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“Like what, Sarah? Hot enough to singe my skin every time I touch you? I beg to differ. I know better.”
“This argument is pointless.” She threw her hands up, desperate to get away from him, desperate to escape the temptations he presented her. “I’m going back home.”
“Sarah, wait.” He caught her arm as she turned to leave, staring down at her, eating her with his eyes. “What would it take to make you understand?”
Nothing. But she couldn’t tell him that. She couldn’t bear the haunting shadows she could see in his eyes now, let alone what they would be if she told him the truth.
She sighed roughly instead. “I don’t know, Brock. I just don’t know.”
She pulled her arm from him, reluctant, hurting. But she turned away from him, running from him. She didn’t jog, she ran, fighting to put as much distance as she could between him and disaster.
* * * * *
Brock crossed his arms over his chest as he watched her run. His eyes narrowed. He wasn’t a fool, nor was he driven to possess someone that didn’t want him. He knew Sarah wanted him. He knew if he could get her past her fears, he could get her to understand.
He raked his fingers through his hair. How could he get her to understand though? How could he make her see that what he wanted wasn’t the torture she had built up in her mind?
He needed a woman’s opinion. Dropping his arms from his chest he started the jog back to his truck. The return drive to the ranch was a bitch. He had been hoping not to have to make it, but the situation was now growing desperate. Sarah was just stubborn enough to keep denying herself as well as him. She was scared enough to put as much distance between them as possible if he wasn’t careful.
She had done that after her marriage. Making certain she was never within miles of him. Hiding from him, suppressing her desire for him and her own needs. The time for that had come to an end. He would have her, and by God he would do it without lies and without promises he couldn’t keep. Sarah had no idea just how stubborn he could be and he was man enough to keep her in the dark about it.
CHAPTER NINE
Brock knew only one woman to go to for advice on this. He needed to figure out quickly how to get back into Sarah’s bed before he went insane with his need for her. He craved the sight of her, the taste of her. If he thought for a minute that she didn’t want him, that she didn’t ache just as hard for him as he did for her, then he could have left her alone. But he did know. He knew she needed. Saw it in her eyes, in the hard nipples beneath her clothes, the flush of arousal on her face.
She just needed to be seduced. She needed to be held and protected, cherished and loved, but first, she had to be seduced into it. Seduction had never been his forte. Cade had been the master of it. It had been he who had chosen their women before Marly chose him. But he wasn’t comfortable going to his brother for this. For this, he went to Marly. To seduce a woman, he needed a woman’s advice.
“You want to seduce her?” Marly asked him carefully from the depths of the large garden tub he found her in.
Bubbles lay around her, caressing her skin, contrasting with the heavy mass of black curls she had piled on her head. She was young and sweet, and innocence still lingered in her eyes despite the sexual excesses she was often a part of.
“Yeah. I need to seduce her.” He sat on the closed lid of the toilet and watched her, confused by the small smile playing about her lips.
“So she’s turning you away?” Brock didn’t like the thread of laughter in her voice.
His eyes narrowed. “You’re making fun of me, Munchkin. That’s dangerous right now.”
He was hard and hurting and more than willing to drag her out of that damned bathtub without Cade’s presence if she pushed him too far. He knew he had Cade’s approval to do so. There would be no hard feelings, no anger. But neither would there be the bonding he needed when it occurred.
She rolled her eyes, settling against the back of the tub as she watched him.
“You can’t seduce an unwilling woman, Brock,” she told him, finally serious. “If she doesn’t want you, then there’s nothing you can do.”
“But she does want me,” he told her carefully. “She’s just frightened, Marly. She’s heard the rumors, she knows about us. Hell, most people do, we’re just too damned rich for them to use it against us. That’s what I have to fight.”
Her face flushed. She wasn’t comfortable with that knowledge, he knew. He wasn’t comfortable with it, but he accepted it. He denied it when he needed to, admitted it when he had to, but he wasn’t ashamed of it. He was alive, and reasonably sane for it, so he had no choice but to accept it. Cade fought his shame on a daily basis, and Brock understood that. The weight of the acts the older brother had been forced into had nearly killed them all. Sam, Brock was never certain of Sam. He appeared the least scarred inside, though the most scarred bodily. He laughed, he played pranks and seemed to be little more than a boy in a grown man’s body at times.
He was hard to figure out, but Brock knew he hurt too. It was there sometimes, when Sam thought no one else could see. In the set of his shoulders, the shadows of his eyes, it was there.
“So if she wants you and you want her, and she knows the truth, then what’s the problem?” Marly asked curiously. “She’s not here and you are. Though I knew you intended to move out, so evidently she ran your ass off. Would she do that if she wanted you?”
Brock sighed. Marly was intent on being difficult today.
“She wants me. Bad.” He flashed her a confident smile. “It’s Sam and Cade she’s scared of, Munchkin. You have enough sense to know that.”
Marly lost her smile. She frowned at him, a clear reluctance to discuss this subject evident in her expression.
“Marly,” his voice was gentle, chiding. “Didn’t you think Sam or myself would ever fall in love?”
