Undeniable (22 page)

All she could do was feel, holding him, squeezing him, riding him. Hurting herself because she couldn’t imagine ever giving him up.

He held her hips, met her downward motion with upward thrusts, lifting the both of them from the mattress again and again. His strokes soothed and startled and she cried out as the pressure built. He scraped her clit, the hard base of his cock, the plump head when he withdrew, the cushion of hair darker than the rest on his body when she ground against him.

After the truck and the pasture, she needed this. To be on top. To be in charge. Getting what she wanted. Getting off the way she wanted. Using Dax the way he’d used her. Except this wasn’t the same. She wasn’t fucking him to forget an external blow.

He
was the source of her upheaval, and she wasn’t punishing him but herself, pulling his web tighter, binding them with each stroke when what she wanted was for them both to get off then go their separate ways.

Didn’t she?
Didn’t
she?

She slowed to allow the awareness of his body in hers to heighten, to feel, to really feel, to let go. She paused, moved again,
overwhelmed with the emotion sweeping her away, and when she stopped and shook her head, he brought her down and held her close, rolling them over and covering her, protecting her, burying his face in the crook of her neck and rocking her.

He was gentle, taking his time, tuned into every move she made. Her vulnerability frightened her. She was his and she was open and each stroke of his cock drew a gasp or a moan because she needed this, needed
him
, and that need confused and confounded.

And so she gave up, became nothing but her body, rising with him as desire pulled her toward the brink. His legs bracketed her legs, and his hips cradled her hips, and they were wet together and hot together and it was all too much. She cried out, shuddered, collapsed as the storm swept through her. The same spinning wind took him higher, and he strained as he reared up and spilled his seed.

They lay quietly for a while after that, Dax on his side, spooned around her, their feet braided together, his penis soft against her back, then he finally spoke. “About the booth in your kitchen.”

First Faith. Now Dax. The booth was her business, but at least this subject put her back on solid ground. “Yes?”

“It’s okay that you’ve kept that piece of your past.”

“Thanks for your permission.”

“Shit, Arwen.” He rolled away, flung his arm over his eyes. “Do you have to twist everything I say? Or turn it into a big joke to make me look stupid?”

Did she do that? Were her defenses so ingrained she didn’t stop to consider what he was saying and why, but reacted instead? “I don’t mean to do that. It’s just…”

“It’s just what?” he asked, and when she remained silent, he shifted toward her, braced on an elbow, his head in his hand, his free arm along his side and his hand at his hip instead of on her.

She wanted his hand on her. “I’m not trying to make you look stupid. It’s just…”
What was she supposed to say? She didn’t know what to
say.

“I get it. It’s how you deal. A defense mechanism. You don’t want to talk, you snipe or you shut down or you change the subject. I don’t want to talk…”

“You leave.”

“I guess I do,” he admitted, and then moved his hand to her stomach, above her pussy, below her breasts, as if sex was the last thing on his mind. “Or at least I take myself out of the way.”

“Like you did when you got out of my truck the other day?”

He nodded, began to rub circles on her skin with one fingertip. “I don’t even remember getting back to the house. It was close to dark. Casper and Boone were waiting on the back porch.”

“They were worried.”

He snorted. “Yeah, that they were going to have to pick up my third of the workload.”

“I hardly think that’s what was going through their minds.”

“Oh, who the hell knows what they were thinking? That I was insane, most likely.”

“At least a little bit crazy.”

“Or a whole lot of crazy.” He dropped back against his pillow then, tucked his crossed arms beneath his head. “I just couldn’t deal. Not with the news coming out of nowhere like that. If he’d been sick, I’m pretty sure Darcy would’ve mentioned it.”

“Unless he didn’t tell her.”

“Which wouldn’t surprise me. She’s like an afterthought to him. Always has been.”

“And yet she’s the one at the hospital standing vigil.”

He took his time, finally responded with, “I’m going to have to go see him, aren’t I?”

“I think you knew that a couple of days ago.”

“It’s just… I say he means nothing to me, but know that’s not true. It’s what he means that I’m having trouble with.”

“He’s your father. He’ll always mean something.”

“What does Hoyt mean to you?”

She pictured her father the last time she’d seen him. He hadn’t even acknowledged her presence. In his condition, sober by then but still mourning the loss of her mother, that was hardly surprising. What was surprising was how much it had hurt. She’d cared for him for so long. She’d done her best to be there, and it had meant nothing to him.

“I don’t know. I want to think he did all he knew how to do. He kept me with him. I was never shunted off to a foster home, though I know some people thought that was where I belonged.”

“My mother.”

“Yeah, I never got that.”

“She couldn’t control what was going on at home. She needed something to dig into.”

“Someone else’s life.”

He nodded. “It’s how she survived her own. The one I’m pretty sure she would’ve done anything to get out of as long as no one had to know.”

“She didn’t love your father?”

“She put up with him and all his screwing around. That’s all I know.”

“That says a lot more about her than it does him.”

“What? That she wasn’t putting out and he had to go elsewhere?”

“No, jackass. That she could overlook infidelity to keep her family together.”

“Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong. It wasn’t about keeping her family together. She put up with him so no one would know the truth.”

T
HE DAY’S SWEAT
running in a river down his spine, Dax stared into the refrigerator in the ranch house kitchen, hoping dinner would jump out at him and he wouldn’t have to cook. Since the day of their father’s heart attack, Darcy’d been AWOL, leaving him, Boone, and Casper to feed themselves.

They were perfectly capable, but they weren’t Darcy, or Tess, with her tables full of meat and potatoes and pie for dessert. Or Arwen, with her aluminum pans of beans and barbecue and cobbler. His stomach rumbled, but the fridge wasn’t giving up anything but five pounds of hamburger wrapped in white butcher paper, and it was too late to see what the back porch freezer held.

A quick check of the pantry yielded spaghetti and jarred sauce. Even he could manage a pot of pasta. Not that a rib eye didn’t sound a whole lot better, but the Dalton Gang wasn’t living on
a rib-eye budget. And he was beginning to think that was going to be the lay of the land until Faith let up on the purse strings.

Not that he’d ordered supper from a country club menu while cowboying in Montana, but hell. There was something wrong when a cowman couldn’t enjoy the fruit of his own damn labors once in awhile. And he didn’t mean enjoying it all ground up, a pound mixed with noodles and sauce and spread between three grown men.

No, he wanted meat, a big juicy marbled steak from a gorgeous grass-fed bovine, meaning he’d have to go elsewhere since
gorgeous
didn’t describe the beef cattle calling the Dalton Ranch home. At least not this year, this season; maybe next, if he was still around.

He slammed a cast-iron skillet on the stove top, tore open the hamburger and eyed it for a few before digging in his hand and halving it. Two and a half pounds. Fuck the budget. He wrapped up the rest, returned it to the fridge, lit the burner beneath the skillet, and went looking for a pot for boiling water.

He was bent in half with his head in the cabinet when the screen door squeaked open and bounced shut in its frame behind him. “Hey, don’t we have a big pot here somewhere? For the spaghetti?”

“Top shelf. Back on the right,” Darcy replied.

Dax raised up, banged his head on the edge of the counter. “Shit, Darcy. Give a warning next time. I thought you were one of the boys.”

She held out her arms, looked back at him without smiling. “Nope. It’s just me. Your sister. The only one of our father’s children who seems to care if he lives or dies.”

Rubbing the back of his head, he looked at her for a long
moment, then filled the pot with water and set it to boil before using a fork to break up the meat. “You been there all this time? At the hospital?”

When she didn’t answer, he glanced back. She was standing in the same place, wearing the same blank expression, her arms now crossed defensively over her chest. Her eyes were tired, the circles beneath like dark horseshoes against skin that was more ghostly than pale and free of makeup.

But he’d asked her once. He wasn’t going to ask again. It was obvious she’d come here with something on her mind. And as much as he probably didn’t want to hear it, he’d give her the floor for as long as it took her to unload. Her ball. Her court. He was only here for the show.

“You need salt in the water. For the pasta,” she finally said.

“Thanks.” He set aside the fork and found the saltshaker, then found himself asking. “What are you doing here?”

“Coming to find out what you’re doing here.”

“I live here. Last I looked, so did you. Since you hadn’t been around, I figured you’d moved back to the house.”

“Why would I do that?”

Because it was closer to the hospital? Because almost everything she owned was in the bedroom suite she’d lived in her whole life?

Because she was eaten up with guilt for abandoning the father who’d abandoned her first and thought being there would turn back the clock?

He stirred the browning meat, shrugged. “I don’t know, Darcy. You weren’t here. I assumed you’d gone home. Unless you’ve shacked up with Josh Lasko.”

He turned as he said it, and he hadn’t heard her cross the floor, so he wasn’t prepared for her open palm connecting with his face so
hard that he jerked backward, stumbled a step, and took the skillet of ground beef with him.

He looked down, watched the grease pool on the floor, the skillet wobble, the crumbles of meat scatter like feed from a trough. Then he looked up. Darcy’s pale face was red, her eyes dry, fury rolling off her in waves.

He curled his hands over the counter’s edge and leaned back. He had a feeling she was mad at the world as much as him; he just happened to be the closest punching bag. But he asked anyway, “I guess you’re mad at me?”

She snorted at the obvious. “Why haven’t you been to the hospital?”

He swallowed, his chest and throat tight. “No real reason for me to go, is there?”

“Goddammit, Dax.” Her voice rose with each syllable. “Our father is there.”

“Like I said.” He left it at that, stayed where he was, continued to hold her gaze.

She blinked rapidly, as if fighting tears, trembled repeatedly, as if suffering hypothermia. “Do you hate him that much? That you can’t make amends before he dies?”

“Is he going to die?” Dax asked, more worried at the moment about Darcy than their old man.

“The doctors aren’t saying much. He’s still in a coma”

Dax sighed. “Then how do you suggest I make amends?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.” And then exhaustion claimed her. She backed up, reached for a chair, pulled it from under the table and sat. “I don’t know anything.”

What he knew was that his sister was not in a good way. “When’s the last time you slept?”

Darcy shrugged.

“And food? Have you been eating?

“I don’t remember.” She fluttered a hand, used it to push her hair out of her face then propped her elbow on the table and leaned into it. “Josh brings me things.”

So his wondering about Josh and his sister hadn’t been that far off the mark. “You’ve been there all this time? And he’s been with you?”

“Yes and yes,” she said, and then huffed, turning her head enough to glare at him. “Unlike my brother.”

Dax let that pass. “What about Mom?”

Another shrug. “It’s been just me and Josh and Greg.”

“Who the hell is Greg?”

“Greg Barrett. From the law office.”

Oh. That Greg. “What’s he doing there?”

“I don’t know, Dax,” she said with a fling of her arm. “He was there when The Campbell collapsed. I guess he cares what happens to him.”

Right. Anything to assure his place in the firm. Dax reached over and turned off the gas flame beneath the pot of water. A waste of fuel when he’d lost his appetite. “You’re going to end up in an adjoining room if you don’t take care of yourself.”

“I don’t care—”

“I do. Darcy. Shit. That’s enough.” He took a deep breath, scratched the scruff on his cheek, the skin still stinging from her slap. He was no good at this family crap. “If he’s in a coma, he won’t know you’re there—”

“He might. And anyway. I’ll know it.”

“So his
might
makes it worth being there and you getting sick in the process?”

“I’m not sick.”

“You’re not well.”

Her tears broke loose then, her chest heaving, her sobs loud
and snotty like those of a scrawny bawling calf. “What do you expect? I’m doing this all on my own. You’re not there. Mom’s fallen off the face of the earth. Josh and Greg are trying, but they’re not family. You are. You’re all I have.”

His gut clenched, his heart, his lungs, his throat. He couldn’t swallow or breathe, and he closed his eyes against the pain. If she was counting on him for anything, she was going to be sorely,
sorely,
let down.

He didn’t feel like family. He didn’t even feel like a hired hand. He felt like a stranger, one who knew nothing about what she might need from him.

Except he did know. He’d known all his life.

He’d given it to her when she’d come home from winning a cheer competition that he’d been the only Campbell to attend. When she’d received her nearly perfect SAT scores and no one else had been around to pop the cork on a bottle of champagne.