She stared at the raging erection stretching along his thigh beneath his now too-tight jeans.He wanted her.Like always, that didn’t mean he was going to do anything about it.
“A hard-on never killed anybody.”He shrugged.“I’ve got a hand.It’ll be fine.”
“If you don’t want to…” Her voice hitched as inside she thoughtwant me.“I get it.But will you at least lay here and hold me.Stay with me, please.”
“I can’t, Joy.And now you know why.”He scrubbed his hands over his face.“It’s all I can do to resist you.It’s always been that way.”
With her safely mummified in the covers, he sat on the edge of the bed and took her hand in his.Part of her wanted to snatch it back, but it turned out, she couldn’t do it either.
“These issues between us.The tension.It was never about you, Joy.It’s about me.”He sighed.“Yeah, at first I thought I was going straight to hell for lusting after my sister.But pretty quick it was more than that.You were Dane’s.And club rules say… Fuck that.My own screwed-up morals say that means you’re off limits.And then the shit with Clive went down and I was ashamed.”
“Of me?Of the fact that everyone knew what he’d taken from me?”Her eyes went unfocused, and in the blur the only thing she could see was the ceiling of her old room in Walker’s father’s house.Clive’s grunts and her own sobs echoed in her ears.
“Never!”Walker’s rage drew her back to the present.“You should know that I intended to kill him.It was only Dane, and his commitment to the recruiter, the contract we signed saying we’d go, that kept me from executing my plan.Executing him.My father knew and was fine with it, by the way.He told me I should do what had to be done.To fight for my woman.Except I knew then, like I know now, that you were never meant to be mine, Joy.You were meant to be Dane’s.He saved my life.Kept me from taking a fucked-up situation and making it worse.Going down a path I could never come back from.You and he were the ones who suffered most, and I made it even harder on you both.I took him from you.He went to save me.That’s the truth.”
Walker shot to his feet then, dropping her hand to the mattress.
She’d never seen him so tormented before, his emotions so close to the surface.
Joy pushed herself to her elbows, but she was too damn weary to go farther than that.Not only because of what she’d been through in the past twenty-four hours, but because of what life had thrown at them for the past decade.It hit her all at once.
“Walker,” she said softly.“That was then.This is now.We’re different people.Why don’t we start over?”
“It would be nice if I could erase my sins with a snap of my fingers.This shit is tangled up in my mind.And I still think that Dane is your best bet.He can be the kind of man you need, the father Arden deserves.It’s him.Not me.And I should have thought about that before I almost let us get carried away.”His right hand balled into a fist and he punched his left palm.“I’m sorry.I shouldn’t have done that.”
“You think I’m weak.That I can’t handle myself.”
“Are you listening?It’s me who’s fucked up.You’re perfect.I’m too rough for a woman like you.Anyone decent, really.”He shook his head and crossed to the door.“And that includes Dane.I want you to know that I haven’t touched him since you came back into our lives.Hislife.He’s yours.”
He held his hands up, palms open, as if he was letting go and giving her another person.As if Dane didn’t have any say in the matter, just like she hadn’t.
Walker was absolutely infuriating.Or would be if she wasn’t too worn down to fight back.
Joy let herself fall.She crashed to the fluffy pillow that still smelled like Dane and buried her face in it.She wished he were there right then to make sense of everything that was going on.
It surprised her when Walker didn’t leave and instead inched near her again.He leaned down and kissed the tip of her nose.“You should talk to Dane about this stuff.He’s always been the right guy for you and he still is.Even more importantly, he’s the right man to be a father to Arden.The best.Don’t tempt me, Joy.That’s not some kind of threat.That’s me begging.Please.I can’t say no to you any more than I can to him.”
“Looks like you just did, asshole.”
“I told you.I’m the worst.”Walker huffed as he spun on his heel and made his way toward the room he was sharing with Dane.“Sleep well, Joy.I’ll be out here making sure you’re safe.And when you wake up, we’ll go get your daughter.”
“Our daughter,” she mumbled.
He said something low, but it was garbled and she was fading fast.It almost sounded like, “If only I were so lucky.”
But he might be.Why couldn’t he believe it?
Before she could ask, he left her by herself.Again.
If she heard one peep from the other side of the wall, a single moan or sigh that made it sound like Walker was getting off without her, she was going to cannonball into his bed and force him to allow her to relieve the pressure that kept building day after tortuous day, even if it meant demeaning herself by pleading.
Whether he realized it or not, Walker needed Dane.And he might even need her.
He was unraveling.Or maybe that was simply his true personality emerging from the stranglehold the Wildfire environment had put on him since he was a child.
It wasn’t often she saw this side of him, though she’d glimpsed it more often since she’d come to Hot Rides than at any other time in his life.He was mellowing out, maturing even.Maybe settling down.Letting himself be vulnerable to his own emotions.
That freaked her out some, because if that was true and he still wanted nothing to do with her, it meant the problem probably wasn’t him.