Hudson(39)

I grab her arm and pull her to me. “Alayna.” I search her eyes. “If you don’t want to have sex with me again, you need to tell me.”

“I do! I do.”

She throws her arms around me and buries her face in my chest. I shouldn’t do what I’m about to do, but my arms have a mind of their own, my body needing to protect her and hold her and comfort her. I return her embrace.

“What is it?” I stroke her hair. “Tell me.” I want to know her thoughts, her reasons, her worries. Even though I can’t give her the same in return.

“I’m not good at relationships. Of any sort. I have…issues.”

“Like what?” I know more about her past than she realizes. Her issues are nothing compared to mine. I shouldn’t let her know that I’ve researched her. I should let it go, let her secrets stay inside her. I’m not going to share mine with her.

But there are other parts of me—parts that want her to share with me and darker parts that want to force her to open up. Those parts take over and I ask, “Does this have anything to do with that restraining order?”

She stills in my arms. “You know about that?”

A rush of satisfaction runs through me. I’m addicted to this power—this thrill of being able to make someone feel a certain way. She’s uncomfortable, humiliated.

She tears out of my arms and buries her head in the blankets.

And I hate myself.

This power isn’t the power I want. It’s not who I want to be with her. I want the light, carefree Alayna back—the one that yielded to me with pleasure, not discomfort.

I should let it go. But I have to fix it.

I lie on the bed next to her and force a laugh. I put my hand on her back and massage her shoulders. Her naked skin beneath my fingers feels incredible and warm. I can’t stop touching her.

I bring us both back to the thing that we have, the only thing we share—our physical connection. “I know intimate things about you, precious—the way you look and the sounds you make when you’re about to come—and you’re concerned about this?”

She groans and my di**ck throbs.

“It was a big deal. The biggest deal. Like my biggest secret. I thought my brother had buried it.” She rises on her elbow and turns to eye me. “And are you saying I should be embarrassed about how I look and sound when…you know?”

It’s the last part of her statement I want to react to, but I still have mending to do. “I needed to know anything that might come up about my pretend girlfriend. It wasn’t necessarily easy to find, but not incredibly hard. It’s been buried now.”

With that out of the way, I cup her cheek and lose myself in her brown eyes. “And never, never be ashamed of how you look or sound at any time, especially when you’re about to come.” I circle her nose with mine. “I’m honored to be acquainted with you in that way.” I’d like to be acquainted with her in that way right now, in fact.

“I’m mortified.” She falls back onto the bed. “About the restraining order, I mean. I don’t know how to react to the other.”

“Why?” Her past is nothing like mine, and in many ways, her restraining order is silly and frivolous in comparison to the lives I’ve ruined.

But I understand her regret and her compulsions. They intrigue me and I want her to see that I can relate even though I can’t tell her how. Instead, I run my hand across her face and through her hair. I shouldn’t be touching her like this—it’s too near showing affection—but I can’t help myself.

“Because it makes me feel all weird and tingly. And turned on.”

“Fantastic.” I should take her again, right now.

I don’t. “But I meant, why are you mortified?”

“Oh.” She flushes and my di**ck hardens. That color on her face is so beautiful—she looks the same way when I’m f**king her, when I’m driving inside her. The urge to ravage her deepens.

But I want to hear her other answer. It’s important.

“Because it’s evidence of my crazy,” she says. “You know when I said I love too much? The restraining order is part of that, and I like to pretend it never happened.”

Like to pretend it never happened. I can’t get to that point. The things I’ve done are still real in my mind—every moment, every day. They consume me and eat at me, and even though I have learned to regret them, I can’t move away from them. What I’d give to pretend they never happened.

I suspect that, despite what she says, it’s the same for her—that she can never escape the things she keeps running from. I admire her for trying.

So, as if I have any power to make it true, I give her this wish. “Then it never did.” I kiss her nose, and for this one moment, I let words wash away past sins—both of ours. Mine and hers. “We’ve all done insane things in the past. I’d never hold it against you.”

In this time and space, I’m captured by her—connected in a way that goes beyond the physical. I know her at a depth that she can never understand.

And that’s when I return to reality. I can’t keep this connection. I have to let it go, have to push her away. Alayna Withers cannot belong to me. “Just another reason romantic love holds no interest for me. People get crazy with it.”