A Winter Wedding(81)

“It could’ve been someone else you saw,” Olivia insisted.

“It could’ve been.” Kyle put his glass aside. “But it wasn’t.”





22

By the time Brandon and Olivia left, Lourdes was exhausted, but she couldn’t relax. Kyle was too keyed up. She could sense his agitation, could almost feel the air crackle with his pent-up energy—and all the things they weren’t saying only made it worse. She wanted to blame his dark mood on the fire, but she could tell he had more on his mind. He scowled whenever he looked at her, as if she’d suddenly become his enemy instead of Noelle.

“Do you think we should talk about...what happened...before?” she asked.

“You mean when I had you naked beneath me? No.” His jaw remained hard as he reclaimed the glass he’d pushed aside a few minutes earlier and, every once in a while, a muscle twitched in his cheek.

She cleared her throat. “I know it must’ve been confusing, since...since it felt like there was a little more going on than either of us expected.”

“A little more?” His gaze locked onto hers like a heat-seeking missile. “Do you moan like that when you have sex with your other friends?” He shook his head. “God, the way you looked at me, the way you welcomed my finger inside you—”

“Stop!” Embarrassed, she smoothed down her sweater. “I thought you’d be the one to understand how casual worked. You couldn’t have been in love with that woman who tattooed your name on her arm after only a few dates, and yet you slept with her. I’ve never slept with anyone I wasn’t in a committed relationship with. I was just trying to...to establish an understanding between us, to make it possible for us to have what we both wanted.”

“Yeah, well, after all that talk about how it didn’t mean anything, you surprised me.”

“You surprised me, too!” But what more could they have done to protect themselves? It wasn’t her fault their lovemaking hadn’t gone according to plan, wasn’t her fault that the moment he touched her, everything they’d said at the door had fallen away as if it was the words and not the actions that had no meaning. There’d been no emotional distance between them at all, which had spooked her as much as it had spooked him.

“Forget I brought it up,” she said. “I thought... I thought we could clear the air, but you’re obviously not ready.”

“I can’t imagine why,” he muttered sarcastically.

“What do you want me to do?” she asked.

“Nothing. I don’t want anything from you. Go to bed.”

She didn’t leave. She felt too bad about everything.

After waiting for several seconds, she tried to get him talking about something else. “It was nice of Brandon and Olivia to come by.”

He made a sound of agreement, but that was it. Then he got up to pour himself another drink—only this time he carried the bottle back to the couch with him.

“It’s getting late,” she said.

He had no response to that, either—except to toss back what was in his glass and to pour another shot. She got up and walked over.

His eyebrows rose when she grabbed the bottle, which he hadn’t yet put down.

“Are you sure you want to go on drinking?” she asked. “Facing the damage at the plant tomorrow won’t be hard enough?”

She thought he might jerk the bottle out of her hand. He had that right. It wasn’t her place to tell him what to do. But she was only trying to take care of him, and he seemed to understand, because after a few seconds, he cursed under his breath but allowed her to move the bottle out of reach.

“Come on. Let’s get you to bed.” She pulled him to his feet and led him to his room, where he fell back on the mattress, fully dressed.

After removing his boots, she was about to cover him up, but the way he was staring at her held her in place. “What?” she said.

“So are you going to let me f*ck you or not?” he asked.

Her breath caught. “You think talking like that’s going to take the meaning out of it?”

His eyes glittered with hurt and anger. “I can show you how it works when it doesn’t mean anything,” he said, pulling her on top of him.

When she didn’t refuse, didn’t attempt to get up, he unzipped her jeans. “Tell me silence means yes.”

She closed her eyes. She should refuse, but it was the last thing she wanted to do. If she left his room right now, she knew she’d probably just come back in five minutes—or less—and by then he might have passed out. “Yes,” she murmured.

He quickly dispensed with their clothes, but instead of kissing her and holding her as he’d done before, instead of engaging his tongue and his hands and his voice, he put on a condom and turned her onto her stomach.

He didn’t want to feel any tenderness, she realized. He was searching only for physical release—and she wasn’t opposed to letting him have it. She wanted to feel him inside her as much as he wanted to be there, even if it had to be like this.

But everything moved too fast for her to feel satisfied. The feral intensity was exciting, unlike anything she’d ever experienced before—except that when he finished, she felt a strange sort of disappointment.

Since he was done with her, she started to get up. She’d known what he was going through tonight—how upset he was and how much alcohol he’d had. She figured she had no right to be surprised or offended, since he’d delivered exactly what he’d promised. She was the one who’d agreed to settle for whatever he was willing to give, which was why it startled her when he slipped an arm around her waist, lifted her back onto the mattress and pinned her down.