Undeniable (32 page)

Her idea of management was not holding on to the past for sentimental reasons, not being stupid just because smart hurt a lot more. She was also a big proponent of the long term. “But it didn’t, did it? In fact, my
saloon
is the number one go-to place in Crow Hill.”

“That’s not saying much.”

Right. She’d put the idea out there. She knew he’d mull it over, and that was pretty much all she could ask. He’d have to be the one to add the fertilizer and see what he could grow.

Still, she couldn’t let his slam go unanswered. “It’s saying plenty.”

“Says you.”

“Do you want to fight?”

“No, I want to fuck.”

“We can do that.” She took a deep breath, and an even bigger leap of faith. “Or we can make love.”

It took a long moment for what she’d said to settle, and for him to look over, lying as he was on his back, one arm beneath his head on the pillow. The shadows in the room made it hard to see his face, harder to see his eyes and his expression.

But it wasn’t hard at all to understand that he wanted her when he reached across her body to roll her on top of his. When he threaded his hands into her hair. When he pulled her head down and kissed her.

His tongue was sure in its possession, bold and strong in its claiming. He stroked it along hers, mating, playing. She pushed into his mouth and did the same, stretching her legs out atop his, settling her pussy over his balls, his cock warm and insistent where it snuggled between their bellies.

He felt so good, head-to-toe hard and so wonderfully hot. She scooted lower, kissing his jaw, his neck, and farther down, finding a nipple and teething it until he sucked back a curse and groaned. Then he laughed, a deep throaty sound that had her biting harder, had him growing harder, stiff and thick and damp.

“Be careful with those teeth, Ms. Poole. Damage any of the goods and it’ll be your loss.”

Cocky beast,
she mused, pushing her chin into his pectoral muscle until he gave up and groaned, and then sliding one hand between their bodies to capture the head of his cock and squeeze.

“Jesus Christ,” was all he managed to say, and even those words had trouble clawing their way free.

She liked this Dax. Helpless Dax. Dax surrendered. Dax unable to fight her or the demons possessing him. She wanted more of this Dax. She loved this Dax, and he would know exactly how much before leaving her bed. He needed to know. His knowing gave her the power to convince him this was where he belonged. With her. To her. Without her he would never be who he was meant to be.

The responsibility thrilled her, challenged her, and she dragged her tongue down the center of his torso, wetting the strip of silky hair bisecting him. He was salty, always salty, so much time in the sun left him baked and brown and the sheen of sweat refused to be scrubbed away. She loved that about him, loved that his body belonged to the life he loved as much as his mind and his heart.

His cock came next, her tasting of him, skin stretched to near splitting over the head, the tip that was open and salty, too, the seam beneath, the ridge of the mushroomed cap that fit her mouth and filled it. She ministered to all of it, sucking and lapping and loving, her hand ringed around his shaft just beneath, squeezing and letting go, squeezing and letting go.

“Goddamn,” was all he got out this time, his hands at his hips digging into her sheets and bunching the fabric into balls in his fists.

Scooting lower, she blew a stream of warm air over his balls, licked the center of his sac, separated his testicles with her tongue. She pulled first one then the other into her mouth, rolling them gently before spitting them into her palm and slipping a finger into his ass. Kissing her way up his shaft, she held him, pumping and sucking and sliding her lips to the base of his cock and back.

He groaned, bucked upward, his cock bouncing against the top of her mouth, and he tried to tell her, but she knew. She felt it in his balls, in his ass, in the tension like rigor stiffening him. He came in bursts, long liquid pulses of semen that she swallowed
and cleaned from his cock, easing him back in time and space to where she waited.

He looked at her, dazed and amazed and not far from stupid. “What do you want?”

I want you to love me. I want you to need me. I want you to stay here and be with me for the rest of our days.
But she didn’t say that or say anything. She just smiled, telling him with her eyes that she had everything if she had him.

“Anything, baby,” he said. “Anything. Tell me. I’m yours.”

That was what she needed to hear. What she’d wanted for days now to have him say. Yes, this was sex and he was drunk on it, and she could’ve asked him for the world and he would’ve given her the last penny in his pocket. She knew that, and yet she was filled to bursting with loving him and having him, and his need to give back to her was the pin that was going to pop her.

She crawled to the head of the bed, wrapped her hands around the headboard’s railing, and caught her lower lip with her teeth. She rolled her hips, side to side, a figure eight above his face, his gaze slipping from hers to her breasts to her cunt inches from his mouth. And the look in his eyes nearly did her in, fierce and full of knowing and ready.

Closing her eyes, she waited, dipping down when he tapped her thighs, feeling the tip of his tongue splitting the seam of her pussy’s lips, circling her clit, sliding back to push inside of her, moving in and out until he replaced his tongue with a finger, two fingers, and she rode them, a slow up and down.

He blew against her, his breath warm and raising gooseflesh, his other hand finding the bud of her ass. She pushed against him, reached for one of the rings in her nipples and tugged, the tips of her breasts drawn tight, her heart racing, blood rushing beneath the surface of her skin.

And then he bit her, her inner thigh, her labia, and sucked the
whole of her clit into his mouth, holding it with his lips while he used his teeth to scrape her, his tongue to soothe the tiny wounds, the fingers of one hand in her pussy, the thumb of the other up to the knuckle in her ass.

She was on fire, burning with need, her arousal consuming, tearing her apart. The butterfly touches of his tongue had her wanting to climb the walls, to claw her way through the barriers keeping them from having this together for the rest of their lives. She wanted him. She loved him. And then she came, a rush of sensation that left her unable to breathe or to think or to do anything but succumb.

Dax caught her when she fell and pulled her to him, pulled her to her feet. Pulled her with him to the shower and then inside once he’d turned the hot water on high. She hadn’t known she was shaking until the water rushed over her, until Dax held her from behind and stilled her.

“I’ll think about it,” he said against her ear, and it took her a minute to recall what she’d said to him about the business before he’d taken her apart.

She nodded. It was enough to know he hadn’t blown her off. That he hadn’t forgotten. That he’d remembered.

F
OR THE SECOND
and what he hoped was the last time in his life, Dax found himself walking the main corridor of Crow Hill’s Coleman Medical Center, and this time because it had to be done. Not because guilt over his sister standing vigil was driving him or because Arwen was making him. His father was finally awake, and though he wanted nothing less in the world than to talk to the man, a whole lot of things needed to be settled.

He kept his gaze trained ahead, his hat brim pulled low, his focus on the door at the end of the hall. He didn’t want to be distracted or to hear good wishes for his old man’s continued recovery. He wanted to have his say and get out, to never have to see Wallace Campbell again in this lifetime. Seeing him in hell would be punishment enough.

He didn’t bother knocking when he reached the door, but pushed in before he could talk himself out of it and headed straight for the bed. The young Hispanic nurse tending to his father
put herself between them and reached for the call button. He crossed his arms and waited, not saying a word.

“It’s okay, Marisol,” Wallace Campbell boomed hoarsely, taking the controls from the nurse’s hands. “This is my boy, Dax. Been a long time since the two of us have seen one another. I think maybe we should do our catching up one on one.”

“As long as you’re sure, Mr. Campbell.” Dismissing Dax, she looked back at the chart she held and finished whatever she’d been writing. It took her way longer than Dax thought it should have, but finally she closed the folder.

Holding it to her chest, she looked down and patted his father’s shoulder. “You call if you need anything, and that includes privacy or security.”

Dax’s father reached for her wrist and squeezed it. “You keep taking such good care of me, Miss Mari, I may never want to leave. But I’ll be fine. What man wouldn’t be with his son come to visit?”

She glared at Dax as she walked past, leaving them alone. Leaving Dax to fight the sting of the pins and needles firing in his legs and pushing him to flee.

Wallace Campbell waited for the door to close, sitting straight up in the bed, and smoothing the stiff white sheet over the bulk of his lap. Once he had everything to his satisfaction, he lifted his gaze and arched a thick bushy brow. “Hello, Dax.”

When Dax said nothing, he went on.

“You look… well, not quite as I’d pictured my son at thirty-four, but healthy at least. Maybe a little on the thin side, and you may want to have a doctor check the sun damage to your skin, but for sixteen years away, you look good.”

What a crock. “You say that like you care.”

The older man shrugged. “It’s what fathers do.”

Dax started to ask “Since when?” but that wasn’t the conversation
he’d come to have. “I’m only here to get an answer to one question.”

His father reached for the pitcher of water on his bedside table, poured himself a glass and downed it. Then he poured another, returned the pitcher to the table, and held the plastic cup on the rail at his side—biding his time, making his opponent sweat.

A lawyer through and through. “If that’s the way you want to play this. Ask me anything.”

“Is Greg Barrett your son?”

After a slow lift of his brow, Dax’s father asked, “Did he tell you that he was?”

“He did. In this very room. Not more than a week ago.”

“Greg’s a man of his word.”

Unbelievable. Dax watched his father sip from his cup, staring into the water as if any second now it would turn a deep rich amber and burn its way down what was left of his gullet. “Can’t come straight out with it, can you? Can’t admit you’re an adulterous son of a bitch.”

“I’ve done a lot of things in my life I never plan to admit to.” The older Campbell’s gaze came up, held Dax’s as if it would take no effort at all to throw the connection away. “Greg’s not one of them.”

A piercing burn struck the center of Dax’s chest and bored its way to his spine. “Then it’s the truth.”

His father gave a single nod.

“A truth you’ve known from the beginning.”

Another nod.

“And you brought him into the firm because of it. He didn’t just show up and apply for the job.”

“Unlike… ranchers, attorneys don’t just apply for jobs.”

“Whatever.”

“Yes, Dax. I paid for my son to attend law school. I needed to
have someone there with the firm’s best interests at heart. Someone to take over after I’m gone. To carry on the tradition you weren’t interested in.”

“You have Darcy,” Dax bit off, clenching his hands into fists.

“Darcy won’t always be a Campbell.”

Dax advanced, reaching the foot of the bed and slamming his palms against the mattress. He leaned forward, his chest heaving. “Darcy will always be a Campbell. Even if she marries and changes her name, she’ll be more of a Campbell than Barrett can dream of being.”

One heartbeat, two, then the older man asked, “And more of a Campbell than you?”

That one was easy. “Nope. She doesn’t have it in her to be that big of a dick.”

A grin stole over Wallace Campbell’s face, and he began to nod, a bobbing sort of knowing motion that Dax didn’t find funny at all. “A chip off the old block after all, are you? Good to know. I’d been wondering.”

“You never wondered. You probably haven’t thought about me since flipping me off when I drove away.”

“If telling yourself that makes you feel better…”

Dax shoved away from the bed, paced the length of the room and back, stopping in the corner where he shoved his hands in his pockets. “Did Mom find out about Greg? Is that why she left?”

His father looked down, swirling the water in his cup. “We had a fight. She wasn’t happy about it and decided she needed some time. A spa, I think she said.”

Goddamn pulling teeth. “A fight about Greg?”

“No. About your sister.”

Dax felt his hackles rise. “What about her?”

“Oh, the usual. Women. Your mother wanted me to give Darcy the partnership. I said no.”

Well, at least he knew his daughter’s name. “Why? She’s devoted herself to the firm since law school.”

“She runs on hormones. Look what happened over Henry Lasko,” he said with an expansive sweep of one hand. “She couldn’t even give the man the time of day.”

Someone somewhere was doing a whole lot of spin. “That’s not what happened at all.”

“According to you.”

“I was there. In the Blackbird Diner. I heard every word.”

“And I’m supposed to believe you? Over Henry? A friend who’s stood at my side all the years I’ve known him?

“Just like Darcy has, you mean?”

The other man snorted, looked away.

“Is this about the ranch? And the lease? You’re taking Henry’s side when Darcy knows he doesn’t have a leg to stand on.”

“I’m not about to break client confidence to discuss a case with you.”

“Even when I own the ranch?”

“You own debt. You own nothing.”

“I own a piece of something valuable enough to cause your client to run to you with his tail between his legs.”

“Henry Lasko is a good man. A man of his word.”