Need Me, Cowboy (Copper Ridge Book 2653) Page 7

  It was going to be inside her.

  Her internal muscles clenched, and she realized that rather than fear, she was overcome completely by excitement. Maybe that was the perk of waiting twenty-five years to lose your virginity. She was past ready.

  He growled, jerking his car off the road and to a turnout spot next to the trees. Then he unbuckled his seat belt and moved over to the center of the bench seat, undoing her belt and hauling her into his lap. He kissed her, deep and hard, matching what had happened back at the bar.

  Her head was spinning, her whole body on fire.

  He stripped off her T-shirt, quickly and ruthlessly, his fingers deft on her bra. She didn’t even have time to worry about it. Didn’t have time to think. Her breasts were bare, and he was cupping them, sliding calloused thumbs over her nipples, teasing her, enticing her.

  She felt like she was flying.

  She wanted him to take her wherever this was going. She wanted him to take control. She was used to being the one in control. The one who knew what she was doing. She was a natural in her field, and that meant she always walked in knowing what she was doing. Being the novice was a strange, amazing feeling, and she had the sense that if she’d been with a man any less masterful, it might feel diminishing.

  Instead it just felt like—like a weight on her shoulders suddenly lifted. Because he was bearing responsibility for all these feelings of pleasure in her body. He was stoking the need, and soothing it just as quickly. But all the while, a deep, endless ache was building between her legs and she wanted... She needed... She didn’t know.

  But she knew that he knew. Oh, yes, he did.

  He kissed her neck, cupping her head as he moved lower, as he captured one nipple between his lips and sucked her in deep. It was so erotic, so filthy, and she couldn’t do anything but arch into his touch as he moved his attention to her other breast. He was fulfilling fantasies she hadn’t even known she’d had.

  She had just never...thought about doing such a thing. And here he was, not only making it seem appealing, but it was also as if she might die if she didn’t have it.

  He pulled his own shirt over his head, tugging her heart against his chest, his muscles, the hair there, adding delicious friction against her nipples, and she squirmed. He wrapped his arm tightly around her waist, cupped her head and laid her back, somehow managing to strip her of her jeans and panties in record time in the close confines of the truck. Then he took hold of the buckle on his belt, and she heard the rasp of fabric and metal as he worked the leather strap through, as he undid the zipper on his jeans.

  She jumped when he pressed his hand between her thighs, moved his fingers through her slickness, drawing the moisture up over that sensitized bundle of nerves, then slid his thumb expertly back and forth, creating a kind of tension inside her she wasn’t sure she could withstand.

  “I’ll make it last longer later,” he said gruffly. “Promise.”

  But she didn’t really understand what he meant, and when she heard the tearing of a plastic packet, she only dimly registered what was about to happen. Then he was kissing her again, and she didn’t think. Until the blunt head of his arousal was pushing into her body, until he thrust hard and deep, a fierce, burning sensation claiming any of the pleasure she had felt a moment before.

  She cried out, digging her fingernails into his shoulders, trying to blot out the pain that was rolling through her like a storm.

  “Faith...”

  She tensed up, turning her head away, freezing for a moment. “Don’t say anything,” she whispered.

  “Sorry,” he said, sinking more deeply into her, a groan on his lips. “You feel so damn good.”

  And that tortured admission did something to her, ignited something deep inside her that went past pain. That went past fear. The scary part was over. It was done. And the pain was already beginning to roll itself back.

  “Don’t stop,” she whispered, curling her fingers around his neck and holding on as she shifted beneath him.

  It was strange, this feeling. His body inside hers. How had she not realized? How intimate something like this would be?

  Everybody talked about sex at university. Gave great proclamations about what they liked and what they didn’t, had endless discussions about the when, the why and the with who. But no one had ever said sex made you feel like someone hadn’t just entered your body, but your whole soul. No one had said that you would want to run away and draw closer at the same time.

  No one had said that it would be a great, wrenching pain followed by a deep, strange sense of connection that seemed to bloom into desire again as he shifted his hips and arched into her.

  She tested what it might feel like if she moved against him, too, and found that she liked it. With each and every thrust that he made into her body, animalistic sounds coming from deep inside of him, she met him. Until her body was slick with sweat—his or hers, she didn’t know. Until that fierce need she had felt the first time he had kissed her was back. Until she thought she might die if she didn’t get more of him.

  Until she no longer wanted to run at all.

  He growled, his hardness pulsing inside her as he froze above her, slamming back into her one last time. And then, a release broke inside her like a wave, and she found herself drowning. In pleasure. In him.

  And when he looked at her, she suddenly felt small and fragile. Any sense of being resolute crumbled.

  And much to her horror, a tear slid down her cheek.

  * * *

  She was crying. God in heaven, the woman was crying.

  No. He wasn’t going to think about God. Not right now. Because God had nothing to do with this. No, this was straight from hell, and he was one of the devil’s chosen. There was no other way to look at it.

  Not only had he taken her in his truck like a beast—a fancy justification for sidestepping the word monster if ever there was one—but she had also been a virgin.

  And he hadn’t stopped.

  When he had hit that resistance, when he had seen that flash of pain on her face, he had waited only a moment before he kept on going. She’d lifted her hips, and he hadn’t been able to do anything but keep going. Because she was beautiful. And he wanted her. More than beautiful, she was soft and delicate, and an indulgence.

  And he hadn’t had any of that for more than five years.

  Sinking into her tight body had been a revelation. As much as a damnation.

  “Dammit to hell,” he muttered, straightening and pulling his pants back into place. He chucked the condom out the window, not really giving a damn what happened to it later.

  “What?” she asked, her petite frame shivering, shaking, her arms wrapped tightly around her body, as though she was trying to protect herself.

  Too little, too late.

  “You know.”

  “I don’t,” she said, shrinking more deeply into the far corner of the truck, her pale figure cast into a soft glow by the moonlight. “I don’t... I thought it was good.”

  Her voice was trembling, watery, and he could hear the sigh that she breathed out becoming a sob.

  “You didn’t tell me you were a virgin,” he said, trying to keep the accusation out of his voice, because dammit, he had known. On some level, he had known. And he hadn’t been put off by it at all.

  No, he had told himself to be put off by it. By her obvious innocence and inexperience. He had commanded himself not to be interested in it. To chase after someone more like him. Someone a little bit dark. Someone a little bit craven. But his body didn’t want that.

  Because his soul was a destroyer. A consumer of everything good and sweet.

  Hadn’t Alicia been sweet when he’d met her? Hadn’t she transformed into something else entirely over their time together? How could he ignore the fact that he was the common denominator at the center of so many twisted scenarios
in his life?

  Him.

  The one thing he could never fully remove from the equation unless he removed himself from the world.

  “So what?” she asked, shuffling around in the car, undoubtedly looking for her clothes. “I knew that.”

  “I damn well didn’t.”

  “What does it have to do with anything?”

  “You told me you knew what you were doing.”

  “I did,” she said, her voice shrinking even smaller. “I knew exactly what we were going to do.” She made a soft, breathy laugh. “I mean, I didn’t know that we were going to do it in the truck. I expected it to take a little bit...longer. But I knew we were going to have sex.”

  “You’re crying.”

  “That’s my problem,” she said.

  “No,” he said, reaching across the space and dragging her toward him. He gripped her chin between his thumb and forefinger and gazed into her eyes. It was dark, but he could see the glitter in her gaze. Like the stars had fallen down from the sky and centered themselves in her. “Now it’s my problem.”

  “It doesn’t have to be. I made a choice. My lack of experience doesn’t make it less my choice.”

  “Yes, it does. Because you didn’t really know. I hurt you. And because you didn’t tell me, I hurt you worse than I would have.”

  “Again, that’s on me. I wanted to have sex with an older guy. One who knew what he was doing. I’m way too old to be a virgin, Levi. I never found someone I wanted to change that with, and then I met you and I wanted you. It seems simple to me.”

  “Simple.”

  The top of his head had just about blown off. Nothing about this seemed simple to him.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Little girl, I hadn’t had sex in more than five years. You don’t want a man like me in bed with you. You want a nice man who has the patience to take time with your body.”

  “But I like your body. And I like the way it made mine feel.”

  “I hurt you,” he pointed out.

  She lifted a pale shoulder. “It felt good at the end.”

  “Doesn’t matter. That’s all I have. Rough and selfish. That’s what I am. It’s all I want to be.”

  “Well, I want to be my own person. I want to be someone who makes her own choices and doesn’t give a damn what anyone else thinks. So maybe we’re about perfect for each other right now.”

  “Right now.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I don’t know why you find it so hard to believe, but I really do know what I want. Do you think I’m going to fall in love with you, Levi?”

  She spoke the words with such disdainful incredulity, and if he was a different man, with a softer heart—with a heart at all—he might’ve been offended. As it was, he found her open scorn almost amusing.

  “Virgins fall in love with all kinds of assholes, sweetheart.”

  “Have you deflowered a lot of them?”

  “No. I haven’t been with a damn virgin since I was one.”

  “Then maybe calm down with your pronouncements.” She was wiggling back into her jeans now, then pulling her top over her head. She hadn’t bothered to put her bra back on. And he was the perverse bastard who took an interest in that.

  “I’m a lot more experienced than you. Maybe you should recognize that my pronouncements come from a place of education.”

  “It’s done,” she said. “And you know what? It was fine. It was fine until this.”

  “I’ll take you home.”

  “Take me back to my car,” she said.

  “I’d rather not drop you back in the parking lot at this hour.”

  “Take me back to my damn car,” she said. “I don’t want to arrange a ride later. I don’t need my car sitting in the parking lot all night, where people can draw conclusions.”

  “You didn’t mind that earlier.”

  “Well, earlier I didn’t feel bad or ashamed about my choices, but you’ve gone and made that... It’s different now. It’s different.”

  If he had a conscience, he would have felt guilt over that. But it wasn’t guilt that wracked his body now. It was rage.

  Rage that the monster had won.

  The rage had nothing to do with her. Nothing about the way it might impact her life. It was about him.

  Maybe that was selfish. He didn’t really know. Didn’t really care, either.

  “If you’d like to withdraw from the job, I understand,” he said when they pulled back into the parking lot of Ace’s bar.

  “Hell, no,” she said, her tone defiant. “I’m not losing this job. You don’t get to ruin that, too.”

  “I wouldn’t figure you’d want to work with me anymore.”

  “You think you know a lot about me. For a man who knows basically nothing. The whole...intimacy-of-sex thing is a farce. You have no idea who I am. You have no idea what I want, what I need. I will finish this job because I took it on. And when I said that I wanted you, when I said I wanted this, I knew we were going to continue working together.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “None of this suits me.”

  She tumbled out of the truck and went to her car, and he waited until she was inside, until she got it started and began to pull out of the space, before he started heading back toward his place.

  But it wasn’t until he parked in front of his house that he realized she had left her bra and panties behind.

  The two scraps of fabric seemed to represent the final shreds of his humanity.

  He reached out and touched her bra, ran his thumb over the lace.

  And he asked himself why the hell he was bothering to pull away now. She had been...a revelation. Soft and perfect and everything he’d ever wanted.

  He wondered why the hell he was pretending he cared about being a man, when being a monster was so much easier.

  Eight

  One thought kept rolling through Faith’s mind as she sat at her desk and tried to attend to her work.

  She wasn’t a virgin anymore.

  She had lost her virginity. In a pickup truck.

  Of all the unexpected turns of events that had occurred in her life, this was inarguably the most unexpected. She surely had not thought she would do that, ever.

  Not the virginity thing. She had been rather sanguine about that. She had known sex would happen eventually, and there was no point in worrying about it.

  But the pickup truck. She had really not seen herself as a do-it-in-a-pickup-truck kind of girl.

  With a man like that.

  If she actually sat and broke down her thoughts on what kind of man she had imagined she might be with, it wasn’t him. Not even a little bit. Not even at all.

  She had imagined she would find a man quite a bit like herself. Someone who was young, maybe. And understood what it was like to be ambitious at an early age. Someone who could relate to her. Her particular struggles.

  But then, she supposed, that was more relationship stuff. And sex didn’t require that two people be similar. Only that they ignited when they touched.

  She certainly hadn’t imagined it would be an ex-convict accused of murder who would light her on fire.

  Make her come.

  Make her cry.

  Then send her away.

  It had been a strange twelve hours indeed.

  “Faith?” She looked up and saw Isaiah standing in the doorway. “I need estimates from you.”

  “Which estimates?” She blinked.

  “The ones you haven’t sent me yet,” he said, being maddeningly opaque and a pain in the ass. He could just tell her.

  She cleared her throat, tapping her fingers together. Hoping to buy herself some time. Or a clue. “Is there a particular set of estimates that you’re waiting on?”

  “If you have any estimates
put together that I don’t have, I would like them.”

  She realized that she didn’t have any for him. And if she should...

  That meant she had dropped the ball.

  She never dropped the ball.

  She had been working, full tilt, at this job for enough years now that she had anticipated the moment when she might drop the ball, but she hadn’t. And now she had taken on this extra project, this work her brothers didn’t know about, and she was messing up.

  That isn’t why...

  No, it wasn’t.

  She was messing up because she felt consumed. Utterly and completely consumed by everything that was happening with Levi.

  Levi Tucker was so much more than just an interesting architecture project.

  It was the structure of the man himself that had her so invested. Not what she might build for him.

  She wanted to see him again. Wanted to talk to him. Wanted to lie down in a bed with him, with the lights on so she could look at all his tattoos and trace the lines of them.

  So she could know him.

  Right. That makes sense. He’s nothing like you thought you wanted. Why are you fixating?

  A good question.

  She didn’t want him to be right. Right about virgins and how they fell in love as easy as some people stumbled while walking down the street.

  “Faith?”

  Isaiah looked concerned now.

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  “You don’t look fine.”

  “I am.” She shifted, feeling a particular soreness between her legs and trying to hide the blush that bled into her cheeks. It was weird to be conscious of that while she was talking to her brother.

  “Faith, no one has ever accused me of being particularly perceptive when it comes to people’s emotions. But I do know you. I know that you’re never late with project work. If all of this has become too much for you...”