Sweet Sinful Nights(22)

“So not only was I busted for Facebook stalking my ex, but I’m also the complete * who let her get away. She was the one. The one who got away. Let this be your lesson, men of the world. Don’t be me. Don’t be King Schmuck.”

The clip ended.

When she’d originally watched the first half of the video, she’d wanted to reach her hands through the screen and throttle him.

Now, she wanted to squeeze her own heart for the stupid way it dared to beat the tiniest bit faster when he’d said perfection.

Silence cloaked them both. She stared at the screen, not quite ready to meet his eyes, too afraid of what she’d see. She’d only come there to clear the air, and now she was spun back in time, feeling everything again.

Lust. Desire. Sadness. Anger, too.

Without looking up, she asked quietly, “What part?”

“What do you mean—what part?”

“What part did you want me to see?” she asked, keeping her voice steady so she wouldn’t reveal the cascade of emotions waterfalling through her chest. “Because it’s funny. But which part is for me?”

She kept her head down. If she looked in his eyes, she’d lose herself. She’d lose her center. She’d lose every ounce of strength she’d relied on during the last ten years.

His voice was a confession. “She was perfection... she was the one... and I was the complete * who let her walk away.” Then his fingertips brushed against her wrist. She held in the hot shiver she felt from his touch. “I’m sorry I didn’t go with you. I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you. I’m sorry I gave you an ultimatum. I’m sorry I twisted words around because I was desperate to keep you.”

His words now were a thread that pulled her up. She lifted her face and looked at him. In a second, she knew. He wasn’t performing, he wasn’t acting, and he wasn’t faking a thing. His eyes were serious. She believed him. She wanted to believe her body, too, and her body knew what it wanted.

She’d always listened to her body, had always been deeply in tune with its wishes and wants. Since she was four years old she had wanted nothing more than to dance. She had danced every day, harder, faster, better, until she was at the top of her game, and then tore her ACL one day during a rehearsal. But still, she remained a physical woman. She liked to be one with her body. And just then, her body and her heart wanted the same damn thing.

For Brent to make her feel good again.

As only he could. As only he ever had.

When she and Brent had been together, he’d f*cked all her troubles away. Every kiss, every touch, every taste was the antidote to every painful memory. Sex with him was exhilarating. It was the greatest rush, the sweetest high. It was ecstatic amnesia. When he f*cked her, she was no longer one of the Paige-Prince kids. She was not the left behind, the whispered about, one of those kids whose mother murdered their father for money.

With Brent she was muscle and bone, and she was solid and strong. She was a woman wanted by a man.

She wanted that man too. With everything inside her. The desire burrowed into her blood. It called out insistently, like a beating drum, like a fire in her veins. She might regret this later. She might regret it in a few minutes. That moment she didn’t feel regret. She felt hungry. She felt greedy.

She felt justified.

“Perfection?” she asked, tilting her head to the side, reeling him in with his own description of her. “I’m perfection?”

He inched closer, nearly inhabiting the same space. “Yes,” he said in a low rumble that sent goosebumps over her skin, a promise of other things he’d say in that wickedly sexy voice. “You are perfection, and everything I said was and is true.”

Her tank strap slid down the slope of her shoulder. “You pine for me?”

“You’re the one who got away. And I can’t stand the thought of that happening again. I will do whatever it takes to keep you,” he said, and the words torched her heart. They started a goddamn bonfire in her belly.

And they scared the living hell out of her.

So she pushed back. “But you don’t even have me.”

“I am well aware of that. And I intend to change it.”

She didn’t know if she was ready to hear these things from him, not when she still had so much to say. She grabbed the collar of his shirt, tugged him between her legs, and practically snarled at him. “I don’t know how to believe you.”

“You don’t have to believe me,” he said, his voice matching hers, sounding furious, too. “Because I’m going to show you.”

The heat in her core shot up. God, he turned her on when he was like this, even as she fumed. She gripped his shirt tighter. “I hated how you left,” she said, airing her grievances like dirty laundry as she spread her hands across his shirt, his firm chest one layer away. “I hated that you picked your career over me. And I hated not seeing you every day.”

His eyes narrowed. He wedged himself between her legs. His dick was hard against her thigh. Rock hard, and it excited her. “I hated not seeing you, too,” he said, his voice rough and hungry. His entire body seemed to vibrate with restraint. She wanted to watch that restraint snap. She wanted to live in that moment when control spiraled away.

He grabbed her hips, his big hands wrapping around her bones, his thumbs digging into her sides. This was their dance. Their foreplay. They knew their steps. “Every day I wanted you,” he said.