No Surrender. Sara Arden

didn’t want to be trite and wait until prom.”

      “So who was it?”

      “You wouldn’t know him. He lives in Canada.”

      “Don’t go Sixteen Candles on me. Come on. I’ll tell you mine.”

      “Yours was Lynnie. At Winter Royalty.” She rolled her eyes, but then she smiled. “She told me all about how magical and special it was.”

      “Was it?” Those words punched him in the gut. “I’m glad.”

      “Wasn’t it for you?”

      “Of course it was. Then eight months later she broke up with me.”

      “Because she knew you were the one. She wanted to make sure neither of you ever had any regrets.”

      “I’ll be honest—all of my junior year, I thought I was dying. I dated other girls, but there was only Lynnie.” Only Lynnie, until he became someone else. Until his job changed him. Or maybe it unearthed who he really was, deep down in his bones. Because even though he saw horrible things, he made a difference. He loved what he did. He wished that the world didn’t need people like him, but as long as it did, he’d be there in the thick of it.

      “Enough about me. You already knew that. Answer my question.” He searched her face. “Unless you really don’t want to.”

      “So you’re telling me the state of my virginity and nonvirginity has been a burning question plaguing you since high school?” She smirked.

      “What if it has?” What was he doing? This had gone past the boundaries of their friendship. He could lie to himself and say that friends shared these details all the time, but that wasn’t what this was. Not for him.

      Especially because he knew not for her either.

      She rolled her eyes and sighed. “Jason Carter.”

      “Robbie’s brother?”

      “I was so pissed at him that I went to his house. Jason was home from KU for winter break. He took me out to dinner and we ended up having sex in the back of his Mustang outside Paisano’s.”

      He’d admit, he kind of hated Jason in that moment. He didn’t expect to feel angry. He pushed the thoughts aside.

      “Should I punch him next time I see him?” He tried to retreat, to lighten the mood.

      “No, he punched himself. He married Angie Rhem.”

      She was super high-maintenance, and with a mean streak wider than Stranger Creek.

      They laughed and then fell into that silence that seemed to keep sneaking up on them. At first it had been companionable, comfortable. Maybe even peaceful.

      But now there was something between them. Something heavy and electric. Their gazes met and held, soldered together. Neither of them able or willing to break the moment.

      Her lips parted, pink and soft, as she drew in tiny sharp puffs of air. The firelight cast a warm glow over them and he could see her eyes, wide dark pools he could drown in.

      Sean Dryden had always believed himself to be a good guy and at this moment, if he’d been a “good guy,” he’d have said something.

      We shouldn’t.

      No, we can’t.

      This isn’t right.

      But he didn’t say anything. He waited for the moment to bloom, to become whatever it was meant to be.

      She reached out tentative fingers and cupped his cheek.

      It was the lightest, gentlest caress, and it devastated him. In that single connection, he felt the comfort she offered him. Her grief and her understanding of his.

      And of this moment. What it was. What it could be.

      What it could never be.

      She drew him closer and his emotions choked him. He buried his face against her breast and tightened his embrace around her, holding her so tight that nothing could ever pry her away from him.

      Kentucky stroked his brow, cradled his skull and then slipped down his back only to return again.

      “Share your pain with me. Let it breathe, Sean. You’re not going to smother it. It’ll smother you.”

      “How do you know?”

      “I know. All the people I’ve lost? My parents, my aunt, Lynnie... It’ll drown you. But you’re not dead—they are. So don’t let it.” She continued her soothing caress. “I’ll miss them forever. I’ll love them forever. I’ll even hurt because of those things, but that’s not all there is to feel.”

      He turned his face up into her neck, his lips close to her pulse. “What if I don’t deserve to feel anything else?”

      “Of course you do. Lynnie loved you. She’d want to know you missed her, but she wouldn’t want you to stop living because she’s gone. Let yourself grieve, Sean.”

      “What if I’m not ready to grieve? What if I want to feel something else?” Like the softness of Kentucky’s body under his while he buried himself inside her. The taste of her skin on his tongue. Her nails on his back while she screamed his name.

      God, but he was a bastard.

      The worst part of all this was he knew that if Lynnie could see him, she wouldn’t begrudge either of them whatever solace they could find together. She’d only want them to be good to each other after.

      He wasn’t that noble.

      “Do you want to feel, or do you want to forget?” Her touch was still soothing, but it made him burn hotter, too. “Because after the orgasm is over, you realize those things you were hiding from never left.”

      “Wasn’t this what you wanted when you brought me out here?” He lifted his head and met her eyes. “If it’s not, tell me to stop and we’ll forget this ever happened.”

      Her eyes were luminous and open. He could see all the way to her bones. She wanted him, but she wanted more than what he was offering her.

      “I don’t want to forget it happened, and I especially don’t want you to forget I happened. As good as this feels—” she shook her head “—it’s not worth our friendship. I don’t want to do this and then you can never look at me again because I’ve become a single-use item.”

      “I hope you’d know me better than that, Kentucky.”

      “Sometimes when we’re hurting, we don’t know ourselves.”

      He pushed her down in the sand and pressed her beneath him. Color was high in her cheeks and her eyes glittered in the firelight. Her arms twined around his neck. She obviously didn’t give a damn that they were out in the open, that her hair was fanned out in the sand or that their wet underwear clung to them.

      She was singularly focused on him.

      He gripped her hips and pulled her forward to meet him, grinding his hard cock against her cleft.

      “Live a little.” He threw her words back at her and his mouth descended toward hers oh-so slowly, building the heat and tension between them so they had no choice but to see where the explosion took them.

       3

      THIS WAS HAPPENING, Kentucky thought.

      The fulfillment of a fantasy.

      If she wanted it.

      She could say no, deny him and herself. Or she could take her own advice and “live a little.” Except she was starting to see the fallacy in that being a life philosophy. It wasn’t a one-size-fits-all solution to every problem.

      If