Of course she did.
Her dad had played mine.
She’d witnessed the lines, she’d read the script. She’d probably laughed with her father over the silly habits and sacred phrases of my parents.
Goddammit.
My fist drove into the tiles, hard enough to bruise but not hard enough to break. Hope didn’t deserve that sort of power over me. I wouldn’t bow to her mind games. I wouldn’t succumb to whatever plan she thought she’d set in motion by working with me.
But that kiss…
Fucking hell.
No matter what road my thoughts chased, they always ended at the same dead-end of her lips on my cheek and her scent of lilies, sunshine, and lemonade in my nose.
I should never have left the forest. I should never have believed I was safe enough in her company to let down my guard. And I should never have permitted my body to react. To stand, two hours later, under a stream of scalding water, doing my best to get my need under control.
The viciously hungry greed for another kiss, another touch, another something to grant peace from the snarling, clawing desire in my belly.
My hand brushed the hardness between my legs, my blood begging for a release all while the thought sickened me. Because the reality was, I didn’t just want a release.
I wanted Hope to be the one to deliver it.
And that was the most petrifying admission I’d ever had. I wanted her to touch me. I wanted her to kiss me.
I wanted her to stay as far away from me as possible.
She was dangerous.
She was gorgeous and annoying and brave and sexy and driving me out of my goddamn mind.
How the hell had this happened?
Which argument switched my anger into want?
And how the hell did I stop it?
* * * * *
“You’re late.”
I narrowed my gaze through the dark gloom of sunrise. I’d slept like the dead last night after succumbing to my disgusting needs of jerking off in the shower.
I’d done my best to keep my mind blank and sterile as I pumped ruthlessly and clinically to an orgasm. It wasn’t about pleasure. It was about salvation. And I hated, hated that images of Hope had managed to crawl into my mind, and I now had fantasies of her on her knees before me, her lips wet, her body naked, her hands around my—
“It’s dawn. You’re just an overachiever,” I muttered, moving stiffly toward the light switch in the barn where the tractor and attachments lived. I’d also slept well thanks to four painkillers, a slug of whiskey, and the fact I hadn’t been at all comfortable in the forest for the past three nights. “What are you even doing up yet, anyway?”
“Your mom told me five a.m. is your typical start.”
“Just like she told you where to find me, I’m guessing?”
Hope smiled with perfect teeth and her damn perfect face. “Yep.”
“Wonderful.” My sarcasm was as dark as the dawn.
Pressing the switch, a wash of warm electrical light chased away shadows and spiders, granting false day to the otherwise still fast asleep farm.
Hope sat bold and unwanted in my tractor. Her hair twisted into a ponytail, the long, glossy brown sticking through the back of a beige baseball cap I vaguely recalled was my mother’s. She wore a white singlet with a pink bra peeking by the straps, jeans far too clean for field work, and one of my old shirts with a torn elbow and tatty collar the same colour as golden hay.
“What are you doing wearing my stuff?” I moved around, staying busy so I didn’t look at her and remember what I did last night.
“Your mom lent it to me.” Hope plucked the cuff, pushing it up her skinny forearm. “I think it suits me.”
“It looks ridiculous.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.” She beamed, leaping down from the old cab and standing by a rugged tractor wheel far bigger than she was. “How are you this morning?” Without waiting for my reply, she launched into another conversation that reminded me of the morning starlings outside my bedroom. “I’m so happy you agreed to let me help you, Jacob. I’m so excited; I can’t tell you how excited I am. I mean, I can tell you. Obviously, I speak, and you listen, but I don’t think you truly get what this means to me.” Her eyes glittered with joy that tried to infect me but was just as insidious as a disease.
Spinning around, she pranced toward the old shelving where tins held old nails, new screws, odds and ends, and rusty tools wanting to play their part but semi-retired in their decrepit age. “I want to know how everything works. I want to know what seeds to plant and how you keep weeds out and about irrigation and what you do in case of a bug infestation.”