Free Dare by Glenna Sinclair Page A

rose around my face, and pulled my hair out of its elastic band to shake it out fully.
    “Thanks.”
    “You should wear your hair down more often,” he said, looking at me with a weird face. “Your hair is beautiful.”
    “When it’s down it just gets in the way,” I said tiredly, pulling it back up and out of my face. “It’s not a very glamorous life on the farm, but it’ll do.”
    We stood in silence for a long moment, suspended in the golden sun finding its way through the outer barn doors. A tractor labored by, the roar of its engine filling the space between us, and as it faded into the distance, Sebastian cleared his throat. “I really, really like you, Rachel.” His bare chest glistened with sweat, light between the wooden slats slanting over the muscles there.
    I snorted at him, hitching my panties and jeans back up over my hips. “Here comes the ‘but.’”
    “No ‘but,’” he protested. “No ifs, ands, or buts about it. I just really, really like you. Can’t I say that without you second guessing me?”
    I crossed my arms over my breasts, suddenly shy. “I guess…I guess that’s good and all. People should like who they screw.”
    Sebastian threw his head back and howled with laughter. “Oh my God! Where do you come up with these things?”
    I shoved his shoulder—hard. “I will not be a source of entertainment for you,” I informed him. “If you’re going to make fun of me…”
    “I’m not making fun of you!”
    “Then how is it you make me feel like a million bucks one second and then lower than low in the next?” I demanded. “Why are you a gentleman at first and then a jerk in the same breath? Isn’t it exhausting for you to switch back and forth, back and forth? I don’t know how you do it. It’s exhausting just for me to be a witness to.”
    I yanked on my bra, eager to take my leave of the man.
    “Rachel, stop,” he said, taking my scrambling hands away from the clasp and doing it for me himself. “I don’t mean to be a jerk. I just…that’s just the way I am. I don’t even know I’m doing it, most of the time. I’m sorry if I make you feel bad. Call me out. Let me know I’m doing it.”
    “You don’t have to worry about that,” I said, glaring daggers at him. “I’ll let you know right away.”
    Sebastian made an odd sound in his throat and put his arms around me, kissing the top of my head. “And even when you try to be sour, you’re sweet. Look at me.”
    “No.” I kept my head down, making a move to get my shirt back on over my head, still feeling vulnerable and defensive and something else I couldn’t quite put a finger on. Maybe it was the shock of having sex out in the barn. I’d practically grown up out here. It was no different from having sex in my childhood bedroom. More than likely, it was the shock of actually consummating something with Sebastian, who I’d fantasized about, hemmed and hawed about, and finally come to the snap decision of taking him inside of my body. Yes, that was probably what it was—that, in spite of my misgivings about him, I’d still decided to bang him.
    Sebastian laughed at me. “Why won’t you look at me?”
    “Because, idiot, I think I’m in love with you.”
    I hadn’t really wanted to say that. That much I was sure of. And I was also sure that Sebastian hadn’t wanted to hear it. He stiffened before his arms loosened around me, and I was able to duck away from him and finish pulling my shirt on, down over the rest of my torso.
    “Rachel…”
    “Stop,” I sighed. “You don’t have to say anything. I—I don’t know why I said that.” I didn’t understand why I was trying to let him off the hook. Maybe I was just trying to cover for myself, for my own insecurities. I’d seriously just told a guy I barely knew—a guy I’d just had sex with for the first time—that I loved him. There wasn’t much that was more embarrassing than that.
    “No, Rachel, it’s that…I think we’re on the same