“Because today…today has been one of the worst days of my life. If you wanted to put me out of my misery right now, I wouldn’t stop you. On the other hand, tomorrow I might wake up full of piss and vinegar and want to go hunt down Hector Ramirez. I might decide to go round two waterboarding the woman we’re hiding under the barn. And I might just feel like asking you to marry me. A good night’s sleep can really change a man.”
“You waterboarded Maria Rosa?”
Rebel lets out a bark of laughter. He looks away, scanning the horizon. A dimly burning sliver of copper, rapidly disappearing below the rocky ridgeline in the distance, is all that remains of the sunset. He squints at it, frowning. “I just implied that I’ve been considering asking you to marry me, and you object to the fact that I dumped a bucket of water over a woman who threatened to kill you not only seven hours ago.”
“Yes, but you were joking about the proposal part. I know you were, asshole.” He has to be joking. Has to be. There’s just no way he’s being serious.
He steps forward just a little so that the gun digs deeper into his chest. There’s a weighty look in his eyes. I don’t know what to make of it, of his body language, of anything that’s happening right now, but I know I’m beginning to feel a little freaked out. He’s so close, I can smell him—entirely natural, and yet addicting at the same time. I can’t get enough. “Why am I not being serious?” he asks. There’s no doubt that he’s looking and acting very serious, but my brain just won’t comprehend the prospect that he’s not fucking around.
“Because! You know. You’re a smart guy. There’s no way you’d ask a girl to marry you if you’d met under the circumstances we did. Especially only a month after that meeting, too.”
“Why not?”
Oh my god. I’m beginning to think he’s lost the plot. “Because you’re meant to date for a couple of years, see if you like someone before you marry them, Rebel.”
He pulls a dismissive face, rolling his eyes. “It takes you years to know if you like someone? Sounds like horse shit to me.”
“Of course not. That’s not what I—” I pause, take a deep breath, then start over. “There are steps you’re meant to follow. You’re meant to live together first.”
“You’re already living with me.”
“You’re meant to meet each others’ parents.”
“You’ve met my dad. He’s a total ass-swipe but you’ve met him. And anytime you want, I’d be happy to meet your folks. You know, I scrub up well in a good suit.” He winks at me.
I ignore him, because this is all far, far too absurd. “You’re out of your damn mind. You’re being a jerk, pushing this because you know I’ll say no and you just want a reaction out of me.”
“If thinking that makes you feel better, Sophia, then that is totally okay. Though, I think in the profession you were studying back in Seattle, the way you’re acting at this moment might be termed as avoidance.”
“Get the fuck out of the way, Rebel. Am I supposed to be shooting these cans or not?” Even as I snap at him, I realize that what he’s saying is true, though. I am deep in the grips of avoidance. But, hell, shouldn’t I be? I mean, what a crazy, half-baked, insane thing to bring up. We barely know each other. And I’m more than a little intimidated by the man. If and when I get married, it’s going to be to someone who didn’t pay a considerable amount of money to buy me from a Mexican skin trader. I’m going to know my future husband intimately. I’m going to know his favorite color and what he thinks of Stevie Knicks. I’ll have heard stories from his childhood so many times already that I’ll know them by heart. We’ll have traveled together and explored different countries, seen and done so much together that…that it will feel like we’ve already had all of our adventures? That we have nothing left to learn about each other?
It hits me like a punch to the gut. People place so much emphasis on getting to know your partner before you agree to spend the rest of your life with them. Perhaps…god, I don’t even want to think it, but I can’t seem to stop myself. Who ever said knowing someone inside out is a good thing? Could that be why so many marriages fail? Because there are no adventures left to be had? No secrets to be uncovered? No mysteries left to untangle?
I shake my head, forcefully shoving the thoughts out of my mind. What the fuck is wrong with me? My father would have conniptions if he knew what was going on in my mind.
Rebel’s wearing a shit eating, I-know-what-you’re-thinking-and-I-like-it look on his face when I climb back out of my head. “You wanna shoot the cans, that’s okay with me. You forget…I get to strip you naked either way, though, Sophia. It’s win/win for me.”
A shiver crawls up my spine, my skin breaking out in instant goose bumps. This bet is a win/win for him, but does that mean it won’t be a win/win for me, too? Would obeying him, doing what he tells me to do without question, be that terrible for me? I somehow don’t think it would. “Maybe I’m…maybe I’m curious,” I whisper.
“Then why bother with our little shooting lesson? You’re clearly a crack shot. Why not just say, ‘Jamie, I want you to take me back to the cabin, and I want you to show me what it means for you to be my master.’”
My hand is trembling on the gun so badly that I’m suddenly worried I might accidentally shoot him. Despite the cool night air of the desert, my palms are slick with sweat, as is the back of my neck. “You told me I shouldn’t call you Jamie,” I say quietly.
Rebel leans in, filling my head with the smell of him. “Oh, sugar. If you were going to say those words to me, I’d definitely want you to call me Jamie. At least then, when you eventually do run away like any sane person would, I can replay the sound of your voice telling me that. And it will be for me. Not the guy who’s wrestling to keep his people together. Not for the guy who didn’t protect his uncle. Not for the guy who’s been searching for his best friend’s missing sister for what feels like forever. It’ll be for the guy who came back from Afghanistan never thinking he’d find a woman strong enough or brave enough to take him on.”
I lower the gun, letting it hang down by my side. “I’ve already told you. I’m not going to run.”
“Then it looks like you’re the crazy one, not me.”
“Looks like it.” I can’t believe what I’m about to do, but I know it’s happening. I’m ramping up to it, a part of me panicked and scared yet unable to talk me out of voicing the words he wants to hear me say. “Jamie, I want you to take me back to the cabin—”
Rebel moves like a whirlwind. He catches me up, wrapping his arms around me, pinning me to him so hard that it feels like our bodies are fused together. He’s kissing me, then. Kissing me so intensely that pinpricks of light start exploding like fireworks behind my closed eyelids. His hands are in my hair, roaming all over my body, palming my breasts, moving over my thighs. The moment is so unexpected and fierce that I begin to wonder if I’m imagining it. My imagination has never been this good to me, though. He slides his tongue into my mouth, exploring me, tasting me, and I follow his lead.
The gun I’m holding drops to the ground, and then my hands are in his hair, arms winding around his neck, and he’s lifting me up so I can wrap my legs around his waist. His hands cup my ass, holding me up. When he pulls back, he’s breathing heavily, his chest heaving, his eyes bright and shining in the near darkness. “We can still have amazing sex without you finishing that sentence, Soph. Don’t say something you don’t mean. Don’t say something you can’t take back.”
A frisson of fear sparks in the pit of my stomach, but that’s all it is—a small nagging sensation. When I look into his eyes and see what’s in store there for me, how giving myself over to him will be so, so much more, that fear fizzles out and vanished entirely. “I trust you,” I tell him. I lean closer, crushing my breasts up against his chest in order to whisper in his ear. “And I want it.”