It’s mesmerizing to watch Pippa talk about her mom. To see her face light up with love and adoration when talking about her. I’m fascinated by listening to every detail she wants to tell me. I like her better like this. Her cheeks are flushed from talking so fast, her hands moving in every direction from telling a story about how her mom once brought home a box of kittens because she found them on the side of the road and couldn’t leave them there.
Earlier, something had hurt inside me to see her cry. I’m not someone who is good at handling other people’s emotions. To be honest, I don’t do well at handling my own emotions—partially due to how I grew up and the verbal lashings I got from my mother if I wasn’t acting like a perfect little robot for them to show off to their friends. Partially because I wasn’t taught to be compassionate. Other people’s feelings have never really been my business. Except right now, I want to know every single feeling she’s ever felt, everything she’s feeling. I want to know everything about her.
“One time, me and my best friend, Mare, wanted to do a lemonade stand so badly. It’s all we talked about, even though Cade and my parents kept telling us that we lived on the edge of town, no one was driving by to stop for lemonade. Mare and I would hear none of it,” Pippa explains, laughing to herself.
Something about her makes me want to laugh along with her, as if I was remembering the same memory she is. It’s just the two of us, our horses, and the mountains around us. I feel like without the distraction of the real world, I can almost let my guard down with her. At least enough to enjoy hearing what it’d be like to have a parent who cared about you.
“So, come to find out, my mom forced half the town to drive out to the ranch to visit our lemonade stand. Mare and I were so young and naive we truly thought everyone was driving by and wanted to taste our lemonade, but no, it wasn’t that. It was because my mom strong-armed half the Sutten population to purchase glasses of overpriced lemonade from us.”
“What’d you buy with the hard-earned money?”
“An Easy-Bake Oven,” she answers immediately.
“I have no idea what that is.”
“Oh my god!” She sits up on her knees, slapping the ground underneath her as she looks at me in shock. “You don’t know what an Easy-Bake Oven is?”
I shake my head.
She sighs dramatically, as if the fact I didn’t grow up with whatever this appliance is was the reason my childhood sucked. “You’re right, you did have a terrible childhood,” she mutters, almost reading my mind.
“You’re right,” I joke. “Not having some fancy oven was the reason my childhood was stolen from me.”
Pippa throws her head back with laughter. Her hair falls down her back as her entire body shakes with her laugh. “It’s the fact you think the Easy-Bake Oven is fancy.” She looks at me once again. There’s wetness under her eyes, but this time, it’s from laughter. She wipes at her smudged mascara.
The thought occurs to me that I could get used to hearing her laugh more, to seeing her happy tears. And those are both things I shouldn’t want to get used to.
“Is it not?”
“No. It’s terrible. I don’t know how the food that you bake in it is even edible.”
“How was I supposed to know that?”
She takes a long, deep breath in an attempt to calm herself. It’s quiet between us, but a comfortable kind of quiet. The one without expectations to awkwardly fill it.
Eventually, she takes another drink of her coffee with her eyes trained on the view in front of us. In the back of my mind, I still want to find a way to bring people here. To give some of the landscape artists I know the chance to capture the beauty to the best of their abilities.
“So are you going to tell me more about your childhood?” She doesn’t sound timid while asking it. She seems curious, but I also get the sense I could tell her no and she wouldn’t keep prying.
“Doubt it,” I answer honestly. I have a complicated relationship with my parents. As an adult, I can’t fathom treating a child the way they treated me. I could imagine myself having a kid or two if I met the right person, and I can’t imagine just discarding a child the way they discarded me. “All there is to say is that I was their trophy child. Paraded around and appreciated when they wanted to show me off to others but hidden away and forgotten about when there was nobody around to brag to.”
“Did they encourage you to be an artist?”
I take a drink of coffee because her question is a complicated one. They shoved art down my throat from the moment I could hold a pencil, but even from a young age, I rebelled against them. I didn’t want to become them, and every day of my adult life, I wonder if I became everything they hated or everything they wanted me to be.
“Encourage isn’t the word I’d use. Forced is more like it.”
“Something tells me you don’t take well to being forced to do anything.”
I chuckle. I appreciate that she seems to always say exactly what’s on her mind. “You could say that.”
“So you rebelled by becoming an art owner instead of a creator?”
“I rebelled by not ever giving in to their wishes and following in their footsteps. I was supposed to be some nepo baby art prodigy. They wanted me to be that desperately. It’s the one thing I refused to become.”
“So could you have been an art prodigy? Are you any good?”
My lips twitch as I do my best to fight a smirk. “Remember that statue you liked so much in my office?”
Her face scrunches in confusion. It makes me laugh, a small chuckle rumbling from low in my chest.
“The most beautiful piece of art I’ve ever seen? Yeah, I remember it.”
My teeth run over my bottom lip because she’s feeding my ego, and I love it. “The artist who didn’t know if they wanted to sell it? That’s me.”
“Shut up!”
“No one knows it’s me.”
“Oh my god, I gave you compliments without even knowing it.”
“You gave me so many compliments,” I tease, popping another bite of scone into my mouth. It’s my second one. They’re just so damn good.
“I want to throw up.” She sighs dramatically, falling backward onto the quilt. “How could you let me say such nice things about you and not say anything?”
“Maybe I like it when you say nice things to me.”
She looks at me from the corner of her eye. “No you don’t.”
I shrug because I won’t confess to her what I do or don’t like. I loved watching her fawn over a piece I spent so long on. It was fun to see my art through somebody else’s eyes since I don’t allow a lot of people in on my secret. It was even more fun with the knowledge that she had no clue the artist she was complimenting was me.
“Camden,” she groans, covering her face with her hands. “You’re the actual worst for letting me make a fool of myself.”
Leaning forward, I attempt to push her hands from her face, but she keeps them locked in place. “You didn’t make a fool of yourself. I liked hearing what you thought of my work.”
She grunts, not giving any indication that she’ll move her hands. “I was telling you what I thought that artist was trying to convey when you were the artist.” Another loud groan comes from her. I try to look away from the skin she’s showing between the denim waistband of her jeans and the ruffle at her midriff. So much sun-kissed skin that’s begging for attention.
“Stop being dramatic.” My fingers wrap around her wrist. I pull again, this time a little harder. Finally, I get one of her hands to move enough to see both her eyes. “Everything you saw was exactly what I wanted the beholder to see. I’ll deny this if you ask me again, but to be honest, I was flattered you noticed all the little details I’d hidden in there.”
“I can’t believe you actually have talent. I thought all there was to you was, well…you being a dick.”
“Maybe I like it that way.”
She catches her plump bottom lip between her teeth. Without invitation, I wonder what it’d be like to catch her lip between my teeth. I imagine myself tugging on it, digging my teeth deeper until she’d moan.
Fuck. What does she sound like moaning?
She seems so untamed. I bet she doesn’t hold back in bed. I’d bite and suck before licking across the seam of her lips, hearing the sound of…
“Camden?”
I shake my head once, ridding the imagination from my mind. She looks at me expectantly, her eyes wide with confusion.
“Hm?” My brain’s still playing catch-up, trying desperately to wipe the thought of her moaning underneath me, to form anything else coherent at the moment.
“Why would you rather let everyone think there’s nothing to you other than being a dick instead of maybe letting yourself be a little more…human?”
I shrug, not wanting to have this conversation with her. Quite frankly, I don’t want to be doing anything with her. I need to get away immediately. I’m not thinking rationally. My libido has taken over, and I can’t stop imagining shutting her questions down by having my cock down her throat. “Have you ever thought that maybe I am just a dick? The fact that I don’t like to just sell art but I also like to create it doesn’t change that.”
“If you say so.” The sarcastic tone of her voice tells me she doesn’t believe me for a second. I want her to think I’m just an asshole. If people think you’re a pompous jackass, they have low expectations of you. I don’t like expectations—then I feel like I have to live up to them. The thing about other people’s expectations is that you’re never really able to live up to them. You’ll end up disappointing them, and then you feel like shit for doing so.
“Can I ask you one thing?” The words are out of my mouth before I can think better of it.
When I find her eyes again, I’m struck by how close we are. She’s now sitting up, bringing us too close together. If I leaned in slightly, I might feel her breath mingle with mine. Her scent would surround me, more than it already is. The idea of it sent my senses into overdrive from the moment we started this stupid day together.
“I won’t tell you my secret recipe for chocolate chip cookies,” she mutters. I wonder if her half-assed attempt at a joke is a defense. I know it’s something I’ve done when things don’t feel like they’re under my control and I desperately need to get a grip on the situation.
This seems like one of those situations. We’ve both leaned in slightly. I can see the slight tinge of pink on her cheeks, despite it being the start of fall. We’re so close I can make out her individual eyelashes. Every time she blinks, her long lashes kiss the apples of her cheeks. Her lips have a sheen to them from her licking them with anticipation. Does that mean she’s imagining kissing me the way I’m imagining kissing her?
“To be honest, I don’t give a damn about your cookie recipe. I don’t enjoy baking.”
The swells of her breasts almost spill out the top of her shirt. My fingers twitch at my sides, desperate to run along the soft, exposed skin. Would she tremble underneath my touch? All I’d have to do is reach out to find out…
“Ask your question.”
I don’t ask my question. It’s escaped to the back of my mind. At the forefront is the need to lean in closer. Maybe after just one kiss, one swipe of our tongues against one another, I’ll be able to get her out of my mind. I’ll escape to New York tomorrow and forget all about the woman who drives me mad in more ways than one.
Against my better judgment, I reach up and sweep a stray piece of hair out of her eyes. It didn’t seem to be bothering her, but I wanted the excuse to touch her. To finally feel her skin under my touch.
Her chest hitches at the contact. We’re both caught in the moment, staring into each other’s eyes, wondering who will completely cave first. It’s a constant push and pull with us. I’m not a man who likes to lose or a man who gives in to temptation, but for her, right now, I might be.
My thumb skirts along her cheekbone as I memorize the feel of her soft, flushed skin. I won’t allow myself to surrender to this again. I need to commit every single moment to memory before I come to my senses all over again.
“Camden,” she breathes, leaning into my touch.
God, she’s reactive. Her chest heaves, and her lips part, just waiting to press against mine.
“Yes, shortcake?”
“What are you doing?” I wonder if she realizes she’s leaned in closer, placing her lips inches from mine.
“I’m thinking of doing something incredibly fucking stupid.”
“Like?”
“Like tasting that sharp tongue of yours. I can’t help but wonder if your insults won’t bother me as much if I get to taste them.”
My pinky and ring finger press into her neck. Her pulse thrums erratically against them, giving away that she’s lost control just like I have.
“We shouldn’t.” There’s not an ounce of conviction in her voice, despite her words ringing true. I absolutely shouldn’t want to kiss the woman who’s driven me mad from the moment I first met her. But lust isn’t logical. She’s temptation and lust all wrapped into one, and for once, I’m dying to give in to it.
“You’re right about that,” I say, my voice low.
“I want to.”
“Why do I want to give you what you want for once?” My thumb traces over her cupid’s bow before running along her top lip. Her lips part even wider. I continue my path down, pushing her bottom lip as her saliva coats the pad of my thumb.
I’m about to trap her mouth with mine when she takes me by surprise. Her mouth opens even wider. I let my thumb slide deeper into her mouth, feeling the scrape of her teeth against my skin.
Her lips close around my thumb. My cock stirs as I imagine her in the exact same position but with my cock between her eager lips.
The moment her tongue runs along the pad of my thumb, I’m pushing off the quilt and getting as far away from her as possible.
