Addicted After All(35)

His hand lowers to the small of my back, and he dips his head. His lips to my ear, he whispers, “I’m not going anywhere.” He pauses, an extended one that stops my pulse. “Lil…how aroused are you?” He would’ve checked without asking if we were alone.

I flush and tilt my chin up. I whisper quickly, “I’m only aroused by you.”

His face sharpens and he says, “Shhh.”

Why is he shushing me? “It’s true.” My voice shakes.

He kisses the outside of my lips, really tenderly. Where is his head at?

“Lil,” he warns, like I did something wrong. I concentrate and realize I’m pushing my pelvis right up against him, his bulge edging towards my wetness as I hike my leg around him.

I drop my foot, my whole body flaming with embarrassment. I cover my face with both my hands. This is one of those days I wish I could erase. Dr. Banning, my therapist, says that everyone has them, but I always play my bad days on loop, tormenting me for eternity.

“It’s okay, Lil,” he breathes. “Look at me.” He grips my wrists, tearing them away from my face. Still I tighten my eyes closed, too ashamed…I’d like to vanish again.

Invisibility, kick in. Please.

“I love you,” he says so empathetically that it tears open my heart. “I understand you. Please hold onto that, Lil.”

He should be angry at me. He should hate how disgusting I am—what my body is craving. It’s not right.

“Lily,” he forces, cupping my face in both his hands. “Breathe, love.”

I take a deep one, and then I sense a tall masculine body a couple feet behind me. Most likely Connor. He’s not too close, but the longer he stands there, the more my body reacts in ways I dislike. Lo studies all of my muscle tics and spasms. Diagnosing me. I cross my ankles and shut my eyes again, snuffing out every perverted image that I should not have in public or at all.

Why? Why do I have to like things that I shouldn’t?

The heat of two bodies stimulates parts of me that my brain has abandoned. The sensual parts that cares little about names, relations and faces. Just the high of a climax.

Not Connor. I can’t grow wet from him.

This is so wrong.

I cling to Lo, shaking, afraid of myself. I haven’t felt this gross in a while.

His lips fall to my ear at the right moment while he rubs my back. “Shh, Lil.” He pulls me even closer to his body. No space between us. “I’m going to take care of you, love.”

With sex? I wonder. The guilt sinks to a low, hollow place.

“Not with sex,” he says, as though he can read my mind.

“I’msorry,” I mumble together, burying my face in his arm and refusing to acknowledge Rose, Ryke or Connor.

Today is a not-so-good day.

I could have reined myself in, but I slipped off the diving board and belly-flopped in the deep end. I know addictions are up-and-down kind of things, but the downs really, really hurt. At least Lo was wading in the water, there to keep me from drowning this time.

He hasn’t given up on us.

It’s silly to think that’s a possibility anyway. It’s an irrational fear that I should never let cling to me. He is my soul. I am his. The moment we give up on each other is the moment that neither of us exists.

Lo lifts me in a front-piggyback, and he carries me towards the staircase while I clutch him like a koala bear to a tree.

As we leave, I hear Daisy enter the kitchen. “Mom has already planned my birthday.” A long pause before she adds, “We’re taking the yacht out, and everyone’s invited.”

I can barely even concentrate on that future drama when my mind has zeroed in on Loren Hale and only Loren Hale. I need him.

I want him.

I just can’t let myself have all of him tonight. No sex.

But it will be enough. It has to be.

Lo climbs two more stairs before the front door bursts open and bangs against the wall.

He cranes his neck over his shoulder, and every muscle in his arms and abdomen tenses against me. I peek from the crook of his bicep and make direct eye contact with a stern, severe man. Dark brown hair that’s grayed by the temples. A jaw as hard and intimidating as Ryke Meadows’ and a glower as deathly as Loren Hale’s.

Jonathan Hale is the scariest parts of both his sons.

“Meeting,” Jonathan Hale says roughly, his voice husky and foreboding. “Now.”

My arousal still exists. I can’t just extinguish it because of Jonathan’s worst timing. So I recognize that I’m in serious trouble.