Riding Hard by Lauren Landish

Author:Lauren Landish [Landish, Lauren]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781503903517
Published: 2019-03-26T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

MARK

Driving the ATV back from the back pasture where I’ve been working myself into an exhausted mess, I thump my forehead with my palm, cursing myself yet again.

I’m a complete asshole.

For a moment there, I considered that I might have some redeeming qualities. I brought Katelyn home, I was a gentleman escorting her to her door . . . but no, complete and total bastard.

I’ve replayed what happened in my head a thousand times. Driving home, I thought I’d be watching the mental repeat while I jacked off, but now . . . now it just makes me cringe.

She trusted me, willing to expose her inner goodness and light, to place that soft beauty in my hands. I should have cradled it, and if I couldn’t do that, I should’ve walked away before she got hurt. What I did was take her light and squeeze it tighter and tighter until it blinked out and she fell apart in my arms.

For a beautiful moment, I thought it was okay, that she was with me. The sass she gave me about being bossy seemed like a hint that she could handle at least a taste of me.

But with her eyes barely open after I wrung every last bit of pleasure out of her that I could, she seemed confused that I called what I’d done to her “easy.” She didn’t understand, had gone further than ever before, had more than she ever dreamed possible.

For me, though, it was barely the tip of the iceberg. And even before I kissed her, I knew. As much as her light called to me, as much as it still beckons me with the sweet taste of heaven, she’s not the woman I deserve. I’d just dim her brightness, ruin her new and innocent attempts at independence. And though I’m a bastard, I can at least give her freedom from my destruction.

Still, I fed my needs one last time, tucking her in and caring for her, letting myself feel better that at least I left her satisfied and hoping that she’d remember the end of the night, not the way I’d been too rough with her. But even I know that not so much as sending a good morning text after being fingers-deep inside her is the pinnacle of shithead moves.

I keep telling myself it’s for her own good. It worked for most of the day yesterday as I toiled in the barn, repairing the auto feeder and getting elbows-deep in a machine that was built three years before I was born and coming out blacker than midnight in the back forty.

When she calls Sunday morning, I’m too short with her, more grunts than usual, but I can’t stop myself. It’s so ingrained in me. And it’s an easy slip into the protective facade that will hopefully keep her from seeing how disappointed in myself I am.

“Yeah?”

“Hey, Mark,” she says hopefully. “I figured you’d be up, and I was going—” Her words drive a stake in my chest.

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