For a long moment, neither of us moved. His forehead rested on my shoulder, my breath coming in sharp gasps. He was still trembling, his own breathing ragged. Slowly, he pulled out, and I hissed at the sensation, but he caught me when my legs threatened to give way and turned me in his arms.
I could feel the way his heart hammered, the way his body still hummed in the afterglow. I held him steady with my hands on his waist, then ran one palm up his back, over the damp skin, the ridges of his spine.
I should’ve felt guilty that I’d taken this. Should’ve been second-guessing, overanalyzing, finding a way to twist this into something I could regret later. But I didn’t.
Because today, now, here in this room, Jesse wasn’t a mistake.
He was a choice.
When the heat between us had burned down, there was silence, and I hated what it let my head do.
“So,” I said, aiming for dry, for light, for anything that wasn’t how exposed I felt right then. “That’s one way to convince me not to sell.”
The words landed wrong. I knew it instantly.
Jesse went still. Completely still.
“The fuck?” he said quietly. Not angry. Worse. Flat.
My chest tightened. “No. Jesse—no. I was joking. Badly. I do that when I’m?—”
“No,” he snapped, then pulled on his clothes, already moving away from me, away from the sofa, away from whatever we’d just done. Control snapped back into place like it always did, and all I could do was watch. “You’re an asshole,” he snarled, and I wish I knew how to take those words back, but we weren’t on the same page. I still wanted to sell, but he would never agree, and I’d thrown the equivalent of a bomb between us. I heard the front door slam, winced, and headed up to the bathroom to shower.
“Way to blur the lines,” I muttered to my stupid reflection. Best sex ever, with a man who made me feel all the wrong things. And all the right things.
Way to fuck up.
Chapter 20
Jesse
Itried to pretend that what happened with Lucas had been a mistake I could file away and ignore. Wanting more was the real problem, and I didn’t have room for that kind of weakness. Avoiding Lucas became a job in itself, which mostly meant I holed up in my office and buried myself in work. If he thought letting me fuck him was going to change my mind about the ranch, he was dead wrong.
Jake knocked once and came in without waiting.
“Quick question,” he said, easy, casual. “You want the north pasture pumps throttled back today, or are we still holding steady until the water rights call comes back?”
I didn’t look up. My pen snapped between my fingers.
“For fuck’s sake, Jake, how many times do I have to say it? If you don’t hear otherwise, you don’t touch the pumps.”
Silence.
Then, “Okay, boss,” Jake drawled. “So that’s a no on touching the pumps.”
I shoved back from the desk. “You know that!”
“Yep, I do.” He leaned against the doorframe, arms folded, eyes sharp now. “But I needed to check if you were spiraling, snapping at people, or about to take your head off on a spreadsheet.”
“I’m busy,” I said.
“I’mcheckingon you, Jesse.”
“Well, you don’t need to.”
“Is it your dad?”
That was the last thing I needed to be asked. For once, my dad was only part of my problems—and not all of them.
