And she didn’t want it.
Refused to even give him a chance.
But she would give him this.
And maybe that was the bottom line. This was the opportunity. This was the moment. So he had to take it.
So he took a step toward her, and he let the future be its own problem. He took a step toward her, and he decided that what happened after tonight didn’t matter. He took a step toward her, and he let his guard down. Then he wrapped his arms around her waist and lowered his head.
And finally, after all these years, he kissed Arizona King again.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
FOR THE FIRST TIME, Arizona wondered if she had miscalculated. She had decided that she was going to have this, because if she couldn’t have everything, why not have what she wanted? Because since he was indirectly responsible for the thing that was holding her back from having lovers, he might as well be the first one.
Break the barrier, so to speak.
But now he was kissing her, and it was... It was so big and raw and real, and he was so close. It wasn’t like she had imagined it would be. She wasn’t really sure what she had imagined at this point in her life. She had long ago stopped romanticizing attraction and romance and sex. That was what happened when you excluded yourself from those things. And she had. Pretty ruthlessly at that.
She had excluded herself from being able to have and enjoy these things. And so she had diminished their importance in her mind. A meeting of bodies was about satisfying a physical itch, and she was modern woman enough to figure out how to do that on her own a long time ago. She had a well-developed fantasy life, and she found people difficult, so self-pleasure just seemed the way to do it. The man in her head, who did exactly what she wanted him to, and looked exactly how she wanted him to, and didn’t make any demands, was enough for her. Or had been.
But the difference between a fantasy and reality was that reality brought in another person. It stole her control. She was not in charge of this man. She couldn’t tell him what to do. She couldn’t force the moment to fade to black. She couldn’t make this easier. His kiss was hard and dark, and when he slid his tongue against hers, it made her shiver.
Logically, she understood that people enjoyed strange and intimate things when they were aroused, but now she understood. On a level that had nothing to do with logic. She understood in that quiver of excitement low in her belly. Understood in that hollow place between her legs that was getting wet from that friction. And she also understood that the control would not be entirely hers.
And she had to make a decision. Right now. Either do what she did, throw up the wall and run away, or give an inch. Let a little bit of that wall crumble. Raise the white flag of surrender, even if just halfway.
Her plan had been to brazen all of this out. To offer no explanation for the scars on her body—for all he knew, she’d had them then. He’d never seen her.
To act like she was okay with them. To act like there was no story.
To act like it hadn’t taken her relationship with her father from toxic to near nonexistent. To act like it hadn’t made her feel like she’d ruined herself.
She was so good at walls.
She had just gotten so very good at them.
“Is there a place we can go?”
“Yeah. I was planning on parading you past my brothers and taking you upstairs to my childhood room,” she said, doing a good job of keeping a straight face, because this kind of commentary was her strength.
“Great,” he said. “If you’re cool with that...”
“You would not seriously do that.”
“I’m forty-two years old,” he said. “I’m not going to treat you like a dirty secret.”
“Oh.”
“I think you’re trying to push me away.”
“It’s the Arizona King specialty.”
“I am happy to parade you through the kitchen. But are there other alternatives?”
“Yeah. There’s a place. One of the cabins that’s empty out at the edge of the King property. We can go there.”
“I can drive,” he said.
“Great.”
And that was how she found herself seated in the front of his truck, her nerves growing. Tightening. Making it nearly impossible for her to breathe.
And when they pulled into the gravel lot right in front of the small cabin, Micah laughed.
“What?” she snapped. “What’s funny?”
“I feel like I’m sneaking around with you. And I can’t say as I’ve snuck around with anybody for a long time.”
“Oh. Right. Well. We aren’t sneaking around. We just aren’t parading.”
“I don’t typically... I’ve never... When Daniel is with me I don’t go off to have sex. But he’s hanging out with the ranch hands back at the bunkhouse and I know he’s good.” He looked a little bit wistful. “And it’s you. I’m here with you.”
“You say that like it matters.”
“It does. To me it does.”
“Why?” She couldn’t help but ask that. She shouldn’t ask that. Because she felt a little bit raw and a little bit scared, and she wanted to be the Arizona that kept everybody far away from her. Wanted to be the Arizona that she had become in order to protect herself. Because it was so important. Because it had been so important.
“You know, you meet people in this life, and you forget so many of them. Time marches on, and the world changes and you change with it. And it just... It all changes. And there are certain people that stay with you. They made you feel something. They showed you something. You are one of those people for me. I always thought you were so smart and funny and I just liked being around you.” No one had said anything like that to her in a long time. And she knew it was her own fault. Knew that people didn’t particularly like being around her because of her own behavior. But Micah remembered her as someone who had been fun. Someone he had wanted to be around.
It was the strangest gift she hadn’t known she needed.
“I’m not that person anymore,” she said. “But if you still think I’m hot, then we might have something tonight.”
“It’s more than that,” he said.
“It can’t be more than that. You don’t know me.”
“You know me. And if you ever decide that you want me to know you... I’d like that.”
“Well, I don’t want to talk right now,” she said. “I just want for you to get naked.”
“I’m definitely on the same page.”