“I’m saying that you’re too hard on yourself because you expect the impossible. Perhaps we all do.”
“Did you fight him?”
“Who?”
“Your dad.”
“Does it matter?”
Did it? I took Harry’s plate from him and put it with mine. The booze in my blood roared to life and my body moved of its own accord. I straddled Harry, pushing him back on the couch, and pressed my forehead against his. “I don’t know.”
Harry took a breath, one of those, soft-sharp gasps that I’d started hearing in my sleep. I braced myself for his answer, but then he kissed me, and my mind was devoid of all else but the sensation of his lips on mine.
My hands flew to his face and I kissed him back, rising up on my knees, pouring everything that I didn’t understand into everywhere we touched. Perhaps he hadn’t meant to kiss me. And maybe I hadn’t meant to return the favour, but right now, it was all we had.
Harry growled into my mouth and pulled me tight against him, his blunt fingernails scraping my bare back. I gasped and kissed him harder, my world narrowing to his chest and his heartbeat thundering a hairsbreadth away from the growing bulge in my jeans.Too much. Too fast. But I couldn’t pull back. My lips were fused to his, my skin addicted to his bruising touch, and it was only the need to breathe that eventually forced us apart.
By then, Harry’s T-shirt was somewhere behind me, his belt undone. I was shaking, and so was he. I tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. So I kissed him again, losing myself in the rounded muscle of his beautiful torso—his smooth skin and ripped abs—and blocked out the fluttery sensation in my stomach.What the hell are we doing?But the bemusement in my conscience found no purchase either as I coaxed a low sound out of Harry with my tongue. Everything about him set me on fire, and what little control I possessed in spite of my father’s dud genes was long gone.
Harry’s belt buckle clanked against mine. I moved to rectify the fact that he was the only one with undone jeans, but he got there first. He ripped my belt away and unbuttoned my jeans. I braced myself for his electric touch on my dick, but it didn’t happen. Instead, he slid his hands over my heated skin, his fingers digging in, and rocked up against me, the layers of denim between us the sole thing keeping me from embarrassing myself.
My heartbeat spiked and madness crept up on me. I snaked a hand between us and found Harry’s cock. It was hard, and hot, and heavy, and the scrape of my palm along his length clawed a hoarse gasp from his throat.
“Joe.”
The way he said my name was everything, but as I gazed down at him, something changed. Perspective seemed to hit him first, and then come crashing into me, and the fierce compulsion to never let this end gave way to reality.
A shudder passed through me. I let my hand drop, and Harry brushed my hair out of my face like he could ease the sting of what I knew he was about to do. He stood with me still in his arms as though I weighed nothing, and deposited me gently on the sofa. He turned away. For a moment I feared that he’d leave without a word, but he stopped at the door, one foot in the hallway.
“I did fight my dad, but not until he’d hurt me enough that I’m still fighting him now. Don’t try and make sense of these things, Joe. Just be the best man you can.”
And then he was gone, and I was half naked on the couch with wet eyes and a raging boner.
Chapter Eight
Harry
“What on earth are you doing up there?”
Emma wobbled precariously on the rickety ladder. “I’m looking for the bran mash. Tauna lost another tooth overnight, so she’s going to need soft food from now on.”
“Are you sure it’s up there?” I steadied the ladder and gazed up at the cluttered shelves in the feed store. “It’s not with the other sacks of, uh, stuff by the door?”
“I’m not sure of anything,” Emma said. “Joe usually measures up the feeds, but he’s not here.”
I knew all too well that Joe wasn’t around—I’d heard him tear off in the van at the crack of dawn—but I had no idea where he’d gone, and his kiss still bruising my lips kept me from asking. That and stopping Emma from breaking her neck. “Fuck this. Get down. I’ll look.”
Emma shot me a death glare but slid down the ladder anyway. “You’re in a mood.”
“Am I?” I climbed the ladder and heaved myself onto the dusty platform that served as the lowest shelf. “Can’t say I’d noticed.”
“Are you hungover? Because Joe was. He looked like shit when he stopped at the bungalow to give Mum some money.”
That Emma trusted me enough to jabber on like I was part of the family warmed my bones, but the thought of Joe looking like shit turned my whisky-scarred stomach. I’d left him dishevelled and bemused on the couch, and gone to bed with the world and my dick on my mind, but I’d woken to a brain obsessed with only him, and the longer he was absent, the more distracting that became. “Was he okay?”
I didn’t look at Emma, but I sensed her frown. “Why are you asking me that?” she said. “Has something happened between you two?”
“Like what?” I read the label on a half-empty sack and then discarded it. “There’s nothing but oats and molasses up here.”
