“Shane?” she asks again, but I know she knows it’s me. I know that she feels me just as I do her.
“I’m here,” I say, and there is a rough quality to my voice that I know speaks of things I do not want to exist, but I don’t seem to be able to escape tonight.
“Why are you just standing there?” she asks, throwing the blankets off.
Hearing the confusion in her voice, I close the space between us, reaching her as she twists around to face me on her side of the bed. Some small slip of gown I can barely make out is all that covers her. I don’t immediately reach for her, or her for me, and I was right about what I sensed in her. She is uncertain. But still I stand over her, and she seems to hold her breath, or maybe I hold mine, waiting for what comes next. For me, those seconds are about controlling that edge that is inside me. For her, I suspect it’s trying to understand what is happening with me, and us. What it is between us, yet isn’t about us. But guilt won’t stop clawing at me, and she is the only answer I know to silence it.
I lean over her, my hand on her waist, my body pressing her into the mattress, my forehead finding hers. “My God, Shane. You’re soaking wet.”
There’s concern in her voice, and it hits me that I don’t know what it’s like to have someone care about anything I do. It feels remarkably good, something I oddly did not think I needed, until it was her who cared. Her offering it. Giving it freely. “It’s snowing,” I say. “I walked home in the snow.”
“You have to be freezing,” she says, her soft palm warm on my face. “You are freezing. Why did you walk?”
“It’s a long story, but I was meeting someone about a corporate sponsorship a few miles from here and—”
“Brody Matthews,” she says. “I heard you talk about him.”
“Yes,” I say. “I waited a long time for him but he didn’t show up.”
“That’s crazy. Why would he do that?”
“He was in a car accident.”
“Oh God. Oh no. Is he okay?”
“No. He’s not.” The next words are lead on my tongue. “He’s dead.”
She gasps. “Oh my God.” Her hand flattens on my chest, gently pushing me back as she tries to see my face through the darkness. “I’m beyond words. When. How?”
“Beyond words is good,” I say, my palm sliding under her backside, finding her warm skin beneath her silk gown. “Because talking isn’t what I have on my mind.” My free hand frames her face and my mouth slants over hers; the rise of something dark and hungry inside me, dark and out of control, is hard and fast, a fire burning through me. That same something I didn’t want to feel, nor do I want her to taste. I tear my mouth from hers, and the sound of her panting breath is soft, and sexy, and my cock thickens, stretching my zipper.
“I’m making you wet in all the wrong ways,” I say. “I need to go shower.” I try to move, and she grabs my jacket.
“Don’t go.”
“I need to go shower,” I repeat, but what I need is to get my fucking control back or to be inside her, which won’t go hand in hand right now.
She hesitates, holding on to me, as if she will refuse to let me go, but her fingers slowly slip away. I waste no time pushing away from her, putting space between us, and crossing to the bathroom. I flip on the light, shutting the door behind me, but I do not look in the mirror. I walk to the shower and turn on the water, then strip off my shoes and clothes before pressing my hands on the glass. I came here to save my family, but I haven’t saved them, and I damn sure didn’t save Brody. I played my brother’s games. I tried to save him when he is the one who doesn’t deserve to be saved. And because of that, I haven’t done enough, and others could die that might have lived.
A tight knot forms in my gut and I walk to the mirror and I don’t know what happens. I take one look at myself, an emotion I cannot name explodes inside me, and I punch my reflection, glass splintering, but not shattering, and a line forming across my image.
“Shane!”
“Fuck,” I breathe out with the realization Emily has entered the room, that I’ve done this, and she has seen a side of me I barely recognize as who I am. I grab the sink, pain splintering through my hand, stickiness clinging to my skin. “I need you to get out until I get—”
It’s too late. She’s already by my side, and the minute her hand comes down on my back, I have even less control than a moment before. I need her. To touch her. To taste her. To be inside her, and I grab her, pulling her in front of me, not giving her or me a chance to change our minds. My fingers tangle roughly in her hair, while my free hand cups her backside, and then the next moment, my mouth is on hers, my tongue licking into her mouth, and this time, I don’t hold back. I let her taste everything that was on my lips in the bedroom, and more. I let her taste my hunger. I let her taste the betrayal I feel from my brother, father, maybe even my fucking mother. I let her taste what I only realize now, in this moment: that Brody’s death was preventable, whereas my father’s is not. I can’t save either of them, and I have given up on saving my brother. They are lost, but she is here and I will not lose her. I will not let anyone hurt her.
She moans into my mouth, and the sound is fire in my veins, my cock thickening where it now rests at her hip. Wanting, needing, skin against skin, I reach down, and grab the top of the silk gown she is wearing, yanking it, the material ripping down the front. She gasps, and my gaze rakes over her high, full breasts, her rosy pebbled nipples. And then I am kissing her again, my hand on her breast, fingers tugging at her nipple, nothing gentle in my kiss or my touch. There is just this deep need that has only one answer and that is her, and she is right there with me, as if she is as desperate for some unknown answer that we can only find with the unobtainable pleasure. Touching me, pressing against me, cupping my hand over her breasts.