Authors: Amber Lin
She turned away.
“Wait. Please. I can’t explain it. God, do you know how that picture...what it makes me feel to hear you describe that?”
“Claustrophobic?”
His laugh was curt. “I was going to say horny, which is true, but no. It makes me happy. I want that too. I just don’t know how to do this. I don’t know if I can.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You deserve everything you said, but I don’t know if I can give it to you. I’m not going to bind you to me without knowing I can deliver what you want.”
The water rights, he meant. She shook her head slowly, because he didn’t get it. He didn’t
want
to get it. They made her angry, these excuses. He should just say he didn’t want her, didn’t want her
that way
, didn’t want her enough. It made her furious that he would let this farm stand between them, let the town stand between them where it always had. Furious that he had insisted she ask him, only to deny her.
“Oh, fine,” she said. “You keep working in that field and let me know how it goes. I’m surprised you’re even bothering with that ancient tractor. Why not grab a hoe and cover the acres by hand? I know, use a spoon. That way there’s no chance of you actually succeeding.”
She hadn’t been sure if he was angry before—she was sure now. “What the hell are you talking about? I’m busting my ass out there.”
“Yeah, you’re really sweating. But you won’t do a damned thing that interferes with your precious pride, just like your dad. You know, if you’re going to pretend to want me, to want to save the farm, the least you could do is
try
.”
He flinched on the last word. Her heart clenched at the sight, and she had a moment’s panic. Had she hurt him? She doubted that was even in her power. And she was right about this, damn it.
His face looked thunderous, but his voice lacked any heat at all. “That was too far, Natalie.”
Too far? She had made an art form of selling short. She had come to this farm, ready and willing to accept less than she wanted. She accepted less from the diner, less from herself, and he thought she had gone too far. “I need this from you. If you and I are anything at all, then promise to stay.”
He didn’t even consider it. He turned and went inside the house, while the rain weighted down her eyelashes and filled every breath. An ache started in her chest as if she’d lost him now, when she knew he had never really been hers to keep.
* * *
After cleaning up for bed, she dawdled at the bottom of the stairs. Where should she sleep tonight? After spending both nights in his bed, sneaking off to a spare bedroom would be conspicuous. Then again, so would joining him in bed, still sore from his words, whole pieces of her missing with the knowledge that he didn’t return her feelings.
Even as she climbed the stairs, she wasn’t sure where she would end up, whether her feet would carry her to Sawyer’s bed, whether her hands and mouth would beg for one more night of mindless pleasure. As if her breath had been knocked out of her, and in her shock and numbness she would turn her face upward for one last glimpse of paradise before the pain took her.
But no, her feet carried her past the open door to his room, into another bedroom. Apparently she had some pride left, a fact that came as a surprise because she didn’t feel it. No, she felt low, used up and wrung out.
This bedroom had a daybed, the iron bars cold, the frilly bedspread dusty from disuse. She lay out on top, face up, hands clasped demurely in front of her, feeling ridiculously like Ophelia floating in the river. How dramatic—laughable really. So why did she feel on the verge of crying?
She drifted like that, caught between waking and dreaming, torn between the hurt she felt and the life she wanted. There was a dragon in her dreams, demanding coffee for only fifty cents. An evil queen, demanding to know which boy had hurt her and offering her a shot of whiskey to make it better. A golden-haired prince who swept her off her feet and carried her to safety, demanding, “Shh, go back to sleep.”
She opened her eyes again. No, that hadn’t been a dream after all. Sawyer carried her through the hallway, stepped over the threshold of her indecision and laid her down in his bed. A chill found her in the short moments he rounded the bed, and then he swept her in his arms, murmuring for her to sleep, he would watch over her, he was sorry.
He was warm and solid and not yet gone, but she couldn’t relax. Couldn’t sleep. She had once said she could be content with the time they had together. Content, content, her excess of contentedness made her sick.
Never demand more than others will give.
But beneath the surface, hunger simmered, a growing disquiet she feared would not abandon her when Sawyer did.
He must have felt it too. “Natalie, Natalie, let me...only, let me hold you...” He kissed behind her ear, nibbled a path down her neck, and lay hot, openmouthed kisses on the side of her neck. All the while his hands ran over her, covering every inch as if to confirm she was all there.
On and on, his hands and mouth stroked the flames until a fire raged within her. She let her frustration and hurt melt away under the onslaught of his intent. He wanted to please her this way, couldn’t that be enough? Her skin burned with it; she was consumed by it. God, let it be enough. “Please, please.”
He groaned. “You feel so good. It’s a sin, how good you feel.”
At that, her lips curved in a small smile. She was sin, she burned with it, and maybe she could let go and enjoy the fall. “Touch me,” she said, though he was already touching her intimately. “Hold me,” though his grip on her would leave marks.
Love me.
“I don’t want to disappoint you,” he whispered. “I don’t want to let you down.”
She froze, the words were so unexpected. But she didn’t want to talk again, didn’t want to be disappointed again. “Then you’re going to have to do more than kiss me.”
She heard the smile in his voice as he murmured, “That can be arranged.”
“Wait.” She stopped his descent to sit up, her body too confined by the overworked sundress, her skin aching to be free of the satin bra and damp panties. Lust and a frantic desire not to think anymore pounded through her veins.
Hurry
,
hurry.
In a rush, she pulled her bra over her head. It tangled in her arms, and she let out a disgruntled sound.
He chuckled, starting to pull at the straps that bound her wrists above her head. Then he paused, holding her still. His body vibrated against hers, trembling with restraint when she was the one restrained.
“Sawyer?” she asked, breathless.
“Just wait,” he said, his voice taut. “Don’t move.”
She would have laughed, if she hadn’t been trembling herself. “What are you going to do to me?”
“You know what I want.” He sounded strained.
She did, oh, she did, but her explicit consent had no place in his game. Instead she wriggled against him, tempting and inviting him.
After a beat, he signaled his own acquiescence with a tightened grip and a low rumble in his chest. His long fingers gently untangled her wrists from the straps and retied them behind her back. He guided her to stand, then tugged her panties down around her ankles. She could free herself from the stretchy bonds if she wanted to. She didn’t. Her body was immobile, the back of her legs against the bed, her front crowded by his body.
He stepped back, examining his handiwork. She tried to imagine what she looked like. It should have been silly, tied up in unmentionables like some sort of laundry bondage doll. But it didn’t feel silly, not when his dark gaze devoured every inch of her bared skin, not when his arousal lifted, thick and proud, her own body dampening, preparing to receive him.
Reverently, he touched her breasts, her belly. Falling to his knees, he pressed his mouth to her core. His tongue slid between slippery folds, unable to reach the spot she needed him to be, both of them constrained by her bound ankles, the unwitting tease heightening her lust, denial fanning its flames.
She had expected this to be a game of captivity, and it was, only she didn’t feel subjugated. She felt worshiped, his lips on her sex a prayer, as if he’d captured a goddess to make his offering. The humble sacrifice, he knelt before her, enslaved by his drink of her while she writhed and gasped her praise, the air too thin to sustain her. She subsisted on the liquid caress of his tongue, the bite of his fingers in her flesh. She felt devoured, swallowed whole into the belly of the beast, only the beast wasn’t him after all, but her own consuming lust. Sobs escaped her, pleasure and agony rippling through her body.
When she couldn’t take anymore, he turned her, bent her over so that her breasts and cheek rested against cool sheets, her bottom exposed to his gaze and large roaming hands. No place was sacred to him, none secret as he felt at the wet cleft and higher, higher to the defenseless spot that had never been breached. She gasped as he paused there, toyed with her, tested.
“Have you ever done this?” he asked, almost conversationally.
She knew what he meant. How could she not? The image was now emblazoned in her fantasies, her helpless and spread, him fierce and invading. She shivered. “No. No, please.”
What she meant was,
Yes.
I
can’t admit it yet
,
but I want every kinky
,
dirty
,
passionate thing in the night
,
a
counterpoint to the whole
,
heartwarming days
.
To her disappointment, he removed the probing finger, his palm resting against the cheek.
“I’m going to spank you now. You don’t mind, do you?” His nonchalance hardened, almost cruel.
Nervous and turned on beyond belief, she whimpered.
“Tell me to stop,” he taunted like a man who wouldn’t stop, though she understood she only had to say the word and he would. He sounded cruel, but she knew better. It was as though he’d reached inside her mind and plucked out the fantasies she could never put words to.
Cool air blew over her heated skin before his hand landed on her. The stroke was too light, much too light, and she might have said so, except his hesitance brought a sweetness to their game. He checked his own strength out of fear that he would hurt her. Not a fevered dream with a jaded partner but a novice courtship.
The flat of his palm played upon her skin, growing more bold, more sure.
Like the first touch of a lover to her breasts and her sex, his strokes upon her felt foreign. She wasn’t sure she liked them, though she didn’t
dislike
them, and then, oh, and then, the sensations began to build, spiraling toward something familiar and yet not, a higher peak that had been shrouded in clouds. She reached the zenith, only hazily aware that he had moved his hand down and inside her.
Spasming around his fingers, she heard the tear of foil and moments later, he thrust into her. Trapped against the bed, she could do nothing but ride out the intensity of his thrusts, savoring his harsh, frantic grunts at her shoulder and the shudder of his body as he reached completion.
A whisper of breath met her skin—her name, perhaps—but hurriedly he lifted, muttering apologies about his weight. With regret, she felt herself empty, clenching at nothing.
She heard a choked sound behind her. “Fuck!”
The world slipped back into focus. “Sawyer?”
“Are you okay?” he asked.
Unsteadily, she pushed herself to standing and turned to look at him. With a flick of her wrist, she pulled her hands free and stepped out of her panties. He looked from her to the soggy condom he held in his hand. She frowned as the world slowed. Had the condom broken? These things happened. It wouldn’t even be their fault. Finally, far too late, she recognized what had disturbed her so much about their condomless slip the other night.
The insidious lick of hope.
A child did not deserve to be an accident, particularly an unwanted one between two people with no commitment to each other. And yet, she had wanted that, for a brief but fierce moment. And again now.
Well, she had wanted to be selfish. And so she had been, all along, so damn desperate for a family, for some sort of anchor in the storm, that would weigh Sawyer down along with her. It hadn’t even been a conscious thought, but she was still damned by it.
His voice came to her from far away, and she registered the panic in it. “Jesus, Natalie, talk to me. Did I hurt you?”
Blinking, tilting her head, she finally registered that his hands were covered, not with semen, but with dark liquid. As she had the previous night, she reached between her legs. Her fingers came up smeared with thick blood. It didn’t hurt. Not physically, anyway.
“No,” she mumbled. “It’s just my period.”
Pulling away, she locked herself in the bathroom, letting the hot shower pound away any trace of their lovemaking and her desperation. Even embarrassment at bleeding all over him couldn’t find her, not when she still reeled at the realization of what she had hoped for...and the proof that it would not come true.
Her relief that they would not be bringing an unplanned child into the world, that she would not tie down a man who did not want to be here, was tainted by private fears that it would never happen for her, that she would always be alone. In thick, humid air, the tangy scent of soap mingled with the metallic smell of her blood as it swirled down the drain.
Chapter Nine
Sawyer woke up sweating, panting, his throat raw from shouts he didn’t remember. Disoriented, shaking, he reached blindly for Natalie. She wasn’t there, and in his sleep-haze, that struck him as a goddamned tragedy. She should be beside him. She belonged there.
He came fully awake, confirming that she was not anywhere upstairs. Slinging on a pair of jeans from the floor, he followed her down. The door creaked loudly when it opened, and the porch groaned as it bore his weight. She sat on the steps, the crooked front steps that he had never gotten around to fixing. Even though she must have heard him, she continued facing away.
It reminded him of how she’d looked last night, watching, waiting. At least until he’d come down on her with harsh words. Too harsh, although they had been true.
Now she wore her solitariness like armor, as if she needed protection. From him. For the first time, they hadn’t been on the same side. He realized then how much comfort he took from her presence there. Even a million miles away, he’d been able to conjure up that smile in his mind. Not anymore. All he could remember was how forlorn she had looked in those moments before she’d told him it was her period after all. He still wasn’t sure if he had hurt her last night, despite what she’d said, but she hadn’t wanted his concern. She’d refused his comfort.
“Good morning,” he said.
“Morning,” she replied, her voice even. Too damn even. Not at all the breathy whimper or sweet moans he knew she could make. Not the cries that had come from the bathroom while he had been locked out, helpless.
He leaned against the railing.
She wanted happiness and peace and family. She deserved them, but he wasn’t in any position to give her those things, not when he couldn’t find them for himself. The rotted wood she sat on proved that much. Everything here was rotting, wasting away. This farm, this house—him. She was right to call him out for it. She was right to leave, even if it felt horribly wrong.
“Joe called this morning,” she said.
Some small change in the skyline drew his eye. He watched it grow larger and form into a truck. No, a tow truck. She
had
been waiting. Not for him, though.
Panic flared in his chest. He thought they had more time. It was too much to hope for a resolution, a bridge to span the time and hurt and plans for the future. Too much to think that a sorcerer was waiting in the forest with a magic sword for him to save her kingdom. But he had wanted to make things better between them. He’d wanted more time with her. A few more days and he could...what? What could he do in a matter of weeks that he hadn’t been able to all these years?
Pride squeezed his throat tight, but something made him ask anyway. Some yawing, yearning part of him that wanted her with a depth that both terrified and nourished him.
“You don’t have to go with him, Natalie. He can take the car now, and I can bring you back to town later.”
She didn’t move her gaze from the horizon. “I’m not leaving because he called. I asked him to come get me.”
His gut clenched, almost like the pinch of hunger. The same feeling—if only, if only.
This was all he deserved but still, regret weighed on him. No, it was more than that, more than disappointment. It was hopelessness. It was wanting and being refused. Needing and going without. Endless denial. That was how he had been raised, how he’d lived as a SEAL, but suddenly he couldn’t see the virtue in it. He didn’t find any pleasure in forcing his body to do without just to show he would survive. Didn’t see the value in doing the hardest job on the face of the earth just to prove he could, while his home eroded to nothing.
Joe stepped out of his truck. His boots stuck in the mud as he made his way over. Tension simmered in the air, or maybe that was Sawyer’s frustration. Not enough time to hear her laugh, to be the one to make her laugh. Not enough time to sit with her, hold her, make her come...oh, a few thousand more times. It would never have been enough, he knew that now. Too late. She wouldn’t even look at him.
Joe seemed tired, eyes shadowed and clothes spattered with mud, though any sympathy Sawyer might have felt evaporated when he gave Natalie a thorough once-over. Not sexual—for that, Sawyer might have had to set him straight. More like checking for any damage, as if Sawyer wasn’t trustworthy. Well, shit.
“There a problem?” he asked, faintly mocking.
Joe kept his eyes on Natalie. “Not that I can see.”
Sawyer snorted. “The great defender of the weak and helpless.”
Joe’s eyes met his. “You’ve never been weak.”
He kept his expression steady, though inside he felt a blow that belied the words. “Yeah? That’s not how I remember it.”
“Sometimes strength means standing back up. You figured that out a lot sooner than me.”
Clearly they weren’t talking about the time since Sawyer had rolled back into town, nor shared childhood antics. This was about the fight, when Sawyer had lost more than the straight bridge on his nose. He’d lost self-respect that day and spent the next decade clawing his way back. Had he reached it? Yeah. A little late, because he’d lost something else then, something he still hadn’t gotten back.
He turned to her. “Natalie?”
It was put up or shut up time. Go with Joe or stick with Sawyer. Dissolve back into the town or stand apart, with him. He knew where she belonged and it sure as hell wasn’t in this empty shell of a house, with an empty shell of a man, but damned if he could stop wanting.
Stay
, he thought.
Give me one more day and I’ll make it last forever.
But even that was a lie, because he’d never get enough of her.
Her eyes haunted him, flashing pools of amber, endless wells of pity. “Goodbye, Sawyer.”
Even Joe’s eyes clouded with embarrassment before he turned to hook up her car to the tow. So it was a damn good thing Sawyer had a lifetime of disappointment to prepare him for this. Damned convenient he’d been alone for so long that Natalie climbing into the cab of the truck didn’t bring him to his knees. He was really fucking lucky that way.
He went inside the barn, a refuge from a chill he had known his whole life, an emptiness that the wind and hollow structure could never compete with. Their time together had been amazing, unforgettable, and like a punch in the gut from the past. In high school they had kissed, and then he’d fucked up. Now they’d had amazing sex, and then he’d fucked up. As he always did. Like Old Faithful, he could practically set his clock on it when he was in Dearling.
So what did he do about it? Leave? That’s what he’d done before. Except it hadn’t solved anything, only created new problems like getting shot at or blown up. Did he really want to go back to that? Not really.
So maybe he would make a stand. He didn’t set much store in his ability to do that here, but maybe this time it would work. He’d fallen down, and as Joe had pointed out, the strength was in getting back up. He’d known that at one time. When had he forgotten?
* * *
Two days later found him at the Dearling County Library. Staring at the squat grayscale building, he swallowed past a lump in his throat. Somehow this felt more intimate than his previous interactions in town, at the grocery store or hardware store, as if he were a true member of the community instead of passing through.
This had been his old haunt years ago. His dad never cared much for education, but one year he’d kept Sawyer back from school to help with the late harvest. A woman came around threatening to take him away if Dad didn’t send him to school and keep him passing. After that, Sawyer had been able get out of time on the farm by claiming to study at the library. Guilt was heavy in his gut. He
had
studied at the library, but that didn’t make it less of an excuse.
As he strolled through the thick-windowed doors, something inside him relaxed at the familiarity. The same metal return box adorned the entrance, the same Quiet Zone sign hung from the tiled ceiling. He paused at the brightly bordered bulletin board covered with notices. There was a babysitter for hire and an upcoming event called a Reading Bee. Looked like a Dearling pig had gotten lucky—five piglets were for sale to a loving home.
Not much had changed.
Like a magnet, his gaze honed in on a grainy black-and-white photograph of Natalie. She smiled broadly for the camera, accepting a certificate that the printout claimed was appreciation for running the book drive. Her hair was shorter, just above her shoulders instead of down her back. She looked good, happy.
Distracted, his mind still on the smile in her picture, he walked straight into one of the meeting rooms. Women and children all turned their eyes to him.
“I’m sorry,” he said, figuring he’d interrupted reading time or something, but the words caught in his throat when he realized that every woman in the room had her shirt lifted, breast out, and not all them were in babies’ mouths.
Shit.
He tried to avert his eyes, cover them, but like some sort of heat-seeking missiles they couldn’t look away.
“Don’t mind us,” one of the women said, smiling. “This is completely natural.”
Then she winked.
He excused himself a few dozen times and then made his way back out, leaning against the wall beside the still wide-open doors.
That
was new.
He needed to focus. He’d come here to figure out how to appeal the water rights decision—and how the hell to farm this late in the season.
How embarrassing. His father surely rolled over in his grave at the thought of his son learning farming from a book. Sawyer remembered some from his summers on the farm. He knew the feel of the land, the moisture and texture of the soil, the smell of the weather. What he didn’t know was what to plant and when, which chemicals to use and exactly how much would be enough to pass the damn appeal.
Wandering through Nonfiction, he found that the Agriculture section had mostly information on recreational gardening and small vegetables gardens. On a whim, he picked up
Domestic Bounty:
How to Grow Your Own Groceries.
If he was really going to play farmer, he might as well fix up the small plot behind the house.
On the magazine rack, he found several recent issues of professional agricultural magazines. They had recent rainfall and weather patterns, some articles on herbicide contamination and the rising price of grain. Good, but he needed more.
With a small rumble of trepidation, he realized he’d have to ask the librarian for assistance. Then she’d know he was a dumbass, but it had to happen.
He stopped in front of the broad desk, remembering a time when he could barely see over it. Now he dwarfed it. The woman behind the computer was a mop of dirty blonde curls and a flurry of typing fingers.
He cleared his throat. “Excuse me, ma’am.”
She looked up. Like a sunrise, her smile spread over her face. “Sawyer Nolan, as I live and breathe.”
“Hi, Mrs. Cooper.”
She beamed. “Are you here to see the little babies?”
He blinked, thinking of the babies in the community room. “Pardon?”
“The ducklings. They’re in the lake behind the library.”
“Oh. Maybe later. Actually I came looking for some information, but I’m not sure exactly what books I need.”
“Then you’ve come to the right place. Tell me what you do know and we’ll go from there.”
He let out a breath and quoted the paper. “I guess, hypothetically...if the situation were to arise...how would a person go about demonstrating a substantive yield of crops, agricultural stability and a positive fiscal projection for a farm?”
If possible, her smile grew. “Right this way.”
She led him to a section titled Professional Science that narrowed down to Horticulture. Almost too quickly for him to read, she pulled books from along the aisle, piling them on him. He caught a few titles
Financial Management and Planning in Agriculture
,
The Biology of Farmsteading
, and texts specific to the region. By the end, the pile was heavy, even for him.
“That ought to get you started,” she said.
“Ah, thanks.”
At the checkout desk, he took out his driver’s license. It still had his old—and current—address. He had never gotten around to changing it.
She waved him off and began scanning the books. “I’ve still got you in the system. I always knew you’d be back.”
Well, she knew more than he did, but something eased, low in his gut.
At home, he spread the books out on the kitchen table. He knew the feel of the land, but he learned its history. He had been a bystander to its beauty, now he studied its ecosystem.
He picked up
The Texas Book of Bugs
, and a paper slipped out. It looked like one of the flyers from the bulletin board. Apparently the McClellan farm was for sale. He snorted. Maybe he should put them in contact with his real estate agent.
He set it aside and kept reading.
* * *
Natalie shivered in the chilly waiting room. The fabric of the stiff chair itched even through her clothes. Motivational posters hung on the wall, pictures of smiling old people. They were fake pictures, but many of the home’s residents did smile. She had passed the ice cream social in the lounge on her way to the doctor’s office. The staff was always genuinely cheerful and kind. Natalie wouldn’t have kept her grandmother here if that weren’t true. But Gram never smiled.
Finally, the door opened and a young couple came out. As they walked quickly past, she caught tear tracks down the woman’s cheeks. Natalie had cried when Gram had been diagnosed in Dr. Parker’s office back in Dearling. She’d cried over the year as her grandmother’s condition had rapidly deteriorated, when it escalated to full-scale dementia and then violence.
Natalie never cried here. This was a waiting place, the beige walls inducing a kind of stasis in her.
The doctor appeared at the door. “Natalie? I’m ready for you now.”
Inside, she found another uncomfortable chair. “Is she okay?”
Dr. Carmichael’s smiles were always soothing, in contrast to her news. “She’s feeling much better. I asked to speak with you before you visited with her because I want you to be prepared. She had another episode. Our monitors subdued her quickly, but she did manage to get a couple of scratches on her face, all shallow and healing fine. We have her under sedation for the rest of the day, and then she’ll return to her usual schedule.”