Hitched(28)

“Yeah?” I brace a hand on the wood beside her head. “Now that you’ve come to terms with the fact that I’m your alpha alpaca?”

She laughs softly, her grin spreading to take up her entire face, sending a surge of awareness rushing through me. “Oh, please. It’s clear that I’m the alpha alpaca. I have a much fluffier, more glorious pelt.” She pats my chest through my tee shirt, her fingers warm despite the cool spring night. “But that’s okay. I like beta males.”

I try to stop smiling and put on a faux angry face, but my lips refuse to cooperate. “I am not your beta, woman. I’m an untamed man-beast who eats rocks for breakfast and spits nails for lunch.”

“Because that makes sense.”

“Go on. Say it. You’re my alpha alpaca, Blake. That’ll be your fourth nice thing about me today.”

She laughs again, her fingertips trailing down my chest nearly to my belt buckle before she pulls her hand away, making me fifty percent harder with that one simple touch. Pretty soon I’ll be giving Dildo Shaggins a run for his money.

Maybe I should have taken him inside, after all. Made more room in my pants.

“Personally,” she says, “I prefer a man who’s okay with his woman taking the lead.”

His woman. Just hearing her say those two words together makes me want her even more. Want her to be mine. My woman.

My Hope and my hope.

Capital and lowercase.

She makes me feel things I haven’t felt in so long, dare to wish for something more than a workaholic life spent chasing professional success so hard I barely have the energy to shower by the time I’m finished for the day, let alone go looking for love.

But that’s because I haven’t wanted love, not really.

I already found it four years ago, and some stubborn part of my heart refuses to let go of that dream, the one that ends with Hope and me waking up in the same bed every morning for the rest of our lives.

Just because she wasn’t ready four years ago doesn’t mean I wasn’t. We were great friends growing up and all it took was one night, seeing her in a different light, for me to want so much more. To want it all.

I bring my free hand to the other side of her head, trapping her between my arms while I lean closer, smile falling away as I whisper, “So where would you lead me, Miss Alpha? If I handed you my reins?”

Her tongue slips out to tease across her lips as her gaze drops to my mouth, leaving little doubt that she wants to be kissed as badly as I want to kiss her.

“Nowhere in particular,” she murmurs. “At least not right now. Just like to know I’ve got the option.”

“Liar,” I counter. “I think you know exactly where you want to go. And what you want me to do to you when we get there.”

Her chest rises and falls faster. “Blake,” she whispers, my name a warning and a confession and a plea for mercy all wrapped up in one.

I tip my forehead closer to hers. “Just tell me what you want. Because I promise, whatever it is, I want to give it to you. I like making you happy a hell of a lot more than making you hate me.”

“I’ve never hated you.” Her breath rushes out, caressing my lips, turning a wheel inside of me another crank, until the tension is almost unbearable. “I’ve never hated you. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Of all people, I should know better. But—never mind. I just want…”

“Yes?” I prompt after the silence stretches on for a beat. I want to ask why she should know better, but I get the feeling that’s not where I should press right now.

She’ll tell me when she’s ready.

“I mean, I don’t want…” Her head tips back and her nose brushes against mine.

She moans softly, a sound that echoes through me, making me ache to kiss her, crush her body to mine, show her right here on the floor of the barn how much I want to give her pleasure.

But I’ve fallen into this trap before.

I’m not going to push. I’m going to wait until Hope asks for it, begs for it. I want her to own this decision, to own how much she wants me too, for once in our fraught personal history.

“Tell me, Mrs. O’Dell,” I say, my lips so close to hers that her body heat warms my skin. “I want to know what you want and don’t want and everything in between.”

She sucks in a breath and ducks under my arm. “I can’t do this.”

I spin to face her. “Why not?”

“I just can’t,” she says, her cheeks pink and her gaze looking everywhere but at me. “I can’t keep making the same mistakes. People don’t change, no matter how much you might want them to.”

“I disagree,” I say, but she’s already rushing on.

“And it’s not fair to ask them to. Not when what they want is a perfectly fine thing to want. I mean, asking Kyle to quit making fun of me for dropping out of vet school is one thing. Or asking my parents to stop using me as a go-between.” She takes a step back, shaking her head faster. “But fair or not, no one ever changes. They say they will, and then they go right back to business as usual, like all the crying and begging and bargaining never happened in the first place. I just can’t do it. I can’t try to change knowing I’m doomed to fail, and so there’s no point in even trying.”