green rolling hills and the strange twisty trees. So different from the mountainous terrain in Wyoming. So different from the jagged peaks that surrounded his ranch, which he’d always kept even during the time he’d lived in Royal. The ranch made him feel like he was closed in. Protected. In another place. In another world. Rather than back here where time seemed too harsh and real.