The return drive to the ranch was a bitch. He had been hoping not to have to make it, but the situation was now growing desperate. Sarah was just stubborn enough to keep denying herself as well as him. She was scared enough to put as much distance between them as possible if he wasn’t careful.
She had done that after her marriage. Making certain she was never within miles of him. Hiding from him, suppressing her desire for him and her own needs. The time for that had come to an end. He would have her, and by God he would do it without lies and without promises he couldn’t keep. Sarah had no idea just how stubborn he could be and he was man enough to keep her in the dark about it.
CHAPTER NINE
Brock knew only one woman to go to for advice on this. He needed to figure out quickly how to get back into Sarah’s bed before he went insane with his need for her. He craved the sight of her, the taste of her. If he thought for a minute that she didn’t want him, that she didn’t ache just as hard for him as he did for her, then he could have left her alone. But he did know. He knew she needed. Saw it in her eyes, in the hard ni**les beneath her clothes, the flush of arousal on her face.
She just needed to be seduced. She needed to be held and protected, cherished and loved, but first, she had to be seduced into it. Seduction had never been his forte. Cade had been the master of it. It had
been he who had chosen their women before Marly chose him. But he wasn’t comfortable going to his brother for this. For this, he went to Marly. To seduce a woman, he needed a woman’s advice.
“You want to seduce her?” Marly asked him carefully from the depths of the large garden tub he found her in.
Bubbles lay around her, caressing her skin, contrasting with the heavy mass of black curls she had piled on her head. She was young and sweet, and innocence still lingered in her eyes despite the sexual excesses she was often a part of.
“Yeah. I need to seduce her.” He sat on the closed lid of the toilet and watched her, confused by the small smile playing about her lips.
“So she’s turning you away?” Brock didn’t like the thread of laughter in her voice.
His eyes narrowed. “You’re making fun of me, Munchkin. That’s dangerous right now.”
He was hard and hurting and more than willing to drag her out of that damned bathtub without Cade’s presence if she pushed him too far. He knew he had Cade’s approval to do so. There would be no hard feelings, no anger. But neither would there be the bonding he needed when it occurred.
She rolled her eyes, settling against the back of the tub as she watched him.
“You can’t seduce an unwilling woman, Brock,” she told him, finally serious. “If she doesn’t want you, then there’s nothing you can do.”
“But she does want me,” he told her carefully. “She’s just frightened, Marly. She’s heard the rumors, she knows about us. Hell, most people do, we’re just too damned rich for them to use it against us. That’s what I have to fight.”
Her face flushed. She wasn’t comfortable with that knowledge, he knew. He wasn’t comfortable with it, but he accepted it. He denied it when he needed to, admitted it when he had to, but he wasn’t ashamed of it. He was alive, and reasonably sane for it, so he had no choice but to accept it. Cade fought his shame on a daily basis, and Brock understood that. The weight of the acts the older brother had been forced into had nearly killed them all. Sam, Brock was never certain of Sam. He appeared the least scarred inside, though the most scarred bodily. He laughed, he played pranks and seemed to be little more than a boy in a grown man’s body at times.
He was hard to figure out, but Brock knew he hurt too. It was there sometimes, when Sam thought no one else could see. In the set of his shoulders, the shadows of his eyes, it was there.
“So if she wants you and you want her, and she knows the truth, then what’s the problem?” Marly asked curiously. “She’s not here and you are. Though I knew you intended to move out, so evidently she ran your ass off. Would she do that if she wanted you?”
Brock sighed. Marly was intent on being difficult today.
“She wants me. Bad.” He flashed her a confident smile. “It’s Sam and Cade she’s scared of, Munchkin.
You have enough sense to know that.”
Marly lost her smile. She frowned at him, a clear reluctance to discuss this subject evident in her
expression.
“Marly,” his voice was gentle, chiding. “Didn’t you think Sam or myself would ever fall in love?”
The feminine growl, low and frustrated, had his lips quirking into a smile.
“He’s still my lover, Brock,” she declared mutinously. “I don’t want to share him.”
“He shares you,” Brock pointed out. “And don’t try to say you don’t enjoy it.”
“That’s not the point, Brock.” She closed her eyes, sighing heavily. “Not one of you will explain this to me. Not in any way. Yet you expect me to willingly accept it. If Cade wants to continue in his stubbornness and not confide in me, then I can continue in mine.”
“Even knowing how much it hurts him?” Brock asked her, trying to keep his voice gentle.
She looked up at him, her deep blue eyes shadowed, regret and resignation swirling in her expression.
“What about my hurt, Brock?” she asked him, her voice quiet. “He beat the shit out of Rick because Tara told me as much as she did, which was damned little. He becomes furious if I question him about it.
He has nightmares and begs brokenly in his sleep and he refuses to let me help him. Do you think this is just about whether or not he f**ks the woman you love?”
Brock’s c**k went to instant attention at those words. Damn. There were times he hated his more than willing flesh. It was causing him more problems than he needed.
“Look at you.” She nodded at the erection straining his casual pants. “Just the thought of it has you hard as a rock, just as it gets Cade. There’s more to this than the three of you finding your pleasures, or your little male bonding ritual or whatever the hell it is. Explain it to me. Make me understand it.”
He would give anything if he could. But he knew the consequences, just as well as Marly did.
“And get my ass kicked?” he asked her carefully. “Rick spent a night in the hospital if I remember correctly, Munchkin. I like my bones unbroken if it’s all the same to you.”