In that candid moment of connectedness, something passes between us. A soulful greeting? A peek behind our defenses? A what-if? Whatever it is, it shakes something loose inside me while reinforcing my number one rule.
They can have my body, but everything else is off-limits.
I offer him a nod, accepting his apology. With a quick shift of my hips, I face forward, escaping his touch. And his eyes.
Vibrant, melty, poisonous eyes. I’m angled away, but I can still see them, still feel them luring me in with filthy promises.
I don’t even like sex. Or men, in general. I offered myself to him, because I don’t want to be in his debt. I stole his money. Now I’ll be eating his food and sleeping in his house. That makes me dependent, and dependency makes me uneasy.
He makes me uneasy.
He leans against my back and rests a hand on the saddle horn, leaving no space between my bottom and the swollen, steely length of him trapped against his thigh.
I bite down on my cheek, my throat an arid desert.
His mouth skims my ear. “You wear a fearless mask, but I hear you, Raina. I feel your fear.”
“I feel your erection.” I turn my neck, my lips a hairbreadth from his. “Are you reconsidering my offer?”
His jaw stiffens. “You use sex like a weapon, wedging it between you and anyone who might run their fingers through your soul.”
My head jerks back at the verbal slap, and I quickly look away, grasping for a subject change. “When was the last time you slept?”
“Prison.”
Three days ago.
I stole his bed the first night and ran off the second night. “Because of me?”
“Because I can’t sleep.” He makes a clicking sound with his cheek, and the horse lurches into motion.
“Do you want to talk about it? I’ll listen—”
“No.”
For the next thirty minutes, Captain carries us through the dark at a lazy pace. My chest bounces uncomfortably, my boobs in desperate need of a bra. But I don’t own one. So I center myself in the tempo of chuffing snorts and the stretch of the horse’s powerful muscles.
It’s so tranquil here. A light breeze, an explosion of stars, the atmosphere flows with energy and life.
Behind me, Lorne’s as quiet as a statue. But I’m viscerally aware of the muscled bar of his arm across my abdomen, the contraction of his thighs against mine, the strength in his fingers around the reins, and the warm massage of his breaths along my neck.
I’m so distracted by him I don’t realize where he’s taken us until he stops beside an unlit, one-story building.
“What is this?” I search the unfamiliar landscape of sparse trees. “Where are we?”
“The ravine.”
My breath catches. “How? It doesn’t look—”
“Jarret and Jake filled it in.” His voice creeps over my shoulder, cold and distant. “Jake built Conor’s veterinary clinic right on top.” He motions at the building.
She works here? Where she was raped?
“Doesn’t that unnerve her?” I ask.
“I guess she doesn’t believe in ghosts.”
“Ghosts?”
He huffs a sound of annoyance. “They buried the bodies in the ravine.”
“Oh.” A chill spreads over my scalp. “I didn’t know.”
“Neither does John, and it’ll remain that way.”
He doesn’t move to dismount or inch Captain closer to the place that altered his life. We sit there for so long I wonder if I’ve lost him to the past.
Does he wish the ravine wasn’t filled in so he could visit it a final time? Is he reliving Conor’s attack? His hunt for her rapist? Or the catastrophic moment when he gunned down the wrong man?
“Lorne?”
“Quiet,” he snaps.
I have so many questions scraping along my tongue, but I trap them behind my lips and close my eyes.
Until his fingers drift through my hair.
I fix my stare on the building and go unnaturally still.
His touch is airy at first, floating through the stick-straight strands like a suggestion. Then his exploration curls into a soothing brush, sinking midway into the length and raking to the end, where it tickles my elbows.
Over and over, he strokes. Neither rough nor hesitant, his movements seem to be absentminded. Except whenever his fingers graze my arm, they linger, feeling my skin through the veil of my hair.
After a while, he abandons my hair altogether to trace the shape of my bicep.
With the pad of one finger, he roams the curve of my shoulder, under the strap of the dress, and back to my upper arm. The slow, methodical caress shoots delicious shivers up my spine.
His breathing accelerates, and mine follows. He sways closer, and I relax against his chest. The heat of his exhales quickens my pulse. My blood warms. My eyes grow heavy, and an involuntary clench quivers forgotten muscles between my legs.
I’ve been touched and kissed and fucked in every way under the sun, but never like this. Never with this much concentration on such a chaste part of my body.