When the Road Went Silent novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: One Night

Ward walked to the end of the dock and threw the tracker as far as he could.

It hit the water with a small flat sound.

When he came back I was standing in the open door of the shop with my arms wrapped around myself.

"Go inside," he said. "It's cold."

"I don't want to go inside."

"Max."

"Cade begged me tonight. He begged and I felt nothing." My voice cracked. "Seven years, and I felt nothing, Ward. I don't want to feel nothing."

He stopped three feet from me.

"What do you want?"

I had never asked a man for anything in my life.

I had waited for them to offer.

"One night," I said. "Just one. No promises, nothing after. In the morning you go back to being the man who stood there and didn't vote, and I go back to being the woman who hates him for it."

His jaw clenched.

"That's not fair to either of us."

"I didn't say it was fair."

"You're angry."

"I'm angry and I'm sober and I'm asking."

He looked at me for a long moment.

I saw the fight in his face, and I saw him lose it.

"One night," he said, rough. "Nothing after. You say stop and I stop."

"I won't say stop."

He crossed the three feet between us in one stride and I was in his arms.

His mouth came down on mine, and it wasn't gentle.

It was a mouth that had waited years and had run out of patience.

I fisted both hands in his vest and dragged him in, and he made a sound low in his chest that went straight through me.

He kicked the door shut behind us.

He lifted me by the backs of my thighs and I wrapped my legs around his hips, and he carried me to the workbench and sat me on the edge of it.

His hands were already under my shirt, hot and rough on my ribs.

"Tell me again," he said against my throat.

"I want you."

"Say it like you mean it."

"I want you, Ward."

He stilled.

I had never said his first name.

I had called him Deacon for seven years, like everyone else.

He pulled back far enough to look at my face, and his eyes were black.

"Again," he said.

"Ward."

He took my shirt off over my head and dropped it on the floor.

His mouth moved down my neck to my collarbone and the swell of my breast.

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