It wasn’t like the way he’d touched her before, when he’d been cleaning her scrapes. There was nothing even remotely impersonal about the way his fingertips drew across her skin now. Honey’s breath froze in her throat.
“Honey,” he said, very softly. He looked up again, meeting her eyes. “I haven’t been acting.”
Honey couldn’t respond. She stared into those eyes, as dark as the forests outside. There was nothing but truth in that look.
“I have never been acting.” His thumb circled her instep, slow and lingering. “These past few weeks, I have been going out of my goddamn mind trying to keep my hands off you. Every night I lie in this bed and replay that kiss in my mind, over and over. When we’re out in the woods, it’s only the kids that stop me from shoving you up against the nearest tree. I am fucking crazy about you, woman. You must have noticed.”
She shook her head in mute shock.
Something shifted in his expression, just a little. There was still desire there, raw and undeniable, but now there was something else, too. A hint of puzzlement.
“You must have noticed,” he repeated, as though saying it again would make it true. His perplexed frown deepened. “Damn it, woman, how could you not have realized? I haven’t exactly been subtle. Hard to be, when very little of my blood makes it as far as my brain in your presence. I’ve been eye-fucking you since the moment we first met.”
Laughter caught in her throat, harsh and painful. “I don’t exactly have a great track record when it comes to judging whether or not men are attracted to me.”
His fingers hesitated just below her knee. He pulled back a little, his gaze moving across her face, searching for… something. She felt stripped bare, far more naked now than she had without mere clothes.
“I think,” he said slowly, his voice dropping to a deep, husky growl, “that someone made you doubt your own instincts. And I think that if I ever meet that someone, I’m going to punch him in the face.”
“I already told you not to do that.”
“So it was your ass of an ex-husband.” His fingertips circled the back of her calf. “Tell me what he did.”
She sucked in a breath, skin tingling. “You really want to talk about another man right now?”
“Woman, I’d rather be putting my mouth to a much better use. But I can’t give you what you need here…”
His palm slid higher, up to her inner thigh. Honey couldn’t help the small, helpless gasp that tore from her throat. Dizzy with desire, she let her legs fall open… but Buck stopped, going no higher.
“Unless I know what’s going on up here.” He tapped her forehead with his free hand. “So tell me what happened.”
“There really isn’t much to tell. We got married young. Too young, probably. And I got pregnant straight away, and he got promoted, and everything got so busy… we never really had time to be a couple. When the kids grew up and left home, we discovered that there wasn’t anything else to keep us together. We just drifted apart. You know, the way people do.”
“Mmm.” He didn’t look away. “Now tell me what really happened.”
She had to drop her gaze, then, away from those eyes that left her nowhere to hide. That looked through her mask and sawher.
“I tried,” she whispered, to his hands rather than his face. Strong hands, rough with hard work, but so gentle on her skin. “Even when the kids were just babies, I tried so hard to make time for him. I knew it was important for us to stay connected, physically, as husband and wife as well as parents. But he was always tired, or he’d had a bad day at work, or he just… wasn’t in the mood. He said it was normal, that the physical side of things petered out for most married couples. That everything was fine.”
“That word again.” His fingertips moved, tracing slow, hypnotic patterns that made her tingle everywhere he touched. “You often say that things are fine, I’ve noticed. Usually when they’re not.”
“Itwasfine,” she said defensively. “Mostly. He was a nice guy, and not in the way that phrase usually means. A good dad. It was just that one thing. And there were the kids to consider, and our home, and all the practicalities of a separation. I couldn’t upend all our lives. Not over something so selfish and trivial.”
“Woman, if you think it’s trivial, you’ve been doing it wrong.”
“Probably,” she had to admit. “Since I’ve only ever been with one man in my whole life. And as it turns out, he was gay.”
Buck’s hand paused on the inside of her thigh. “Ah.”
“Yeah.” She gave him a wry smile, knowing it no doubt looked as forced as it was. “I was married to a gay man for over twenty years, and I hadn’t the faintest idea. Like I said, my sense for that kind of thing is clearly faulty.”
Buck made a low, dangerous sound. “Sounds to me more like it was deliberately sabotaged.”
“Perhaps. He was very deeply in the closet. Conservative family, religious upbringing, all that stuff. I think for a long time, he was lying to himself as much as to me. I can’t blame him for that.”
“I can. You knew something was wrong. Even if the motherfucker hadn’t figured out his own needs, he sure as hell had to know he wasn’t meeting yours. So tell me the end of the story. Much as I’d like to imagine that you finally clawed your way through all the bullshit, divorced his sorry ass, and have spent the past few years in a glorious orgy of long overdue orgasms, I’m guessing that’s not how things went down.”
“No. It was ironic, really.” She shrugged, trying to make light of it. “I stayed for the kids. Turned out he was doing the same. Our youngest left home, and a few weeks later, my husband sat me down and explained that things weren’t fine after all. That they hadn’t been fine for a long time, and that he finally needed to be true to himself. He… seemed to think it shouldn’t be a surprise.”
