“Why?”
“Because I would’ve.”
All my breath left me as he closed the space between us. “Ian—”
His mouth was on mine, tasting his name before I could finish it.
A sound of—God, I don’t even know—something feral—escaped my throat. As if finally making contact opened a door. To everything. Lightning, fire, explosions—all the metaphors in the world couldn’t cover how I reacted under his hands. How I’d
always
reacted under his hands. His mouth. He held my face and let his hands slide up into my hair, his kiss urgent and demanding.
This is a bad idea.
The words echoed in my head. It was so bad that bad wasn’t even in the ballpark. My hands slid under his shirt and found skin—oh, fuck me—his body was so hard and solid, and I was quickly becoming molten lava.
His mouth left mine and trailed over my jaw and down my neck.
“Oh, God,” I breathed, and as the dots started swimming before my eyes, I took his face in my hands and pushed back a step. “Wait,” I whispered raggedly.
Ian took another step back, his eyes wild and unfocused.
“I know,” he said, his voice gravelly and rough. He raked fingers through his hair and walked in a circle as if he might combust if he stayed still. “It’s—”
“We can’t do this.”
My words rang out, silencing us both. Ian stopped walking and just met my hard stare.
We can’t do this.
It was the stark reality that we knew somewhere, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember why. The almost painful look of self-searching on his face told me he couldn’t find it either. A much stronger reality then lit me on fire from within, burning my skin, blinding me. Need.
I crossed the space between us and grabbed his head, pulling his mouth down to mine with a ferocity I hadn’t felt in years. He growled into my kiss, picking me off my feet and walking me backward into the corner post, resting me on the rail. The edge jabbed into my back, but I didn’t care. It only made me want more. It was being back on the top of a roller coaster and screaming your way down. It was running for your life after nearly being caught. It was making love in the backseat of a cop car. It was us and how we knew to be, wild and untamed and out of control, running on adrenaline and instinct and need. I wrapped my legs around his waist and pulled him to me, moaning aloud at the sensation that shot through me. Ian slid my dress up my thighs and dove deeper into his kiss, his hands cupping my ass and pulling me hard against him, making me gasp with the pleasure of it. My sex panties—oh, thank God—were no barrier at all for what he was driving at me, and when his mouth dragged down my neck to lick the swell of my breasts as he pushed them up, I fisted my fingers in his hair and moved against him.
Ian swore under his breath and came back to my mouth, exploring, getting reacquainted with what was once his.
What was his.
But this time he was looking in my eyes. Hard. Fierce. Questioning.
And there was only a half second’s pause.
But it was enough.
It hit me square in the gut as I looked in his eyes, pushing the air from my lungs, shoving the black angry shame up through my throat, choking me.
“No,” I whispered raggedly. “I can’t.”
I choked it back, shut my eyes tight against it, but it wouldn’t be denied. I’d finally been joined again with the only man on earth who’d ever truly known me. Who knew me well enough after eleven years apart to know exactly what I needed, bad idea or not. But
was
it what I needed? Or just what I used to need? It didn’t matter. I couldn’t do that to Duncan.
“Oh, my God, I’m sorry,” I sobbed, my face in his neck.
“Nothing to be sorry for,” he said, kissing my hair, still breathing in ragged breaths. “It’s okay. I shouldn’t have come here.”
“We can keep going with a lot of
shouldn’t haves,
Ian, but—”
“I know,” he said, backing up, pulling my dress back in place so I could stand. His eyes were heavy and his expression unfocused, and he ran his hand over hair that stuck up in spikes from my molesting it.
“I—um—” I stuttered, pulling my hair back. “Fuck, what have I just done?”
“Hey,” he said. “Come here.” He intertwined his fingers with mine, a tiny intimate gesture that I couldn’t quit staring at. “You didn’t do anything, Savi,” he said. “You were the clearheaded one.”
“The clearheaded one,” I said. “The one who dove into your mouth?”
“After I dove into yours.”
“Shit,” I muttered, picking up my discarded boot. “This is what I’m talking about.”
“That we’re toxic,” he said.
“Yes!” I said, spinning around from snatching up my keys. “This,” I said, thumbing back and forth between us. “This is the old days. This is—needing a fix after a bad day. Needing the rush of doing something wrong. This is—”
Fire and matches
. “I’m too fucking old for what this is.”
“This was two people needing each other,” he said. “We always have.”
“Well, you gave that up,” I said. “And I know why,” I added quickly, holding a hand up before he could defend himself. “I get it, okay. But now it’s—” I looked into his eyes. “It’s different now.”
“
You’re
different now,” he said softly.
The weight of that sat on me. “Maybe so.” I rubbed at my face. “I don’t know what I am right now. I’m a wretched mess, I know that.”
“About what?”
“Seriously?” I said. “Pick one. The barn, my dad, this thing with the Greenes.” I took a deep breath. “You.”
“Did you talk to your dad?” Ian said.
“Yeah.”
He gave me a sympathetic look. “So he’s in it?”
“No,” I said. “Being friends with Georgie kept him out of it. But Georgie’s retiring, and—”
“Savi, you’ve got to get out,” Ian said, his tone no-nonsense.
“No!” I said, looking up. “I’m not running from my own business. We’ll figure out how to stop them. Didn’t you say that was why you were here in the first place?”
Ian’s jaw was working furiously. “And what if I can’t?” he said. “What then? McMasters goes down, your business goes down, probably eventually my shop will go up in flames, too. But if you aren’t in it anymore, Savi, it’s someone else’s headache.”
“I’m not walking away from the only thing I’ve ever done well, Ian,” I said. “It’s not happening.”
He lifted my face. “I can’t protect you if you stay.”
I looked in his eyes and felt the sadness of days on end of missing him. Of missing us. But we weren’t us anymore.
“I don’t need you to.”
“I think you do,” he said.
“And why is that?” I asked.
“Because Duncan’s name isn’t Duncan,” he said. “This guy you feel so loyal to? His name is Michael Long.”
My stomach did something swirly as my mind processed those words.
“That’s—” I stopped and laughed.
“What?”
“That’s crazy,” I said. “Where did you get that?”
“Savi, how well do you know him?”
I was taken aback a little. “Um, well, he’s a veterinarian. Been here in town for a little under a year.”
“From where?” Ian’s voice was quiet and it was wigging me out a little. What the hell did he mean, Duncan wasn’t Duncan?
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think he said he was in Katyville for a while, somewhere else before that—” The memory of something stopped me.
“What?” Ian said.
“Google,” I whispered.
He pulled a face. “Come again?”
“Not possible,” I breathed. “What do you know?”
“I told you he seemed familiar to me,” Ian said. “That’s why I really stopped to talk to him tonight. To try to figure it out.”
And there I was thinking it was because of me. “And?”
“So what about Google?” he said, deflecting.
“Ian—”
“Just humor me.”
Shit. “Dad was talking about Googling people, which is crazy coming from him, but I had some time one day and looked up Duncan.”
“And?”
“And—” I got up, stepping around him, my mind connecting dots I didn’t want to connect. “No. I’m not doing this with you. In all this crazy shit, he’s the only thing that’s felt right. The only thing that’s made me feel good. I’m not gonna trash a good guy just because you’re jealous.”
Ian laughed. “Jealous?”
I turned on my heel. The one I still had on. “Tell me you aren’t.”
“Of him? No,” he said. “His family’s more fucked up than mine.”
Icy dread tracked down my spine and I hugged my arms to myself. “How do you know that?” Ian looked at me as if assessing whether or not I might throw the other boot. “Just tell me!”
“His name is Michael Long.”
“You said that already.”
Ian frowned. “He’s Bobby’s nephew, Savi.”
Chapter Seventeen
“No.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“No,” I said, backing up. “That’s not—no.”
“I knew it tonight when I saw him up close, there was—”
“No!” I yelled, storming forward, stopping just short of him. “That’s bullshit.”
“There were pictures of family all over Bobby’s house, Savi. I—” He blew out a frustrated breath and clasped his hands on top of his head. “I was there all the damn time. I think I even might have met him once. Years ago. He was from Louisiana, I want to say.”
Tears burned the backs of my eyes, but I wasn’t going to cry. Duncan was the good guy. The good fucking guy.
“You’re wrong,” I breathed. “He’s a veterinarian. His father is deceased and his brother—”
“His brother was in the service,” Ian finished. “I never met him but saw photos of him.” He paused as he looked at me. I wondered if he could see the pain in the faint light from the moon, like I could see his hesitation. “What was on Google, Savi? Nothing?” He reached forward and wiped a tear I didn’t know had broken free. “Look up Michael Long.”
I swiped at my face. “I’m going in,” I said, leaning over to pick up my wallet, which was teetering on the top step. “Can you go?”
“Savi.”
“Did you come here to tell me this or to have sex with me?” I asked, standing upright again, clutching my things to me.
His eyes narrowed. “What?”
“You heard me.”
His jaw muscles twitched. “Whatever you need to think.”
“Well, if it was to tell me about Duncan, congratulations for copping a feel out of it first,” I said, heading for the door.
“I came here because I couldn’t—stand not to,” he said. “You’re my—” He stopped and I did too. I heard him struggle to pull in a breath. “You matter to me. You have to cut this guy loose, Sav. And you have to sell the barn.”
I stood with my back to him, swallowing through the loud silence, waiting for the sound of his footsteps leaving the wooden porch. When they didn’t, I unlocked and opened my door. “I don’t
have
to do anything. Good night, Ian.”
Shutting the door behind me was possibly the single hardest action I’d ever done, and I slid down it to the floor as quietly as I could. Gracie jumped off the couch to come join me, licking my face.
“Really?” I whisper-cried as she licked my tears from my cheeks. “No barking, no nothing? You just let some man you don’t know sit out there and wait for me?” I said. Her tail thumped. “He could’ve chopped me up in little pieces, Gracie. Where’s the badass girl I taught you to be?”
Oh, holy hell, Duncan.
Or whatever his fucking name was. My chest hurt as I saw his face and his smile and all those looks like I was something special. Shit, I was a fool. And to think I laughed about thinking he was a serial killer as he led me through the woods to Dolly and Max. I was out there with a psychopath after all. Or a really big liar at least. A manipulator. A con artist.
“Fuck, how could I have been so gullible?” I cried.
His reaction when I’d mentioned Bobby Greene, it made sense now. He’d acted mad and disgusted on my behalf, but shit, what did I know?
Probably weren’t even his damn donkeys.
Ian and I had been con artists too in our day, but nothing to this level. We stole things, but it was small-time for kicks. We broke into places, mostly for the rush of knowing we could do it. Hence the frequent sex in odd places. Part of the thrill. We never hurt anyone.
I thought of how Duncan touched me. How he kissed me. It was all a lie. Motherfucker.
On the flip side, I’d just gotten out of his car and attacked Ian two seconds later. What the hell was I?
I was drained.
I tossed the one boot on the floor and tugged off the other one, letting it drop. I didn’t even have the energy to change into pajamas. Or I told myself that as I padded into the kitchen to find the freezer. It had nothing whatsoever to do with being the clothes that smelled like Ian. The dress that he had caressed me through. Before telling me that the guy I was falling for was a fraud.
That I was falling for.
Fuck me.