Undeniable (34 page)

A smile appeared out of nowhere, and he looked over. “I took Arwen to the country club the other night. For dinner.”

“Why?” she asked, smiling, too.

“We were doing this dating thing. Not a lot of places to take a date.”

“You could stay for her,” Darcy told him. “You could stay for me.”

“Well, I’m sure as hell not staying for Greg,” he said digging into his supper again, and she knew when he did he wasn’t staying at all.

A
RWEN WOKE AT
five a.m. to Dax sliding into her bed. He’d called the saloon earlier in the day to let her know he’d be coming, and she’d tried to wait up, but exhaustion had taken her down. That, and worry. Especially after Callie mentioned her sister had seen him at the hospital, and that his father was awake.

Dax never called. He showed up. He vanished. He appeared. He walked away. Their schedules made anything else impossible, and she’d grown used to looking up and seeing him looking down. This, however, was different. This was important. She’d been bracing herself for this moment ever since she’d hung up the phone.

But when she turned toward him, she found him naked, and his mouth on hers before she could speak. With the first stroke of his tongue, she knew she was going to lose him. After all this time, after all they’d shared and all she’d given him, he was going
to go. He didn’t think she was enough. He didn’t believe in the two of them.

Or maybe that wasn’t it at all. Maybe his father had confirmed what he’d already heard from Greg. Maybe he just couldn’t deal, or needed time to deal. Maybe it wasn’t about Greg, but about the Daltons not being in Crow Hill anymore. Then again, maybe he just didn’t know how to stay. He couldn’t possibly think he had no reason to.

She held his face, his cheeks scruffy as if he’d wanted to get to her and didn’t take the time to shave. He was clean, his skin warm, smooth, his mouth tasting like coffee and Dax and desperation.

He rolled on top of her, his cock hard and insistent, and he didn’t ask permission but reached between her legs, holding his shaft, swiping the plump cap through her folds to spread her moisture. And then he pushed in, a slow, filling, sliding invasion that sent her eyes rolling back in her head.

“You amaze me,” he said, his mouth at her ear, the words deep and drawn out. “You’re always wet. Always ready.”

“I always want you,” she told him, because it was a very simple truth, and he laughed and said, “I don’t know why.”

The ridge of his cock caught at her opening, and she sucked in a breath, hooking her leg higher around his hip. “Because I like being with you, and I like what you do to me, and I like you.”

“You’re one of very few,” he said, grinding down and groaning, and she shivered and knew the many were stupid.

“What isn’t there to like?”

He raised up, and she could see the light from the moon shining in through her window reflected in his eyes. Eyes that were sad, despondent. “I have a nasty temper.”

She’d seen it, but she’d seen worse, and she wasn’t much of an example in that regard. She used her tongue on his shoulder, used
her teeth until he dipped for her nipple and tugged hard on her ring.

She tweaked one of his nipples before he grabbed her hand and pinned her. “I don’t put up with bullshit.”

“Most people need to be called on it more often.”

“Are you agreeing so I won’t stop fucking you?”

“I’m saying it because it’s the truth. And so you won’t stop fucking me.”

“I’ve never had as much fun as I’ve had fucking you.”

“Another reason I like you,” she said, the words strangled because his sounded so final, so… gone.

He buried his face against her neck then, breathing deeply, shuddering, his hips grinding until she shuddered, too. Then he moved his mouth back to hers, touching more than kissing, his lower body pulsing in that way he had that did her in.

Long strokes, slow strokes, drawing her pussy along his shaft as he nearly withdrew, pushing her back to stroke hard, stroke fast. She was wet and aching, her clit tight and throbbing, and she wrapped him up in her arms and her legs and held on, keeping him close where she needed him.

He ground hard, pulled out, and asked, “Turn over?”

Anything,
she wanted to say, but all she did was roll to her side, reaching into her bedside table for a vibrator before stretching out on her stomach and pulling a knee to her chest. Dax slipped in behind her, his thigh pushing against her as he found her ass, and as his cock penetrated slowly, she slid her vibrator into her pussy and turned it on.

He groaned, fucked into her and withdrew, groaned again and bit off a laughing, “Are you kidding me?”

“Do you like it?”

“I like you. I like that you can get off. I like that you don’t tell me no.”

She pushed down to let the vibrator thrum through his balls.

“Goddamn. Yes. I like it.”

“I knew you would.”

He pulled out, pushed in, groaned again, and shuddered. “Got me all figured out, do you?”

If only she did. “This part anyway.”

“This part’s good,” he said, shifting his hips.

She worked her toy and her hand, pleasuring them both, and the darkness became the heat and sounds of their bodies, the moisture, their gasps and their breathing and the slap of skin on skin. Her vibrator hummed, and Dax’s moans rattled, and she felt it in her fingers and her nipples and the center of her body where his cock throbbed.

He slipped a hand between her legs, took the vibrator from her hand, and fucked her to the rhythm of his cock in her ass. She gripped the edges of her pillow, buried her face, rocking back and forth until she couldn’t rock anymore.

She cried out, his name, maybe, or other words, or noises that came from a place she didn’t know. He filled her, and carried her higher, holding her until he knew she was done, then following her, one long slow stroke then a shudder that bounced the bed off the wall before he collapsed on top of her.

They came back after showering, curling into intimacy, drifting just this side of sleep. She wanted to stay there, awake, touching him, listening to him, learning and imprinting him. She wanted to remember that his right dimple was higher than his left, that his beard grew thickest just beneath his chin.

She wanted to hear the noises he made when he came, when he laughed,
oh,
God
, he had the best laugh. She didn’t want to forget for a minute his wit, how sharp he was, how smart. Or how gentle he could be, how considerate. How alive.

“Stay with me,” she heard herself saying when she ran out of shelves for the memories.

“For a while? Sure.” But his answer wasn’t enough.

“Not just this morning. Stay. With me.”

And this time his answer was a silence so loud it echoed in the hollow of her heart.

“R
EALLY SORRY TO
see things come to this,” Boone said. “I get that it’s hard to come back and find your family fucked into some seventh hell of dysfunction, but Darcy’s a good girl. Tough that you’ll be leaving her here all alone.”

“Go on,” Dax said with a snort, slinging one of his two duffels into the bed of his truck. “Ignore the code. Touch my sister. Just don’t come crying to me when Josh Lasko takes off your face.”

“Huh.” Boone leaned a shoulder against the truck’s cab. “So that’s the way of things then. Guess I should’ve moved a little faster.”

Dax thought back to some of what Darcy had told him when they’d talked into the middle of the night. “Sorry, dude. I don’t think Flash would’ve been fast enough to catch that train.”

“You should take the horse,” Boone said. “Flash is going to miss you.”

That was highly unlikely, and besides, Flash belonged here just
like Remedy and Sunshine. Just like Boone and Casper. Just like Bing and Bob. “If I hadn’t sold my trailer for gas money to get here from Montana, I’d be doing just that.”

Casper stepped closer to Dax’s truck, elbows braced on the bed railing. “This time you’re going to stay in touch. You don’t, we’ll hunt your ass down and shove every single one of next spring’s calf nuts down your throat.”

If Dax hadn’t already been choked up over leaving, that would’ve done it. “Soon as I hit a city worth a salt lick, I’ll get a cell phone. I’ll call the house. Leave the number on the machine. Ball’ll be in your court after that.”

“Uh-oh,” Boone said, pushing straight and taking a step away. “Something tells me you making a run for the border isn’t going to come without a price.”

Dax looked up in time to see Arwen’s truck come into view. “Shit. I was pretty damn sure we’d finished this up last night.”

Not with words because he hadn’t said a thing, but Arwen had known. He could tell. He’d learned her too well not to be able to tell, and goddamn what the hell was he thinking, leaving all of what she gave him behind?

He climbed into the bed of his truck to figure the best way to pack in his gear. “You’re welcome to stick around. Imagine she’s just come to say good-bye.”

Casper snorted loud enough to wake a dead pig. “No thanks. I like having my scrotum just where it is.”

“What he said,” Boone added, hoisting up the new set of post hole diggers Faith had grudgingly approved and walking off.

Dax didn’t blame them. Arwen wasn’t coming to tell him good-bye. The way she’d been driving told him that, and if he’d had any question after the dust storm she’d stirred up on the road, the way she parked in the yard answered it. Girl would be doing good to ever get that truck in gear again.

She hopped down from the cab, her hair flying, long legs eating up the ground. “Going somewhere?”

And here we go. “Montana, I imagine, though I might make a stop in Utah. Nice place. Ever been there?”

“Sorry, no. I haven’t had a lot of opportunities to travel.”

“You should make them. A lot more out there than Crow Hill.”

“You don’t say,” she said, glaring from behind a pair of sunglasses that hid most of her face.

He straightened, jammed his hat tight, and looked down at her. “What do you want, Arwen?”

“I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head, her words tight and sharp and huffy. “I don’t know. To talk some sense into you? To talk some sense into myself?”

“How’s that working out?” he asked as he hopped to the ground because this confrontation wasn’t helping either of them.

She kicked at the dirt, shook her head. “You know, I told Faith not two weeks after we got together that I’d bet a hundred bucks you wouldn’t stick around six months.”

He tossed his saddle in the back of his truck. “Look at you, the fortune teller. You could open a side business, tell clients how fucked up their lives are long before they’ve got a clue.”

“I never said your life is fucked up.”

“You said it. You just didn’t use words.”

She reached for him then, catching the fabric of his shirt when he jerked his arm away. “Goddammit, Dax. Listen to me.”

He spun on her, feeling his eyes go wild, the heat of the air he pulled in singeing his nostrils. “I’ve been listening to you, Arwen. I’ve been listening to you for weeks. You’ve turned my fucking head inside out. Turned my fucking dick into a porn star. Turned my fucking heart into this ache that won’t quit. I can’t think around you. I can’t breathe. I can’t do this. I cannot do this.”

“What can’t you do?”

“I can’t… be me. I can’t be me when I’m with you.”

“How have I stopped you from being who you are?”

“Because you want me to be someone else. Someone who doesn’t hate his father or who can hang on and make a go of a piece of shit ranch. Someone you made up in high school to go with whatever fantasy you had. But I’m an ass. I always have been. I always will be. You and me dating, or whatever the hell we’ve been doing, isn’t going to make that go away.”

“So this is my fault, then, that you’re leaving.”

“No. It’s my fault. The ass thing, remember?”

“I’m not about to forget,” she said, her hair whipping around her shoulders as she turned and strode away.

“Arwen,” he called as he locked down the bed cover protecting his things.

“What?”

“I’m sorry about breaking your table.”

“Right,” she tossed back.

“And one more thing.”

“What?”

He wanted to turn and look at her. He didn’t. “Go see your father.”

“What?”

“You heard me. He did his best for you. It might not have seemed like it at the time, but he did. And you don’t want a passel of regrets down the road.”

T
HE STRAP OF
her tiny purse held tight to her shoulder, Arwen walked down the pebbled sidewalk shaded by a canopy of thickly laced oaks. The grounds were immaculate, the brick of the apartment houses free of water stains and made brighter by the dark green ivy climbing the walls.

It had been a long time since she’d made this trip. Shame gripped and squeezed when she allowed herself to count the months that had turned into a decade. For years she’d feared her father would leave her, would walk out one day, forget her and never come back. And yet when he’d finally driven away, the relief that he was out of her life had staggered her.

Dax was right. She had no room to talk—especially since her father wasn’t anything like Wallace Campbell. Hoyt Poole had loved her, no doubt loved her still. She was the one who hadn’t been able to deal with the man he had turned into after her mother’s death, but that was on her, not on him.

When she’d called him to tell him she was coming, she’d reached his machine and left a message. She hadn’t given him her number. She didn’t want him to call her back. She’d told him where she’d be and when, and left it at that.

She had a lot to say, and it had to happen face to face. She wasn’t brave enough to make her amends any other way. And again, Dax was right. She didn’t want any additional regrets.

She found a bench in the courtyard of the building, not far from the enclosed patio blocking her view of the entrance to her father’s home. She sat at one end, smiled at the woman sitting at the other. She didn’t want to sit where she could see his door, growing nervous as she waited, making him wonder why she was early, should he come out, or meet her at the time she’d told him to. They would both be wrecks as it was.