“Everleigh,” Wyatt says, his voice firm as he stands. I turn, backing up against the wall. It’s impossiblenotto notice the bulge in his jeans, right where I left a wet spot. “It’s okay?—”
“No. No, it’s not okay at all. I wasn’t thinking straight. I didn’t mean to do that.” Wyatt lets out a sigh I couldn’t begin to decipher if I tried. Desperate to keep him from speaking, I blurt, “That was a huge mistake. Can we please just pretend it never happened?Please?”
“Is that what you want?” The way he pins me in place with his hard stare is a challenge. He’s calling bullshit, but I pretend not to notice.
I fortify every wall at my disposal, praying the ones around my heart are extra thick, before firmly answering, “Yes, it is.”
He pinches his lips as he seems to consider his next words for several stretched seconds. Finally, he settles with, “I’ll wait for you in my truck.”
CHAPTER 8
Wyatt
The drive to Springdale with Everleigh beside me in the passenger seat is torture.
If I’m being honest, this entire fucking day has been torture. Ever since I found her on her bedroom floor wearing my missing button-up shirt, I’ve been so damn screwed up in the head. It’s the same flannel I wore the night I carried her into her apartment. She’d thrown up on her own shirt, despite my best efforts to get her to the bathroom in time. When I tried to find her another shirt of her own to change into, she begged me not to leave her side.
So, I gave up my shirt instead.
I never expected that weeks later I’d find her wearing it—with nothing underneath. Fuck, not even a pair of panties.
“Are we going to talk about this morning?” The question I’ve tried to ask a thousand times since she rode with me out to Stone Ranch hours ago finally lodges free from my throat.
“No.” Everleigh focuses on the Nikon’s screen, scrolling through the dozens of pictures she took at the ranch. She holds the camera steady, as though it hadn’t caused her to have amassive panic attack this morning. I hate to think what might’ve happened if I hadn’t let myself into her house after my knocks went unanswered. I almost turned back to wait in the truck. But it was Stormy’s incessant meowing on the other side of the front door that pushed me to investigate.
The frozen, silently sobbing woman on the bedroom floor was the same broken version of Everleigh I found behind the wheel of her car last summer.
“Ev—”
“There’s nothing more to discuss,” she says, refusing to look up from the camera screen. “I was having a moment. Clearly, I’m okay now since I didn’t have a complete meltdown taking pictures at the ranch. I’m sorry I attacked you, but it won’t happen again. Let’s just drop it, okay?”
Attacked.
The word taunts me.
Everleigh didn’t just attack me, she pounced on me like a wild, feral animal. If a spam call hadn’t interrupted us, how far might things have gone? I’m willing to bet my hand would’ve been inside that deliciously wet pussy, making her come so hard she left her fucking body.
Thankfully I had a spare pair of jeans in the truck, because I’d have had a hard fucking time explaining the wet spot along my zipper seam. The one she left behind after grinding against my throbbing cock like we were horny teenagers trying to preserver her virginity.
Did I inhale her sweet scent before I stashed the jeans in my gym bag? Of course I fucking did. I’m only a man.
Fuck, I bet she tastes even sweeter than smells.
I’ve considered the possibility that she kissed me without knowing what she was doing dozens of times since it happened. But each time the internal debate arises, I remember the hungry way she watched me as my lips moved closer to her pebblednipple. She arched her back in invitation, as though she’d been craving my touch for longer than she’d ever admit.
Frustration wells in my chest at the easy way she now dismisses what happened this morning, but I swallow it down. I’ve waited months for her walls to crumble. This morning, I know what I experienced was a crack in that armor. I’d bet my savings on it. If I wait this out a little longer, the wall itself will fall away completely. It has to. But if I push too hard too soon, she’ll reinforce her barriers and shut me out more than she already has. I won’t risk losing her, especially not now that I’m so close to finally having her for myself.
Even if she wants to lie to herself, I know the truth now—she wants this too.
“Did you get good pictures?” I ask, hoping a subject change will ease the tension in the truck cab.
“Some are good,” she says. “Probably good enough for Macy to get the website up and running. But I’ll need to go back in a couple of days since Gertie was nowhere to be found. Can’t have a website without photos of their star attraction.”
“They should turn the barn into a haunted house for Halloween. Her scream would scare the shit out of anyone.”
“That’s not a bad idea, if they can get her to stay in one place long enough. I wonder if they found her yet.”
“Ryder did, right before we left. She was in the barn loft.”
