Buckled (Trails of Sin, #2)

by Pam Godwin

A man cannot be good unless he possesses the capacity to be evil. Decency is a choice. It’s being tempted by hatred and following a different path no matter how difficult. It’s looking inward with a magnifying glass and acknowledging the flaws and weaknesses in one’s character.

We don’t just love. We love hard, with every bone, sinew, and breath in our bodies.

“How the fuck are you the sperm that won?” “I can explain it to you, but I can’t understand it for you.”

“You won’t sell her?” He shakes his head, frowning. “No way!” I leap up and tackle him in a hug. “Thank you!” “Just this one.” He frames my face with his hands and gives me a stern look. “You can’t save them all.” “I know.” “Stay away from the other calves.” “Okay.” “Don’t even look at them.” I nod my agreement. “You’re a mess.” He swipes a thumb across my cheek. “A beautiful mess.”

I want to hold her without the anticipation of sex. I want to learn where she’s ticklish, what makes her toes curl, and how to coax a smile with the caress of my hand. More than anything, I want to capture the flame inside her and keep it burning between us.

“Are you sniffing her panties?” Conor’s whisper drifts from the entrance of the hall. In an attempt to embarrass her, I hold them up, dangling by a finger, and arch an eyebrow in her direction. “If you think my brother doesn’t smell yours—” “I know he does.”

“I missed this.” She flips to her back with her head propped on my torso. “We used to have the best girl talks, didn’t we?”

She’s going to fall in love with you. That’s not the danger here. It’s me. I’m slipping, and I fucking know it. I need to pull back.

“I’m too tired to fight you.” I release her outside my door and amble to the bed. “I’m too tired to do anything but sleep. But I want you beside me.”

“Who hurt you?”

“I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt as to whether your methods build trust. But I’m not just falling in line because you growled an order. I’m choosing to give it a try.”

Im obsessed with the push and pull

“You needed my fingers in your cunt, destroying it, owning it, you dirty, filthy girl.”

I don’t care about her secrets. I don’t even care about the sex. Not in the way I care about her. She isn’t some gold-digging, narcissistic, faceless woman seducing her way into my bed. She’s everything I’ve been waiting for and nothing like I expected. I made a deal with her that I have no intention of honoring. Because I can’t fathom going back to a life without her. The notion is so bleak and horrifying it fills me with desperate rage. I will never let her go.

“Would it be hard for you to make me leave?” I despise the insecure crack in my voice. “It would destroy me.”

“You will not judge me for enjoying sex with willing women.” His voice is unruffled velvet as he strikes me again. “No, I’m—” He spanks my other cheek and smooths his hand over the hurt. “Nor will you cheapen what’s happening here.”

“I can’t walk away from this.” His fingers loosen, gliding across my cheek and into my hair. “Can’t walk away from you.” “Same.”

His words have the power to slay me. The kiss that follows is a filthy, unhinged, catastrophic confirmation that I will never be able to walk away from him. Not if I want to remain whole.

“I want children with you.” “What?” My heart stops. “You heard me.” “Children? Have you lost your mind?” I scramble out from beneath him. “I don’t mean right now.” He stands and tucks himself into his jeans. “I just… With you, I want marriage and kids and all of it. You’re it for me. Today, tomorrow, and all the tomorrows after.” I feel like my eyes are going to pop out of the sockets. “Stop looking at me like that, dammit.” He stabs a finger in my direction. “I’m fucking serious. If you’re not ready, I’ll wait. However long it takes.” “You’ll wait for what?” I hug my bare chest, trembling and soaked. “For you to accept this.”

“You belong to me.” He prowls closer. “I’ll piss a circle around you if I have to. I’ll move mountains and rearrange my entire existence. I’m not giving you up.”

Holy shit

“I can’t marry you.” I hug my ribs, shivering in a curtain of cold, drippy hair. “I’ll change your mind.” My mind isn’t the problem. Marrying him is a tangled, complicated impossibility. “I’ve only known you for nine days.” “I fell for you the first night.”

“You should see the way your ass moves.”

“You’re a breast man.” “I’m a Maybe man.”

This isn’t sex. It’s something more. Something I’ve never experienced or even fantasized about. It’s cruelty in its most primitive form, love in its deepest, most passionate state. It’s animalistic mating, unbound and stripped bare, a connection that defies civility.

“I can’t get enough.” He wedges into me, breathing so hard it garbles his voice. “We have tomorrow night.” I arch against him. “And all the tomorrows after.” “Hearing you say that…” His eyes hood, and his hand rests against the side of my face. “You sealed your fate.” “What’s my fate?” I burn with desire. Tremble with hope. “This.” He strokes in and out, slowing his pace. “Us. For an eternity.”

“I think a lifetime with you isn’t enough.” He rests his forehead against mine, breathing me in.

He shackled my heart with his, and I wish he would lose the key to that lock. The steady beat of his love against mine empowers me, strengthens me, makes me believe that as long as we’re together, it’s enough. We’re enough.

“I love you.” I snap my eyes closed, startled by the sound of the words I’ve said to her so many times in my head. She lowers her feet to the ground and rests a gloved hand on my cheek, prompting me to look at her. “I love you, too.” Her gaze slips over my face and returns to my eyes. “So much it hurts.”

“You own me.”

“I’ll wait.” He stands taller, shoulders back, and adopts the confident stance so intrinsic to who he is. “Take your space, your time, whatever you need. But I won’t let you take forever. That belongs to me. Your forever is mine.”

Standing on the front lawn three stories below, he stares up at me from beneath his hat, a braided lead in his hand, and Chicken beside him.

A week passes before I see him again. He brings Chicken and stands under my window. Nothing more. Just his unyielding stance, his silence, his direct eye contact. He’s sending an unmistakable message. I’ll wait.

He’s stalking, which is the complete opposite of moving on. And he’s making me crazy.

“I love you so goddamn much I can’t function without you. I can’t sleep. I can’t work. I can’t fucking breathe when you’re four fucking hours away.”

“You’ve always held all the power. You don’t even realize how much control you have.” He cups the back of my head and touches his lips to my brow.

Love hurts. It’s an emotional abuser, insidious and manipulative, charming its way into unsuspecting hearts before beating the ever-loving shit out of the defenseless insides. Love is as invisible as the wounds it inflicts and as lethal as a knife. When it’s taken away, all that remains is pain. Unlearning that pain is impossible. It’s a road with no exit ramps or turnoffs. Once it carves its way through the soul, there’s no choice but to hold on and ride it to the dark, bitter, lonely end.

Love heals. It’s a universal balm that repairs fractures, soothes pain, and stitches the heart into wholeness again. Love is meant to buckle the strongest and fiercest person. It’s the very thing the soul cries for. To recoil from that is to reject the most powerful medicine, the greatest cure for loneliness. With love, even the darkest season of guilt and betrayal can be defeated.

“I bought a truck you wouldn’t recognize, so I could follow you. Watch you. I couldn’t…” His hands lift to his face, and his shoulders roll forward, his huge frame shuddering beneath the deluge of rain. “I can’t let you go.”

“Living without you is a form of death. A death I refuse to accept.” He lowers his arms. Then he drops to his knees, head bowed, buckled at my feet. “You can’t hide your pain from me. Your isolation, the bruises under your eyes, the permanent sadness on your lips…” His gaze lifts, stark against the strobe of lightning. “I see you. I see your misery, heartbreak, longing. It’s lived in your eyes since you left, trapped in turmoil. But I see love, too. It’s still there, Maybe, and I swear to God, if you would just accept it, if you would give me a chance, I’ll set you free. Let me take part in your pain, walk with you, sit with you, watch over you, something, anything… Just…let me join you in the hurt.” His throat bobs. “Come home.”

The feelings I harbor for her will never end. Not when my body ceases to function. Not when my soul releases for whatever comes next. Even in death, I won’t let her go. She’s my serenity and my fire, my first and last breath. Lying beside her is my favorite place, and for the rest of my life and into the next, she’s all mine.