“I’m you. I’m your opposite. I’m what you need.”
“You’re infuriating.”
“That too.” She rocked her wrist in my hold, activating hunter instincts, my heart racing to keep her captive.
I squeezed her harder. “You’re ruining everything.”
“Maybe.” She sucked in a breath with a blood-heating hitch. “Or maybe I’m fixing everything.”
“Don’t fool yourself.”
“Stop lying to yourself.”
“Stop being so goddamn stubborn.”
“Kiss me and stop avoiding the truth.”
Heat became a forest fire as we locked in a war.
I wanted to kill her.
I wanted to kiss her.
I wanted to be left the hell alone. “Enough.” I forced myself to let her go. “I’m done with this.”
“Don’t.” Her hand soared to my cheek again, her thumb tracing my bottom lip. “Don’t run.”
My cock left the realm of hard and turned into concrete. Concrete threatening to crack and splinter if it didn’t have a tiny taste of whatever bristled between us.
She leaned closer, her gaze no longer temper-focused but hazed with need.
My mouth went dry. My heart stopped beating. The earth fissured beneath me, sending me into pits of despair.
“Kiss me…” Her command could barely be heard, snatched by the breeze. The same breeze that licked around us, cocooning us, fighting us.
“No.”
“Please, Jacob.”
I needed to get away.
Now.
But she had me snared, gutted, broken.
I had no free will anymore.
No earthly way of removing myself from this nightmare.
My back bellowed. My mind ran crazy with lust. It took all my willpower to meet her eyes and hiss, “Leave. You’re fired.”
The desire on her face flickered. Her stubbornness faltered for a second. A blissful second where my heart scrambled for fresh air.
“You can’t fire a friend.”
“You’re not my friend.”
“I am.”
“You’re my enemy.”
She shook her head. “I’m not, can’t you see?”
“Get off my land.”
“No.”
“I’ll physically throw you out if you don’t leave.”
Her chin came up, her cajoling switching to anger. “Go ahead. But you’d have to touch me first. Touch me, Jacob. See if you’re immune as you say you are when I’m seconds away from losing everything.”
There was no fresh air because she’d stolen it. Every breath I inhaled Hope. I inhaled sunshine and lemonade and lust.
I wasn’t just lost.
I was dead.
Murdered by the one thing I never wanted to feel.
“Hope…just stop.” I was willing to concede defeat if she just left me the hell alone. I needed to run. To remember how to live in a world of love when I couldn’t have any of it.
“I’m so sorry, Jacob.” Her eyes glittered. “So sorry I’m hurting you.”
“Then stop. Stop all of this.”
“I can’t.”
“You mean, you won’t.”
She nodded, tears welling.
Something about this argument was different. It scratched me, scared me, scarred me.
Fucking terrified me.
Beneath my anger, beneath the attempt at a truce and the truth of pain, the broken kid inside me got on his knees for help.
I wasn’t equipped for this. I was used to family accepting my desire to be left alone. I was conditioned to earn peace by pushing away those who cared.
Hope didn’t give me those rewards.
She didn’t slink away when I growled.
She didn’t stop pushing me.
Pushing and pushing, always goddamn pushing.
“Leave.”
“Like I said, you’ll have to touch me first.”
“If I touched you again, Hope Jacinta Murphy, you’d wish you’d run when I gave you the chance.” My voice blistered the sky.
She froze, a thread of wariness decorated her face. “Try me.”
“Get off my tractor.”
“Make me.”
“Get out of my life.”
“Bite me.” She snapped her teeth together. “I’m not going anywhere. Not yet. Not until—”
“You’re leaving. Today.”
“Only if you physically make me. Otherwise, I’m going to stay. Today and tomorrow and all the days in the future. I’m in love with your land, Jacob Wild. I’m in love with your mother and your family and your horses, and I’m even falling for yo—”
“Fuck, stop. Stop. Just fucking stop.” I lashed out, grabbing her wrist and jerking her toward me. I meant to yank her from the tractor. My mind was full of images of tossing her to the soft grass, leaping onto the machine, and driving away to somewhere I could find sanity.
But the second I touched her again…shit.
That was my first mistake.
Pulling her closer until we were nose to nose was my second.
She froze as we almost bumped foreheads. I waited for her to arch back, to give me room, to get out of my personal space, but she just hovered there. Her green eyes as vibrant and as unforgiving as some emerald river, her button nose pink and cheeks shiny with temper.
My fingers wrapped tighter around her wrist.
And this time, I couldn’t let her go.
I’d run out of strength.
She’d drained me, ruined me.
She’d won.
I forgot why I needed to keep my distance.
I forgot why being happy was a sin.
I forgot why I had promises that kept me locked here and why I didn’t let people get close.
I forgot about all of it.
All I saw was Hope.
Her eyelashes, her chin, her mouth.