I turned away so I could get the condom off and situated myself back in my jeans. I found my shirt where I had tossed it earlier and hers where I had literally chucked it across the room. I handed her the flimsy item of clothing and then sank down on the floor next to her. Some of the primer she had spilled had dried up, but most of it was still in a puddle on the tarp, which immediately soaked into my jeans.

I looked at her out of the corner of my eye and could see the wheels turning in her head. She was thinking again.

“Sayer. This has been headed straight for us since the beginning.” I leaned over so I could bump her shoulder with mine. She pulled her braid out from where it was trapped behind her and fiddled with the ends of it.

“I usually try to avoid impending disaster, Zeb. I’m a problem solver, not a trouble maker. I’m supposed to be helping you make your life better and helping you get what you want, not making it more complicated.”

I sighed. “We are not a problem and this isn’t trouble. How can you not think the way we are together doesn’t make both our lives better? Are you really going to tell me that wasn’t the best sex you’ve ever had?”

She threw her head back so that it hit the wall with a thud. “We might not be a problem, but I sure as hell am. I need to go.” She climbed to her feet and made a face when her shoes swished in the spilled primer. “I’ll see you in my office before court on Monday.”

I ground my teeth together when she purposely didn’t respond to my question about the sex. She might not want to admit out loud how amazing we were together but the evidence was all over—the red marks on her skin, the bite marks on her neck, and the nail marks she had left on my shoulders.

I grabbed her hand as she started to walk away from where I was still sitting. “You can put the lawyer mask on and tie it on as tight as it’ll go, but I know what’s under it, Sayer, and even if I didn’t, I still would’ve had you up against the wall. You are more than one thing to me and I want all of them.”

She looked down at my hand; it was the one that had a skull tattooed on the back of it with a set of screwdrivers underneath for the crossbones. Her eyes flicked back up to mine and I could clearly see the storm clouds hovering over the sea. I didn’t want to let her go, we needed to talk about this, about what was going on between the two of us, but I could see if I pushed her she was going to break apart and I didn’t want that. She was strong and resilient, and I was just starting to get hints of why she had to be that way. The more she opened up about her past the more I understood why she shut down and pulled away when I asked her about it. I didn’t want to be the thing that made her shatter. She might be a problem solver but I was Mr. Fixit. I didn’t break things, I repaired them.

So quietly I almost didn’t hear her she told me, “I’ll see you before court.” She shook off my hold and was gone before I could get to my feet.

When I did get up it was to turn around and stare aimlessly at the impression her body had left on my wall.

The woman was good at leaving an impression, on more than just my wall. I think my heart was starting to have a Sayer-shaped spot in it and I wasn’t entirely sure how to feel about that given the current chaotic state of my life.

CHAPTER 9

Sayer

I couldn’t remember a single time in my life when I had forgotten to be me as thoroughly as I did the moment Zeb touched me. There was no second guessing, no worrying about the outcome and inevitable fallout of handing everything over to him. There was only the moment and being consumed by all the feelings and emotions that he brought to life in it. It was enough to get lost in, enough to blur common sense and a lifetime of warnings about what happened when you opened the door to those kinds of attachments.

When he handled me, moved me, invaded my mind and body, there wasn’t room for doubt, fear, or anything else. He took up too much space and the way he made me feel, the way we felt together, was so much bigger and more expansive than all the other things that typically filled me up. There was no room to worry about what would happen after, to think about the fact that I was spread out naked and exposed, revealing any and every flaw I had to him. He was everywhere, took all the accessible air and capacity my body had to give him. All I could do was respond and melt in his skilled hands and across his insistent heat.

Sex had always been a chore, something I had to get through to make whoever my partner was happy. It was what was expected, so I complied. I instinctively knew it wasn’t going to be that way with Zeb. Even in my dreams, sex with him was explosive, unforgettable, and intense . . . but dream sex didn’t hold a candle to real sex with him. Real sex with him was transformative and wholly terrifying. His touch made me feel like a different woman, a desirable woman, a fascinating and intriguing woman with so much more to offer him than my skills in the courtroom. It made me want to let the reins slip on all those emotions I kept such a tight hold on.

I couldn’t handle feeling so out of control, so absorbed in the emotions and passion that he brought out with nothing more than the brush of callused fingers and the touch of soft lips surrounded by rougher facial hair on my skin. It terrified me, the swell of feelings, the rush of desire toward him, toward us together, so I ran like a coward.

I wanted nothing more than to collapse in a heap in my walk-in shower when I got home. I still had paint all over me and there was no mistaking the large handprints that were smeared across my skin in places. It was a visual reminder that I had royally screwed things up and needed to figure out a way to put them back to rights as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, as soon as I came through the front door, Poppy was waiting for me and couldn’t wait to tell me all about her adventure out with Rowdy. Apparently it had all gone so well that when my brother asked her to accompany Salem and him on a quick weekend getaway to the trendy ski town of Breckenridge, she had agreed to go.

I plastered a stiff smile on my face and told her how proud I was of her and the steps she was taking. Admittedly my mind was elsewhere—namely up against a wall with a big, tattooed body covering it—so I missed it when she asked me to go with her. I must have blindly agreed because the next thing I knew I was embraced in a warm hug, which I returned with tears in my eyes. Poppy had been living with me for months and I could count the number of times she touched me on one hand with most of my fingers left over. I didn’t have the time or the desire to go to the mountains for the weekend, but if it made her happy I could get on board with the spur-of-the-moment vacation.