Being Me (Inside Out #2)(35)

The idea that I’ve convinced myself he is less controlling than he is has my heels colliding heavily on the driveway. I charge toward the 911, the car I’ve let myself drive instead of holding on to my own identity. I don’t look at Chris but damn him, I can feel him all over, everywhere, inside and out, and in intimate places I can’t convince my body he isn’t welcome. It’s beyond frustrating to know that anger this potent isn’t enough to stop the thrum of awareness that just being near him creates. Not for the first time, I feel Rebecca’s words from that first journal entry I’d read deep in my soul. He was lethal, a drug I feared. I relate to her, and I understand the inescapable passion she felt and lost herself inside. I don’t want to be her. I’m not her. And for the first time since my initial first few encounters with Chris, I wonder if I am drawn to him because I’m self-destructive, and he to me for the same reason.

I reach the side of the car and in my haste to seek the shelter of the 911, I haven’t retrieved the key. Without looking at Chris, I fumble with my key. I know he will be standing by his Harley, all decked out in leather and denim, looking like sex and sin and my satisfaction. The key falls on the ground. I squat to retrieve the key and my composure.

Suddenly Chris is there, at eye level, as he had been the first night we’d met, when I’d spilled my purse. My gaze lifts and meets his, and a blast of awareness shakes me to the core. My breasts are heavy, my thighs achy. My skin tingles. A fine line between love and hate, Alvarez had said, and I understand them in this moment. I stare into his eyes and I wonder if he too is thinking about the night we met and the many ways we’ve made love. The many we have not and I want us to, when I should not. I should be seeking space, independence, and my own identity, which he is threatening by taking over my life. It makes no sense how I feel in these eternal moments. How can I be this furious with Chris and still powerfully, completely lost in him?

“We have a lot to talk about, don’t we?” he asks, breaking the spell. His tone is low, and the rasp of anger in his voice is impossible to miss. It jolts me back to reality. He showed up at my client’s house and he’s angry with me?

My temper overpowers all other emotions in me and I reach for the key. His hand closes over mine and heat races up my arm and over my chest. “Don’t do what you did tonight ever again, Sara.”

The sharp command in his voice hits a bull’s-eye on every physiological male dominance issue I own, of which there are many. I try to pull my hand back but I am captive to his grip, leaving me with words as my only weapon. “Ditto to you, Chris. And yeah. We have a lot to talk about—somewhere other than my client’s front yard.”

His green eyes glint fire a moment before he releases my hand and helps me to my feet. There is a possessiveness to his touch that has me leaning into him when I should be shoving him away. He notices, too; I see it in the slight narrowing of his eyes, the gleam of satisfaction in their depths that I both hunger for and reject.

“I’ll follow you to my place,” he informs me.

“I have no doubt you will.” I click the key clicker to unlock the 911. I’m about to open the door when his hand comes down on it, and he leans close, so close his breath is warm on my neck and ear. That woodsy scent of him, which I could luxuriate in for a lifetime, permeates my senses, tearing down my already weak defenses.

His hip nudges mine. “Don’t think for a minute that when we pull up to my apartment, you’re going to ask for your car and leave.”

It is all I can do to fight him when he touches me. Purposely, I do not look at him, certain all my resolve to distance myself from him will crumble. “If I decide to leave, you can’t stop me.”

“Try me, baby. You’re coming up to my apartment.”

I whirl on him. “I don’t want—”

“I do,” he vows, and before I know his intent, his fingers twine into my hair and he pulls me into his arms, against his hard, warm body.

“Let go,” I hiss, my hand flattening on his chest. I intend to push him away, but the heat of his body seeps through my palm, radiating up my arm. My elbow softens, and I am instantly closer but not close enough.

“Not a chance,” he promises, his mouth closing on mine, firm with demand. His tongue licks into my mouth with one brutal, commanding swipe followed by another, and I have no resistance left. I’m weak, so very weak, for this man. As always with Chris, he demands my response and I helplessly respond. I am instantly wet and wanting, my nipples tight points of aching need.

I try to resist the lure that is Chris, but the taste of him, familiar and almost brutally male, mixes with his anger and mine, and the effect is explosively passionate. I want to shout at him, push him away, pull him close, strip away his clothes, and punish him for what he is doing to me, what he takes from me. What he makes me need.

When his lips part from mine, too soon and not soon enough, I barely fight the urge to pull him back. “Was that for the cameras, Chris?” I pant at him, furious at myself for such weakness.

“That was because you scared the shit out of me when you didn’t answer your phone. I don’t give a damn about the cameras.” His mouth comes down on mine again, and his hand slides under my jacket, over my backside, pulling me flush against his thick erection.

I whimper, impossibly aroused, and my hands slip beneath the thick leather of his jacket, wrapping his waist. His hand caresses up my back, molding me tighter to him, branding me with heat and fire and sizzling passion that threaten to steal all the reason I possess. No man has ever made me forget where I am, forget why I should care.