“Yes,” I said, knowing the truth of it all too well. “Can never quite shake that little fella, can you?”
“No, we can’t,” he murmured, his eyes searching around the room as though he’d returned to that feeling of hopelessness we’d stirred in our discussion.
As we continued to move together effortlessly, all I saw was him, in all his beauty and vulnerability, witness to the hurt and pain in his past, but also his strength, determination, and compassion I detected through so many of the simplest of moments we’d shared.
It didn’t feel like we had been enjoying the moment long enough when he muttered, “The song stopped.”
We were still moving, and I had to press my heels into the floor to keep myself from going on.
“Yes, of course it did. I was just impressed at how good we were doing,” I lied, because for a moment, just a brief moment, the song had gone on in my mind, as I was hypnotized by those eyes. It was like that moment in Eric’s condo in Puerto Vallarta, the way I’d let my guard down for just an instant, but how Ty saw that, sawmyvulnerability. It wasn’t something I was proud of, nor was I proud in the moment as I stood before him, wondering what the fuck we’d just done.
Ty pulled closer, pressing his body against me in a way that there was no denying what he wanted. He ran his hand down my back, still looking at my face, his gaze settling on my lips.
“There are other ways of passing the time, you know?” he said as his hand caressed my ass.
I bit my tongue, clenched my fist, being stubborn, mostly to prove a point—to remind myself that I was stronger than that, that I wasn’t about to succumb to Ty just because he wanted me to. And yet, in some ways, I felt I owed him that much, that I’d done this to him. Couldn’t I just give him that pleasure, offer him a moment of ease?
I gulped as this tug-of-war played out within me, the shoulds and shouldn’ts, coulds and couldn’ts, so many good reasons not to and so much desire pushing the other way. I thought about Eric and what he might think. Of course, if he could have been inside my brain and known what I felt, and how much I cared about Ty and his happiness, he never would have questioned anything we did.
I felt Ty’s free hand unfastening my belt, then tending to my fly.
Resist, I told myself.Fight it. Don’t do this.
I still had the strength to battle it off effortlessly. Problem was, even though I had the will, my desire to reject Ty was slipping away from me.
I knew what it was like to feel unwanted…unloved, and I saw that as I looked into his eyes.
And all I wanted was to vanquish that fear from his thoughts. To let him know he wasn’t alone. Not that night, at least.
