Guilty Needs(27)

And that wasn’t something he really had an answer for. She smiled at him, rose up on her toes. A chill caressed his lips as she pressed her mouth to his. He couldn’t feel her, not really, just the brush of something cold—there, then gone. “Stop beating yourself up, baby. It really is okay to let me go. And it really is okay to love her.”

“I don’t…” He wanted to say he didn’t love Bree. There was no rhyme or reason to it. He’d known her for as long as he’d known Alyssa and up until a year ago, she’d been his wife’s best friend. His friend. Nothing else. Then he had started having bizarre dreams about her. “That doesn’t make sense.”

She shrugged. “Love never does.” Slowly, she backed away and whispered, “You have to decide to let me go. Until you do that, until you really do it, you’re going to live with the guilt. And you’re going to live with wanting her and not having her. Wanting something you can’t have sucks, baby. You know that. So just let me go.”




Let me go.

Colby stood in the same spot three hours later.

The same spot, but nothing in the room looked the same. Most of the walls were bare. He had boxed up all of Alyssa’s clothes, along with her shoes, her jewelry, her books.

Everything.

Empty boxes had been down in the garage, waiting for him.

Now, there was only one thing left.

Lowering his gaze, he stared at the ring on his finger. It didn’t come off easily. He still hadn’t put on the fifteen pounds he’d lost over the past year, but the ring didn’t want to come off. When it did, he started to add it to the boxes piled on the bed, but instead, laid it on the dresser.

He was having the local DAV store pick up Alyssa’s clothes and stuff, but he couldn’t part with his ring so easily.

With one last, lingering glance, he left the room and slipped outside.




He hadn’t known exactly where he planned to go—at least not until he was pulling into her driveway.

He should have though.

He thought about her too often. He could hear her laugh in his sleep, smell the scent of her skin even when she wasn’t there and when she smiled, it hit him in the chest like a ton of bricks.

Bree.

Maybe he was falling in love with her…no, screw the maybe. He was pretty sure he already was. But could she love him back?

He didn’t know. She was sitting on the front porch when he pulled up, almost as though she’d been waiting for him. With her head leaning back against the plush cushion of the porch swing, she watched him as he climbed out of his car, mounted the steps and crossed to stand before her.

“I forgot to bring your bike back.” She shrugged. Her silken skin gleamed gold against the pale green tank-top she wore. Her eyes were carefully blank. “No big deal. I’ve got the truck. How did you get the car back?”

He glanced over his shoulder and said, “Callie. She came by to clean and I asked her to drop me off.”

She was quiet, saying nothing else, just staring at him, no expression on her face. His heart kept skipping beats, dancing around erratically while heat and need sizzled through him. Damn it, he wanted her.

Needed.

But she was so damn quiet, so reserved, and he didn’t know if she’d welcome him if he touched her again or jerk away.

Voice ragged, he asked, “Are you mad at me?”

Her lashes lowered briefly over her eyes. She was quiet for a second, long enough to have his stomach going into knots. “No, I’m not mad at you.”

“Should I apologize?”

She blinked. “Why?”

“Because if it’s something I should be sorry for, then I won’t do it again. Should I be sorry?”

Her tongue slid out, slicked across her lips. “No.” Her voice was all but soundless. “Nothing to be sorry for.”

He crouched down in front of her and gingerly laid his hands on her thighs. She wore a denim skirt that was too damn short for his state of mind and the long, lean expanse of her legs bared all but had him drooling. He stroked down low. What he wanted to do was stroke up. Up under the skirt, to tug her panties down and strip them away. Then hold the skirt out of the way as he pressed his mouth to her and licked her * until she came.

That was what he wanted.

But instead of doing that, he murmured, “And what if I want to do it again? And more?”

“Do you?” She stared at him from hooded eyes.

In response, he shifted his left hand higher, pushing it under the hem of her skirt and brushing the tips of his fingers against her heated sex. “Yes,” he said, his voice harsh and guttural.

“Why?”

He touched her again, a firmer touch. He could feel the hot silk of her through her panties. “Because I’ve been thinking about doing it for six months now and it’s driving me crazy wondering.”

She blinked, her lashes so low over her eyes that all he could see was a thin sliver of gray. Then she arched her hips up, oh-so slightly and rubbed against his fingers. “So is this for the sake of curiosity?”

“No.” He hooked an arm around her hips and hauled her to the edge of the swing. “If it was just for the sake of curiosity, I could have f*cked you that day before I left—you would have let me. I could see it in your eyes.” Then he slanted his mouth against hers and kissed her.