Built

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.

That was another thing I would never have been willing to do in my life before Denver. Spontaneously leaving town to spend time with people who loved me and cared about me was such a foreign concept. Almost as foreign as having the best sex of my life up against a wall with a guy covered in tattoos and paint. I didn’t recognize the parts of me that were changing now that I had a new life, and that made me nervous. It felt like the new parts that had been unleashed were all about being spontaneous and out of control. It felt like every risk that was presented was worth taking and that any repercussions were incidental. I hated that. I knew that repercussions could kill.

When I finally did make it to the shower an hour or so later, it was much more difficult to scrub him off my skin than I thought it would be. I had fingerprints and tiny little abrasions from his beard all over my chest and across my shoulders and neck. I could still feel him all over me and it made that place between my legs that had been focused on him from the get-go feel all achy and needy. I was used to the hollow feeling of desire that nagged at me when I thought about Zeb; what made me slightly frantic and almost violent as I tried to wash him away was the lingering pulse that throbbed in my chest, low and insistent, right where my heart was at.

I could work through wanting Zeb on a physical level, could handle being attracted to him in all his masculine and unrefined sexiness. There was no getting around the fact we had a physical attraction happening no matter how ill-advised it might be. What made me want to turn tail and run back to Seattle was the idea that I wanted more. I didn’t want to want more. I didn’t want my heart to trip over itself when I watched him with Hyde. I didn’t want to feel scrambled and out of sync every time he called to talk to me or anytime I had to be in the same room with him. I didn’t want to compare every other man I saw to Zebulon Fuller and find them lacking because, come on! Who could really compare to all that brawn, beauty, and genuineness?

Zeb was too vibrant, passionate, and real to allow for anything other than an equal give-and-take. When he realized how dead on the inside and untouchable I was, he was going to have no choice but to walk away from me because he deserved someone who could give him everything and more. I had a feeling that watching him walk away would shatter my poor, brittle, and underused heart into a million, irreparable pieces. I really, really didn’t want that. With Rowdy’s help I had just started letting the rusty thing work again after so many years of keeping it shut off.

Of course, I suffered through a sleepless night and was less than enthusiastic when Rowdy and Salem showed up to pick Poppy and me up on Saturday morning. Rowdy nudged me with his elbow when I stopped by the trunk to toss my weekender bag inside and looked at me with lifted eyebrows.

“Everything okay? You seem pretty quiet this morning.”