SWNOVELS The Front Runner: Chapter 16
I want to grab his ass so bad.
How I went from wanting to get as far away from him as possible to now standing here, soaked, in a field, weighing the merits of grabbing the town bad guy’s ass, I’ll never know. It’s a great ass, and I’m already drowning in a dunk tank of poor decision making, so why the hell not?
I slide a couple fingers in between the buttons of his shirt to draw him closer. My other hand has been tracing the line of his boxers, but now I let my lizard-brain take over and push it down between the back of his pants and the smooth fabric of his boxers. When I splay my fingers out and squeeze, he follows suit, fisting my loose hair and giving it a gentle tug. His ensuing chuckle is dark and velvety—thoroughly amused—like he knows I just bit off more than I can chew. I feel it rumble across my lips, and the corresponding shot zings through my core.
Our foreheads rest together as we breathe the same air. Suspended in the moment.
A shiver races down my spine, and he pulls me into a hug, muscular arms wrapping around me like a shield. “You’re cold. Let’s grab your jacket and get out of here.”
“God. I really don’t want to go back in there.” The thought of facing everyone after pitching a fit and running out of the house feels like too much right now. Plus, I’m awfully comfortable where I am, and as soon as the cold seeps in from where we’ve spent the last several minutes plastered against each other, so will reality.
And I don’t want to face the reality of making out with Stefan Dalca right now.
His hand strokes my back in soothing circles, and I almost want to purr under his ministrations. Because I am now basically a cat in heat.
“I’ll go in and get it for you. Let’s get you in the car.”
When he steps back, I’m cold, just like I knew I would be. The damp air and cool water chill me to my core, and I wrap my arms around myself to conserve the warmth that Stefan’s firm body left behind.
I want him to hold me again. It’s a bad idea. We both know that it’s a bad idea. That’s why we walk in silence across the soggy grass toward the driveway. He opens the passenger side door of his silver SUV, and I crawl into the seat. He doesn’t even put his hand on the small of my back, nor should he. But my inner cat-in-heat wants him to. I love the way he touches me so casually. The way his hands linger on my body like I’m a piece of art worth savoring.
Before going to the house, he comes to the driver’s side and starts the vehicle. He cranks the heat and shoots me a panty-melting grin before darting back into my parents’ white rectangular house. His hand grips the wrought iron railing on the front steps as he takes every second stair. His pants are wet and tight against his round ass.
I grabbed that ass.
It really is a great ass. And his upper body ain’t bad either. Especially with a wet shirt clinging to every indent and hugging his broad shoulders in the most alluring way. I momentarily wish I was his shirt before scrubbing my hands over my face.
What am I doing?
When I drop my hands, I look down at myself and laugh into the quiet vehicle. I thought Stefan’s clothes were leaving little to the imagination, but my white eyelet dress looks like a translucent slip. It’s suctioned onto my body, and I’m pretty sure I can see my nipples through the fabric. And not because they’re still pebbled from the way he devoured me. I thought this dress didn’t require a bra, but I didn’t account for the wet T-shirt contest we just had.
My head snaps up when the door across from me swings open.
“Got it.”
I instantly grab the denim jacket out of Stefan’s hand and cover my tits with it. He grins at me knowingly and shoots me a wink.
“Dick,” I mutter as I turn to the window.
“What? I’m only human. Am I supposed to complain about my smoke-show fake date wearing a wet white dress? Because I refuse.”
“Yeah. Yeah. Save it for the spank-bank, Stefan.”
His hand reaches across the back of my seat as he checks behind us before pulling out. “Oh, no doubt.” He pushes the stick into drive and smiles. “I imagine you and Mr. Purple will have quite the time tonight.”
Dick.
My cheeks heat, and I wish they didn’t. I’m accustomed to acting one way around my girlfriends, but coming face to face with a man and talking about sex so blatantly is kind of new to me. There are things I want to do, want to try, but I’ve had such sparse and mediocre sex, I’ve never found someone I’m comfortable enough to try them with. Basically, my cool, confident exterior is a farce when it comes to that topic.
If I study anything hard enough, I can master it, and that’s exactly what I’ve done. But I’m worried that Stefan is going to call my bluff.
“Are we going to talk about the kiss?”
“Nope.”
“Dr. Mira Thorne caught kissing Enemy Number One in the middle of a field.” He tuts me jokingly. “What would the girl gang say?”
I shoot him a dirty look, because I don’t need him rubbing my nose in that mess. I’ll beat myself up about it enough later.
“How was it in there?” I ask as we turn onto the road and head back out to Ruby Creek.
“Fine.”
I snort. “Very believable.”
“It was. It was as fine as any of them deserve after that episode.”
“Ugh. I’m sorry I put you through that.”
He shrugs, eyes on the darkening road. “Don’t be. I had a good time.”
“Ha. No, you didn’t.”
“I did. Your parents are very welcoming, and I’m pretty sure I love your Nana. The food was excellent. And the dessert was even better.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. He looks so damn pleased with himself.
“You have to understand, Mira,” he continues. “The house I was raised in wasn’t filled with laughter. I didn’t grow up having family gatherings. There weren’t relatives who cared about where my life was going. Are yours overbearing? Yup. Out of line? Absolutely. But they all care about you. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t say anything. I know because that’s what I got.”
Well, shit. When he puts it like that? “I’m sorry. My family problems must feel very trivial to you.”
His hawkish eyes shoot over to me, glinting like emeralds. “Definitely not. Anyone who thinks they can speak that way to you in front of me is in for a rude awakening.”
I swallow. For some reason, that sentence sounds very long term to me. Like there will be future opportunities for someone to speak to me out of line with him in my presence.
“I know my mom loved me,” he continues quietly. “She used to sneak into my room in the dead of night and wake me up to talk with her. Partly because that’s when he’d be drunk enough to not notice or too asleep to care. It was also because under the cover of darkness, I couldn’t see the bruises on her body.”
My chest aches at his admission. That feeling where a crack fractures itself right down your sternum. What must that be like? To not have your mom there laughing and making inappropriate sexual jokes while making moon eyes at your dad. When I was younger, I thought it was gross, now I think it’s kind of inspiring.
I want to be making moon eyes at someone after thirty years of marriage.
“It always felt like a special time for us. A time when I could tell her anything while we huddled beneath my duvet. I felt safe with her on those nights. I felt like there were no secrets between us on those nights. It was in those moments, she could be the mom I always wanted her to be.”
My lashes flutter over full eyes. Stefan is confiding in me right now, and it’s pulling at my heartstrings. “That’s a beautiful and terribly sad memory all at once.”
He laughs, but it’s a bitter laugh. “It was.” He shakes his head and presses his lips together. “Until she ruined it.”
A part of me knows I shouldn’t press him on this—it sounds intensely personal. But the scientist in me is constantly solving equations, and Stefan has quickly become the most challenging one of my life. “How did she do that?”
His eyes dart to me, and a look of vulnerability flashes across his face. He looks younger, more human, with a lock of golden hair plastered to his forehead and a pink flush to his sharp cheekbones.
“You don’t need to answer tha—”
“No. It’s fine. I trust you to not blab my history all over Ruby Creek.”
I offer him a firm nod in response.
His chest heaves under the weight of a ragged sigh before he launches in. “He mostly ignored Nadia and I. There were moments when I remember thinking he was kind to us—as kind as someone like him can be. But one day, he turned on me. It had to have been the day it all came out. I don’t remember when it started, but I remember the last time it ever happened. My mother threw herself in front of me while I ran out to the barn and hid at the bottom of my horse’s stall with my eyes squeezed shut. But not before he broke my nose. And when he found me cowered there, he promised to sell my horse. The stable hands marched the only thing that was truly mine onto a trailer that very day, and he was gone.”
Stefan clears his throat and looks out the driver’s side window. “The next day, I packed a bag and started school in Switzerland. I was thirteen.”
“Jesus.” My hand falls across my mouth. “I didn’t know you had a horse.”
“He was mostly a pet. But he was mine. He was my best friend. My heart horse. My reprieve from my life. I could spend all day out in a field with that horse, pretending I was anyone in the world. A knight, a traveler—the options were endless so long as I didn’t have to be a boy stuck in a violent home. On the bad nights, I curled up and slept on the floor of his stall in the small barn we had. When Constantin sold him to teach me a lesson… well, the only lesson I learned was that when a heart breaks, the pain never stops.”
It’s quiet in the vehicle as I absorb what he just said. I try to imagine a small blond boy sleeping on a stall floor, and in my mind, that boy morphs into the man I’ve seen over the past couple weeks. The one who will still sleep on a stall floor. The one who will hold my hand on a stall floor.
Stefan speaks again. “So, I left at my mother’s insistence. I left my baby sister behind in that house. Bandaged nose and suitcase in hand. At that point, it felt like a punishment. It felt like I was unwanted. And I suppose, in a lot of ways, I was. But now I can see it for what it was: a kindness. A way to save me.”
His Adam’s apple bobs in his throat as he stares out the windshield. I scan his profile, the subtle bump in his nose, and try to imagine him without it but can’t.
“She met him when she was young and vulnerable. Naive and traveling for the experience of it. He was wealthy and alluring, and I imagine he put on a good show to lure her in. He excelled at manufacturing the perfect facade. She married him quickly. It was a whirlwind romance. She told me in her last hours he seemed wonderful until she signed the wedding contract. She told me…”
Stefan clears his throat, and his fingers pulse on the steering wheel, making the skin around his knuckles whiten.
“She told me she was already pregnant with me when she met him.”
“Oh, shit.”
He smiles ruefully. “Oh, shit is right. He needed a pretty, young wife for appearance’s sake, and she needed someone to take care of her. Pregnant out of wedlock, uneducated, and from a small town on the other side of the world. She did what she needed to do, I suppose. But it backfired when he found out I wasn’t really his.”
My god. How fucking sad is this? It sounds almost unreal. Like one of the daytime soap operas I would curl up and watch with my mom when I got home from high school. Stefan was hiding in a stall alone, and I was watching trash TV and laughing with my mom.
The world is a cruel place.
“And she didn’t tell me any of this until she was on her death bed, hooked up to wires and machines. That’s actually part of the reason I came back here.”
My head tilts. “What is?” I ask as the dark fields whip past us. We’re almost home.
“She told me she wished she never left this small town. That she should have stayed and trained racehorses. I don’t know… she wasn’t making much sense at the end. It was whispers and broken sentences. Maybe I’m on a wild goose chase.” He huffs out a small disbelieving breath. “Just before she died, she told me my biological father used to be the bartender in Ruby Creek.”