Battered Hearts 3: Crossing the line (34 page)

He tossed it on the bed with more force than necessary, and Tabitha shifted over him, as if sensing his sudden bout of anxiety at the thought of losing her again. She smoothed a hand down his chest, making it clear they still shared a truly unique connection that left them joined in far more ways than just the superficial sexual attraction that had always been crippling in its intensity.

“Are you okay?” she asked, her voice heavy with sleep.

He hated that everything in him tensed at the sound of the soul-deep exhaustion he could hear beneath her concern. It made him want to wrap her up in his arms and keep her safe from the world. He wanted to resent her for churning up his protective instincts so easily, but it just wasn’t there. Instead he just soothed a hand down the slender curve of her bare back, savoring the feel of her smooth skin.

He leaned down and kissed the top of her head, unable to help the action because her hair really was startlingly beautiful in the sun. “I’m fine, darlin’.”

She blinked up at him, studying his face intently for several long seconds before she whispered, “Liar.”

A smile quirked at the corner of his mouth. He couldn’t hide from her. He was anything but fine, but rather than confirm her suspicions, he just caressed her back once more. “Go back to sleep.”

She hummed. The sound was soft and sweet, and something that made the nostalgia almost overwhelming because Tabitha had always been a very quiet person. To others she was often hard to read, but Wyatt had always heard the unspoken message in those little sighs. He wasn’t even surprised when she pressed her lips to his collarbone next. He could feel the sheen of goose bumps travel over his skin at the brush of her breath, warm and featherlight against his chest as she continued to press soft, loving kisses against it. Her hand ran over his abdominal muscles and down to his waist as she shifted over him, giving herself better access to his body. His dick was already trying to come back to life again despite the two of them doing it three times before she’d fallen asleep.

He watched her, entranced as her eyes drifted close as if she were savoring touching him as much as he enjoyed letting her. Her hand slid down to his ass, cupping it as another soft sigh of indulgence slipped past her lips.

“I missed you, Wy.” The confession was barely audible, but he heard it, and he groaned in response.

He pushed both his hands into her vibrant hair, holding Tabitha to him with the thought that his sister was fucking crazy if she thought he was capable of handing this woman a stack of papers that would break his connection to her. He could feel it, a complete surrender to the hold Tabitha had on his heart, and he didn’t even fight against it. The poison was too sweet, too wholly addictive for Wyatt to complain about the pain it caused him to know he was never going to be free of the heartache loving her caused.

He didn’t release his hold on her as she moved lower, kissing and licking his fevered skin until he was shifting under her, hard and restless for the feel of her slick, tight heat once more. “Lemme love you,” he rasped when she nipped lightly at his hip bone. Then she cupped his balls, and his entire body jerked from the sensation. “Fuck, Tab.” He dropped his head heavily against the pillow and squeezed his eyes shut against the pleasure, robbing him of the image of her beautiful face hovering near his dick that was straining for another taste of her. She stroked him next, and he pushed his hips into the embrace of her hand with another low curse. “Shit.”

For one brief second, the thought that he hadn’t showered drifted into his mind. Tabitha didn’t seem to care as she took him in her mouth, tasting both of them on his dick. He could feel her hum of pleasure against the head of his cock as she sucked him, and it was as if the other three times hadn’t happened.

The bliss of her mouth on him made the need so blinding he felt it in every muscle in his body. He tightened his fingers in her hair as she took him deeper. He let out a choked sound of pleasure, because he’d forgotten how amazing it was to let her love him like this. How had he survived without it?

It didn’t take her long to have him sweating and pushing his hips up over and over again as she stroked and sucked him. Even if there were a few awkward moments as she reacquainted herself with the feel of him, it didn’t matter, because this was Tabitha touching him. Just being near her made him ache.

He found himself hovering on the edge of oblivion for a long while. The time they spent together earlier gave him the ability to really enjoy everything about this moment, and he was able to truly appreciate it in a way he hadn’t when he was younger. The hot rush of pleasure. The pulse of desire that made it impossible to think about anything other than the image of Tabitha’s lips stretched wide over his cock. Her short hair brushing against his stomach. Her smooth, capable hand sliding up and down his length in a steady rhythm that was pushing him toward a release faster than he realized.

He was so caught up in everything that when his climax did slam into him, it was so hard and fast it startled him. He shouted in warning and loosened his hold on her hair, but that was all he could manage before the energy that had been building finally exploded, hazing everything around him with the velocity of it, and then he was pulsing in her hand and shooting in her mouth. Just like it was before, Tabitha seemed to enjoy his taste as she sucked greedily, suspending the bliss for what felt like an eternity, because that had always turned him on like crazy.

He was still humming in the afterglow when she released him and kissed her way back up until she was draped over him once more as if the episode had never happened to begin with, but Wyatt wasn’t going to let something that mind-blowing go without reciprocating.

He shifted their positions and rolled over with Tabitha until she was curled into his side. He buried his face into the curve of her neck and placed a kiss against the steady thump of her heartbeat that was faster than normal and told him what she wasn’t going to voice out loud. His pressed his lips against the shell of her ear and reached down between her legs that she parted without him asking. He slid his fingers between the small triangle of red hair, finding her wet for him. “Are you sore?”

She was quiet before she confessed in a disappointed whisper, “Yes.” She grasped his wrist, squeezing softly. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.” He traced the outline of her sex, making her breath catch. “I can be gentle.”

“You don’t have to—”

“Hush,” he scolded, still teasing her lightly. “I like touching you. I like listening to you too.”

Her breath hitched once more, and she tilted her head forward from where it rested on his arm. She lifted her leg, draping it over his thighs behind her, opening herself wide to his exploration.

“Are you gonna come for me, Tabby?”

She gasped with pleasure, before she let out a shuddering sigh and nodded.

“Tell me,” he pushed, because he never believed it was good for her to be so closed up about what she wanted from life. “Tell me what you want.”

“Make me—” She paused for a long moment, as if searching for the right words. When his touch became more insistent, moving up to rub against her clit, she shuddered. “Make me feel good, Wy. Please.”

It wasn’t bold and brassy like he would’ve said it, but that was okay. She told him what she wanted, and he was intent on giving it to her. His touch was never more than soft and light, making the rising tide of ecstasy slow and profound. By the time she came, Tabitha’s skin was dewy with pleasure, her breathing labored, her little moans turned to gasps and broken phrases of desperation begging for more and more until she suddenly stiffened in his arms. Her body shuddered. She was no longer quiet and reserved as she let the tide wash over her. Wyatt held her, feeling as if his heart was swelling until the point that it might burst with how deeply he cared for this woman.

He held her after it was over, his arms so tight around her small frame he was likely crushing her as he tried to hold her close enough to keep her from slipping away again. Yet even in the afterglow, he knew how very unlikely that was. She didn’t want to be in Garnet, and he had six generations’ worth of obligation that said he was supposed to be sheriff until the day he died. He had a whole town that counted on him to do the job he was born to do, and it wasn’t something he could just walk away from—even for her.

In the end, it became too much. There was no easy solution, so Wyatt gave up. He fell asleep with her. Even in his dreams, he recognized it was the first peaceful rest he’d had in a
very
long time.

Wyatt didn’t want it, but without his permission, his heart started beating again.

It had always beat for Tabitha.

* * * *

The Storm, A Heroes of Sapphire County Novel by T.C. Rennoc

Tabitha stared at the new title to a book that had been nothing but a blank page for the past year and half. Her publisher had been beyond pissed with her for a long time now over the extended case of writer’s block. Her fans even more so.

She couldn’t tell anyone she wasn’t capable of writing it because she didn’t know how it was supposed to go. It hadn’t happened yet. Her last book,
The End of Innocence
, had finished with a horrible cliffhanger. The heroine, Betsy, had left her longtime boyfriend, Garrett Shaw, to protect him from a terrible secret. Her brother sold her to the villains for something as worthless as money. Betsy had been forced to leave. If she hadn’t, Garrett, a superhero with humbling strength and speed, would’ve turned into something dark and sinister. She’d witnessed the darkness in him before. She’d rather see him weakened than turned into the thing he’d been raised to fight against.

All heroes had a weakness, even Garrett Shaw.

Betsy hadn’t been raped in the book. It
was
a story for young people, which was why Tabitha made the reason her brother sold her a little more palpable than drugs. Money, people could understand. A quick high was beyond heartless, even for an evil minion. In the book she had just been tortured and forced to give up her own powers to the villains. Betsy’s gifts weren’t as amazing as Garrett, or his sister Guinevere, or even his best friend Rocky, but hers could be used for terrible things in the wrong hands. Betsy’s gift was to drain any superhero of their powers, which was what had made her love affair with the biggest hero of Sapphire County so beautifully tragic. Every time he touched her, he got a little weaker.

Betsy was Garrett’s kryptonite, but he loved her anyway.

When the villains had won by draining the last of Garrett’s superhuman strength from him, it hadn’t even mattered. He was a broken young man. He didn’t want to fight anymore. It was a terrible place to leave off the series. When she wrote it, she told herself she’d fix the tragedy with the next book. She was a creative person. She could make up a better ending than the two star-crossed lovers dying old, weak, and alone, but the story had never come to her. She didn’t know how to fix it.

Tabitha smiled. Wyatt had turned out much better than where she’d left Garrett off in the books. She was proud of him, and she started writing for the first time in months, and this time she wasn’t inclined to delete it twenty minutes after she started.

Tabitha began to type.
Three years later.
She paused, reflecting that it was better than saying thirteen years, and added in that Betsy sat at her mother’s bedside, back home in Sapphire County after so long.

Tabitha was grateful to be writing again, and the words flowed as her fingers swept over the keystrokes. It was almost as if she’d never stopped.

She even borrowed the scene of her throwing up in the flowers despite it being horrifying in reality. Somehow laying herself bare in books was cleansing in a way few would understand. She was already to the part where Garrett took her to the cabin Betsy had rented from her friend Tony—a popular side character from the earlier books—when Wyatt came into the kitchen. He was bare-chested and barefoot, wearing only his jeans from earlier.

God, he was a sight with blond hair still mussed from the sex and that big, powerful body on display. He had to weigh at least thirty pounds more than he had when she left, and it was all muscle.

“Howdy, Sheriff.” She couldn’t help but grin at him. “You’re fine inspiration for a starving artist at this late hour.”

“Starving, huh?” He sat down across from her at the table and eyed her laptop. “Ain’t ya got a movie coming out next year?”

“Not my movie.” She looked back at the computer. “Someone else is making it. They just bought the rights.”

“You think they’re gonna cast someone handsome and charming to play Garrett Shaw?” Wyatt wagged his eyebrows, though the mirth didn’t reach his eyes the way it used to.

Tabitha laughed anyway. “I’m sure they will.”

“You wanna talk ’bout these books?” Wyatt asked her softly as his smile faded, and he went back to studying her intently. “I read them, Tabby.
All of them
.”

Tabitha closed her laptop rather than answer, and she stared at it for a long time before she whispered, “Wyatt—”

He shook his head before she could finish. “Forget I asked.”

“No, you have a right to ask,” she whispered. “I know I put a lot of things in there. Maybe they were things you wanted kept private and—”

“That’s not what I was saying.” Wyatt cut her off. “I don’t care what you use of my life. If it helps you, I want ya to put whatever the hell you want ’bout me in those books.”

“I just wanted kids to believe in heroes,” she said, hoping he understood in a way she always imagined he did when the books got so much more popular than she’d anticipated. “Kids like I was, who don’t have a reason to hope for someone to save them. You did that for me, Wyatt. You gave me that. No matter what happens after all this, please don’t ever forget that.”

Wyatt leaned his elbows against the table and put his face in his hands. “But I didn’t, did I? I read the last book. Garrett failed Betsy—horribly.”

“No, he didn’t. Betsy failed herself. She failed Garrett too.”