Sweet Addiction (Sweet #6)(9)

Once in the hallway, she glanced right and left and chose right since she and Lucas had entered from the left and she hadn’t thought they’d passed a bathroom.

She finally found what she was looking for and slipped inside, locking the door behind her. She leaned against the vanity, her hands gripping the edge as she stared at her reflection in the mirror.

She looked …shocked. Unsteady. Her eyes had a bewildered look. Her pulse was too rapid and the pressure in her chest was ever increasing.

It wasn’t as if she thought of Cole on a daily basis. Quite the opposite. She’d made peace with his defection a long time ago.

Really, Ren? Is that why you’re standing here out of sorts? Because you made peace with the man you adored beyond reason who left you after awakening a fire inside you that has never been extinguished?

She ran water over her shaking hands but was careful not to mess up the light makeup she’d applied before arriving. She didn’t want any sign of her disturbance to be evident.

When she finally managed to hold out her hand and see no noticeable tremble, she turned off the water and dried her hands.

A knock at the door startled her.

“Ren, open the door.”

Lucas she might have expected. But it was Cole standing just two feet away and suddenly her hands shook so hard that she had no hope of regaining her composure.

CHAPTER 5

Ren briefly contemplated refusing but then she realized she was huddling in a bathroom hiding for God’s sake. She opened the door, flicked her hair over her shoulder and arched one eyebrow as she stared back at Cole.

He filled the doorway. Big. Broad shouldered. So damn good-ooking that she couldn’t help but stare.

Time had been extraordinarily good to him. It wasn’t fair. If there was any justice, he’d be balding, sporting a potbelly and married with two point five bratty children and a wife who nagged him on a daily basis.

“What do you want?” she asked.

He stared at her a moment longer, his gaze stroking over her as surely as if he caressed her with his hand. “You, Ren. I want you.”

Her eyes widened in surprise. If she weren’t so flabbergasted, she’d laugh. Lucas. Cole. Herself. All apparently blunt people who didn’t play coy games and pretend they were unaffected.

So many things were on the tip of her tongue, but in the end, none of them mattered and all were better left unsaid. They solved nothing. So instead, she spoke a simple truth.

“Even if I wanted such a thing, I belong to another man. I don’t just belong in the symbolic sense of having a relationship. He owns me. I am his possession.”

She watched to see if he so much as blinked. He didn’t. But then perhaps he too had followed the path they’d struck out on together all those years ago. He was after all in a private club for just such practices.

“You said ‘even if I wanted.’ Do you want it, Ren?”

She frowned. Again, she hadn’t expected that approach.

“No,” she replied honestly. “We’re two very different people now, Cole. We can’t just pick up because we once shared something special. You can’t just walk back into my life after ten years and expect me to open my arms.”

Cole’s eyes glittered and his jaw tightened at her response. “Tell me this: If there was no Lucas, if you didn’t belong to another man, would you be holding me at arms’ length right now or would you be willing to see if there was still a spark between us?”

She’d already been honest. There was no point in fudging the truth now. She closed her eyes, breathed out and then reopened them again, hoping she sounded steady and calm. “Maybe? I can’t really answer that. My loyalty lies elsewhere. The point is there is a Lucas. I’m not free. This conversation is pointless.”

“What about your heart?” he asked in a quiet voice. “Where does that lie, Ren?”

She held up her hands. “Enough, Cole. Nothing good can come of this. It was nice to see you. The years have been good to you. I would never be disloyal to Lucas. He owns me. I’m happy to be his. I’m his by choice. My choice. There is no other place I want to be more.”

“I’m glad to hear that what belongs to me can’t be swayed by the pretty words of others,” Lucas drawled.

Ren jumped, took a step back and stared over Cole’s shoulder to see Lucas leaning against the opposite wall. How long had he been there? And why did she feel so damn guilty?

She rubbed her hands down her jeans, dismayed at how this evening had turned out. She simply hadn’t been prepared to see Cole again after so long and definitely not to be bombarded by memories of them together and his bluntness about wanting …What did he want? It all sounded so crazy. They see each other again, in some sex club, and he wants her back just like that?

She pushed forward and frowned as she automatically went to Lucas’s side. He slid an arm around her but it was a gesture of support, not a movement meant to signal his possession to another man. She appreciated that. At the moment she didn’t feel like being in the middle of some pissing match. She needed comfort and Lucas had sensed it.

As she stared back at Cole, he looked …tortured. Again, why? None of this made sense. Unless…?

“You knew I’d be here tonight, didn’t you? Did you plan this? How did you know? You weren’t surprised to see me. This didn’t come out of the blue at all.”