28. Hailey

TWENTY-EIGHT

We lay in the duskiness of my room, silent as we gazed at each other across the three inches of space that separated us. Our breaths had evened, and our hearts were quieted, the only sound the contented hum of peace that whispered through the night.

It curled and enveloped and washed, heightening each time Cody brushed his gentle fingers through my hair. I wondered if I'd ever felt as satisfied at any other time in my life than I did right then.

With the warmth of this man covering me like an embrace.

With my body sated.

With my daughter and grandmother sleeping across the house.

Safe and secure.

And I wondered if that's exactly what this felt like.

Safety.

Security.

A promise.

A place I could just be without the fears of what was to come. Without the questions and worries about where this might lead.

Without the guilt.

Most terrifying was knowing Pruitt was scared and backed into a corner. I'd hoped it'd be enough to keep him at bay forever, what I was holding over his head, a millstone that would sink him straight to the bottom of the ocean if I exposed who he really was.

It was the coward's way. Holding onto his ugly truth like a vapid threat all while knowing what he was capable of. Knowing what I was allowing to continue.

I knew it was an affliction that would haunt me for all my days if I kept it secreted inside. Where the depravity would fester and rot before it spread out to corrupt every part of my being.

Cody reached and rubbed the pad of his thumb over the crease that pulled between my eyes. "You're thinking awful hard there, darlin'."

Unsure, I chewed at my bottom lip, trying to push it aside and fall into the easiness that Cody emanated. "I just…I didn't think the two of us were going to end up here like this."

It was a whole lot safer to let him think I was in a stir about the fact that I'd given in than to expose what I was really thinking about.

His brow arched with a tease, his sweet arrogance twisting into the rugged lines of his face. "Seems strange to me since I knew we were heading this direction all along."

It wasn't so hard to find a grin. "Easy for you to say when I'm sure you end up naked with some girl half the nights of the week."

His thumb kept tracing, and for a flash, his expression dimmed before a fierce softness came rushing back. "Not one of them like you."

A blush crept to my cheeks, and I tried to remember that this man was a player. A pro. He knew exactly how to turn a woman to putty.

Maybe I was just a stupid girl who'd fallen right into his trap.

Dumb love.

But I couldn't detect an ounce of dishonesty in him right then.

Hell, I hadn't detected a trace of it since I'd come here.

I thought he might be the most genuine person I'd ever met.

Still, I attempted the razz, though the words were coarse. "Only because I didn't give in the first time you asked. You thought me a challenge. How do you feel now, Cocky Cowboy? Is your ego stroked?"

A chuckle rumbled in his chest, and he kept watching me with those tender eyes where he stared at me through the flickering night. "Oh, something was stroked, all right."

He nudged his cock that still sat at half-mast against the front of my bare thigh.

I tried to smother a whimper.

Impossible.

He sobered and spread his palm across the side of my cheek. "You want to know what I feel like right now, Hailey? I feel like a king who's just been offered the greatest treasure."

My heart fluttered in my chest, and still I was going for light. "You think I'm a possession, huh? I think I've already been in that role, and I didn't like it all that much."

The last went hoarse, a confession that came from out of nowhere. I blamed it on the fact the man had left me goo.

A puddle of bliss.

I didn't have a lot of fortitude left.

No way to keep him out of the places he kept pushing into.

His palm twitched on my face, his hold both fierce and soft. "I hate him, Hailey. Hate that that bastard could ever make you feel that way. I want to destroy him just for the fact that he would ever try to tamp or trap the beauty that you are. I would never fucking do that. Would never hurt you. Would never use you. Would never think of you as any less than the fiery, sassy, strong, unforgettable woman that you are."

Affection slipped through my bloodstream, a soft whisper that spread out to touch every part of me.

This spirit that ached to meet with his.

I should be afraid.

Cody might not ever hurt me the way Pruitt had, but I knew how he easily could inflict wounds. Wounds that would scar so deep because they'd be the kind derived of vulnerability and trust. He'd gained the position, taken a piece of my being that he now held in the palm of his heated hand.

And there I lay, a glutton begging for the pain, wishing there was a way to give it to him.

Cody warred, and I could feel the storm build around him. Darkness called from every direction. A severity that blistered and writhed and shivered him to the bone. "Did he put his hands on you?"

You'll go, Hailey, and you'll do exactly as I tell you. You don't want to find out what happens if you don't.

I could almost smell the foulness that had leached from Pruitt as he'd stood behind me and threatened it so quietly at my ear.

Could almost feel the way my heart had shattered when I'd realized what he was asking me to do.

What he was forcing me to do.

It had taken me two years to realize what I'd unknowingly become. Blinded. A fool who didn't have a clue. Then another four to gain the courage to rip free of the chains.

My tongue swept out to wet my dried lips, and I fought to find a suitable answer to give Cody, my spirit screaming at me to let him in and the rest of me knowing I couldn't. Not until I knew for sure how I was going to handle this.

I was already putting him at risk—having him here. Having him stand for me the way that he was.

A ball of razors lodged at the base of my throat. "No. Pruitt was more about manipulation and control than the physical. Always trying to force me to be the wife he wanted, mold me into who I wasn't, sure to let me know when I wasn't up to his standards."

At least that was true.

A crack of aggression split through the air, and Cody drew me closer, those big arms holding me as if I were fractured. "I won't let him get near you, Hailey. Not you or Maddie or your grandmother."

"I keep warning you that you don't want to get involved. I'm going to get rid of him, Cody, once and for all, and I'm not sure what that's going to look like."

"It's going to look like me doing it by your side, that's what." His voice scraped with determination.

"Cody." Anxiety riddled my conscience all while I fought the urge to fully sink into him.

"You're stuck with me now, darlin'." Cody issued it like banter, though there was something ferocious seeded in its depths.

He took my chin between his fingers. "Tell me how you got wrapped up in him."

A tumble of nerves skated through, and a sigh pilfered from my nose. "After I left…"

Cody flinched, both of us jarred right back to that time.

When Brooke died.

I gulped around the sorrow that thickened my throat, around the lash of guilt that cracked across my conscience like the scourge of a whip.

"You'd told me you didn't have plans to leave. That you were going to be going to school in Langmire so you could continue to work on your father's ranch since that was your dream."

Agony pulsed, and my tongue stroked out to wet my dried lips. "I couldn't stay here after what happened. I couldn't be on that ranch. Not with her ghost lingering there. I felt…"

Tears blurred my eyes.

Cody just pulled me tighter.

"So I packed my things and left for Austin. There was a ranch there that I knew about. My father had sold some horses to them over the years. I got a job there. The year before that, Pruitt had inherited it from his father."

"And one look at you, and he wanted you," Cody surmised.

My teeth clamped down on my bottom lip. "I was so blinded by pain that I couldn't see who he really was."

"And who was he?"

He pushed me closer to the edge. To that surrender. The guilt that haunted me was only a vague blip in the back of my mind.

"You can tell me anything, Hailey. I'll hold it."

"I know you would, Cody. But I…I need to figure out what I'm going to do with this information. With what I know. I can't drag you into that until I have a definite plan. But you need to understand he's dangerous. Really dangerous."

Awareness dimmed his features, and that stubbled jaw clenched. "And these things you know, you're holding them over his head?"

I gave him a jerky confirmation. "I told him I was going to go to the police if he ever came anywhere near me again."

Disgrace bit down. "But I'm not brave enough to do it. Afraid of what really might happen. Of what he really might do to me. And I'm over here pouring gasoline on the fire."

"He'll die before he gets near you."

A wave of brutality undulated beneath his flesh.

Reaching out, I touched the hollow beneath his eye, running my fingertips over the fierceness that blazed. "And I'm afraid neither of us really know what he's capable of."

Cody took my hand that was tracing his face and pressed my palm to his lips, golden eyes flared beneath the dull, muted light. "We'll find a way. I promise you."

"I'm trying…trying to figure out how to do this right. Without putting my family in danger. He made me sign these papers…" My throat closed off with a breath of hate. "Papers that look like I'm a part of things. Papers that look like I involved my father and his ranch. I think it was Pruitt's way of assuring himself that I would never leave."

An old kind of foreboding rushed through Cody's fierce features.

One second later, he solidified, a resolution building like bricks. He shifted and pressed his palm to my cheek. "How could anyone ever fucking believe that you would do something wrong, Hailey? It'll come out. The truth."

As if the heaviness was no longer in the room, he squeezed my hip with his big hand. "You wait right there."

He pushed to standing, and I watched him waltz across my room and flick on the light to the bathroom.

Buck naked.

That was all it took for the reservations that kept trying to resurface to be obliterated.

For the guilt and the worry to fade away in the recesses of my room, disappearing into the vapor of this dream—this fantasy—I was momentarily living in.

The man was nothing but a heaping stack of muscle and brawn and this unfound beauty that could never have been expected.

He trembled the ground below him.

An earthquake that rattled me to the core.

His back rippled with strength, his shoulders so wide I wasn't sure how he didn't have to angle to the side to make it through the bathroom doorway.

The globes of his perfect, round ass flexed with each step he took.

My stomach knitted in a knot of greed.

I had to press a pillow against my mouth to stop the needy sound from escaping.

Of course, Cody had to go and catch it, and he was smirking in that way he loved to do as he glanced back. "Are you ogling me, Shortcake?"

"Who me? No, never." How I'd gone from drowning in his intensity to giggling, I didn't know.

Apparently, he'd driven me to delirium.

His amusement grew as he turned around and stretched himself out across the doorway, hands going to either side of the frame as he leaned my direction, no shame as he put himself on display.

God, the man was full of himself.

I was going to have to give him a pass. He'd earned that arrogance.

Every rugged, brutal inch of him was immaculate.

"No fibbing, darlin'. You think I can't feel those eyes on me? Not that you're going to find me complaining."

"Do you think I could look anywhere else?" I gave up on the teasing and welcomed the wash of need that swelled from the secret place I'd kept for him. "I can't think straight when I'm looking at you. And seeing you like this…"

I trailed off, not sure how to admit the way he made me feel but knowing I needed to touch him again.

A growl got free of his vibrating chest. "You should really stop looking at me that way, Shortcake."

"What am I looking at you like?"

"Like you're mine." The words scuffed through the air.

Snares to inflict.

Like you're mine.

I was in serious danger of falling into that spot. Of falling for a man who kept making me imagine things that I knew better than to dream about.

He wouldn't stay. He'd get bored. He'd stray.

He'd broken me once and he didn't even know it.

And Brooke…how could she not hate me?

I'd promised…I'd promised. And still, I was shifting around to sit up on the side of the bed before I slowly rose to my feet.

Powerless.

Addicted.

I wobbled. Weak to his presence.

I inched across the room.

Gold-flecked eyes consumed me as I approached, and I saw the tremor roll through his body. His muscles ticked and jumped in vicious anticipation.

"What if I was?" I whispered, a masochist, begging for that breaking.

None of it seemed to have any bearing right then.

I watched his partially soft shaft harden to stone.

"What if I told you I was yours tonight?"

"Then I'd say get on your knees, darlin', because I want to fuck that sweet mouth."

I didn't hesitate, I lowered to the floor, and I stroked my hand down the velvet stone of his shaft as I peered up at him.

He towered, nearly touching the ceiling.

Pure, chiseled strength.

Harsh cuts and lines with that softness in his eyes.

He rushed a thumb over my bottom lip. "Think you might be my match, sweet girl."

Then he pressed the tip of his dick to my lips.

Desire throbbed and I licked out over his head and swirled my tongue around the fat, engorged tip.

His stomach trembled and he jolted forward. "You are trying to ruin a man, aren't you? Knew it from the second I saw you. I'm not going to be the same."

He fisted a hand in my hair, and he edged me back for a second, both of us held in a moment's anticipation.

Intensity boiled around us.

A bubbling of greed.

Then he nudged his cock a little deeper.

"Suck me, Shortcake. Show me what you've got."

Need pumped through my veins, and I felt powerful, beautiful as I drew him in as far as I could take him, sucking as I drew him to the back of my throat, even though I barely could take half of him in.

Cody groaned, and he tightened his hold in my hair. The other hand went to my face as he ran his thumb along the edge of my lips that were stretched wide with him. "If you could see what you look like right now. My cock stuffed so deep in that sweet mouth. Suck me, darlin'. Show me how much you mean it."

He kept going from rough to soft, the man a whirlwind that had completely swept me away.

No rhyme.

No reason.

Just this.

Just us.

I wrapped both hands around the base of him, and I drew back. I swirled my tongue around his fat, throbbing head, and I gave him a good suck as I plunged back down.

Cody grunted.

I picked up a rhythm. I wanted to give him exactly what he'd asked for. To show him that I meant it.

Even if I couldn't say it, even if I could never accept it, even if this was all going to fall apart tomorrow, I meant it.

I meant that he'd come to mean something. He'd infiltrated the places of my heart that had ached for years. The places that were vacant and hollow.

I wanted him to know it meant something that he'd stood for me.

It meant something that he'd healed and given me hope.

Cody began to snap forward, taking me deeper with each stroke, fucking my mouth the way he'd warned he would do.

I liked it. Liked the overwhelming feel of him. Because I could barely take it and I wanted more.

Lust swarmed.

A cloud of desperation.

Desire sparked in my middle.

I rubbed my thighs together, seeking friction.

A needy grunt ripped out of Cody, and he took my face in both of those massive hands. "Touch yourself, baby. I want to see you go off at the same second I come in this delicious mouth."

Reaching between my trembling legs, I whimpered when my fingers brushed my tingling clit.

Pleasure flickered and flashed, and I shivered as Cody rocked in hard, fast strokes.

"Good girl. That's right. Touch yourself as I fuck this sweet mouth. Let me see you."

I rolled my fingers, and short gasps vibrated up my throat. I knew Cody could feel them, the way he moaned and jutted and jerked as he started to fuck faster.

"Nothing as beautiful as this, Hailey. You on your knees for me. But it's me who's on his knees. That's where you've got me. On my fuckin' knees."

I was gone. Lost to the disorder of this man. To this insanity that I knew was going to burn us in the end. But this was what we both needed right then, so I fully let myself go.

The bliss grew and grew, and I let my hand that had been stroking the base of his cock wander deeper behind his thighs until I was tugging at his balls, my fingertip scratching at the backside.

"Just like that. You know exactly what to do to me. How I want it."

Groaning with the praise, with the glow, I swallowed him deeper.

The vibration rolled through us both.

That was all it took and Cody exploded.

A shout wrenched from his mouth. Far too loud. Banging from the walls and plundering the night.

It plucked the pleasure out of me, too.

An orgasm ripped through my body as he poured and pulsed in my mouth. His hands clung to my face as I whimpered and he groaned, the two of us gone as I gulped him down.

Flying.

Soaring.

My head spun with a dizziness that I felt all the way down to my soul.

In places that were forbidden.

It didn't matter because I knew he was already there.

We both slowed and stilled, our breaths panted, the energy a slow crackle that pulled through the air.

Cody's hands were still framing my face when he pulled out of my mouth, and I reached up and swiped the back of my hand over my lips.

Then I smiled his way, feeling as smug as he could be. "It seems to me someone else needed to be gagged. I think you woke the neighbors."

His chuckle was low. "I'd apologize but I wouldn't mean it."

I gazed up at him, feeling a brittle place inside me crack. "Don't apologize, Cody. Not when I've wanted to see you like this for half my life."

Every molecule in his being went tender. "I won't. Won't apologize for the way you make me feel. Won't deny it any longer."

Without giving me warning, he scooped me up and carried me into my bathroom and perched me on the sink. He kept tossing wayward grins at me as he warmed a cloth under the sink and swiped it across my lips.

"This fucking mouth, Shortcake."

Shifting, he gently pressed the heated cloth between my perfectly sore thighs. "This body."

He leaned in and pressed a kiss to my temple, whispering there, "This mind."

Then he splayed a massive palm over the thunder ravaging my chest. "This heart."

Don't fall.

Don't fall.

I silently chanted it like a prayer.

A fleeting one.

"Knew you were something so fuckin' special, Hailey. Knew it all along. Wish I could be that way for you. Perfect and good and right."

He scooped me back up, my legs around his thighs and my arms laced to his neck. Our naked flesh pressed flush to the other, an aching burn that simmered with something bigger than it should be.

He carried me to my bed and laid me down in the middle. I could see the battle wage in his mind as he hesitated at the side.

I reached for him because I couldn't bear to let him go.

Not yet.

Not when I didn't want this night to end.

"Stay with me." I begged it like a secret.

Cody crawled in, the bed squeaking with his weight, and wrapped me in his arms. Heat blistered, his brutal strength wrapping me whole. I set my head on the steady beat of his heart.

"Hold me until morning," I whispered there, to that clock frozen at eight-seventeen.

He brushed his lips across my forehead and held me tighter. "Don't worry, darlin'. I'm not going to let go."