17
Ty
Ifigured he would stop me from unzipping his fly, but he didn’t. He just stood there, allowing me to pull it open.
Eagerness coursed through my veins.
Maybe the whole experience, maybe every day we had spent together in this cabin had helped him see why disregarding this chemistry between us was so fucking stupid. I wasn’t about to waste the precious opportunity. Tucking my thumbs in the waistband of his jeans, I started to slide them down when he took my wrists in his hands.
“Don’t.”
One word, such a simple request. Yet it felt like he’d taken the knife he’d offered me and plunged it right through my heart.
“Why not?” I meant to sound stronger, or at least angry, but it was clear by the way my voice cracked that it pained me that he continued holding back. “What reason could you have for not wanting to do this?”
“Too many.”
“Liam, we almost got killed a few nights ago. We’re in the middle of the woods. We’ve been here for days with no clue how long we’re gonna be here, no clue what’s gonna happen after this point. What if something happens to me? What if something happens to you?”
His brow twitched as he eyed me as though I’d threatened to end my own life. “Why would you even say that?”
“Because I’ll say anything I need to say if it’ll make you stop being such a stubborn asshole…if it’ll make you stop getting in the way of what we’re both feeling.” He didn’t respond, just scanned my face, leaving me wondering what he was searching for. “Don’t act like you don’t want me.”
“Ty, I’m never oblivious to my feelings about anything. I’ve been honest with myself the entire time—since I first met you—because I know myself well enough to know every sensation that creeps through my body. I didn’t become the man I am by caving to every fleeting impulse of lust.”
“Lust?Is that all that’s there?” I asked skeptically.
“No.” He sounded defeated, and it just confirmed my own feelings.
“If you know your feelings so well, tell me what they are.”
His jaw tensed, his shoulders squared off. He stared into my eyes, looking so intense, like he was about to fucking deck me. “Wild, untamed chaos. As though everything inside me is falling apart and I don’t want to put it back together. You’re like a puzzle that doesn’t make any sense, yet somehow I feel like I understand how it all fits together.”
“Funny. I’ve been feeling the same way,” I confessed.
“I’m not trying to pretend I feel some other way than I do. I wouldn’t disrespect you by thinking you’re so naive or unaware of what’s happening here. But I hurt people. That’s what my life has always been about. Some of them I hurt because it’s my job to hurt them. Others I hurt because I get too close. Even having left my work behind me, I knew from the moment we met that I’d always have to keep a certain distance to keep you from getting hurt. However, I was too fucking greedy to just let you walk away. You slipped through the cracks, and now look where we are. And it’s all my fault.”
I could see his guilt about us being trapped in the cabin because of his past, something I wanted to soothe so badly. “It couldn’t have been easy, having to live your life with all the walls and barriers, being worried you’re constantly gonna hurt other people. I can see even just by the way the past few days have gone down, how much it’s weighed on you. I feel bad if you in any way feel responsible for this because I don’t blame you, Liam, for whatever crazy, fucked-up people there are in the world who are out to get you. I can feel how much you don’t want to hurt me, but don’t you see how much you’re hurting me right now?” Tears rushed to my eyes, and I saw panic race across his expression. I moved closer to him. “Every time you push back, every second you keep your hands away from mehurts.”
He raised his hand and pressed it to my cheek, and I felt the visceral relief of his touch moving through me.
I gasped. “Don’t you see how much I need this?”
He pulled his hand back, and as he did, there was that sensation I’d described, this ache in my chest…cutting me to my core.
He studied my expression, something so predatory about the way he probed. He rested his hand against my cheek once again and moved closer. All the confidence and certainty that had been present in me just moments earlier diminished and was replaced with a sort of trepidation, nervousness. He was already intimidating as hell, but to be the subject of his undivided attention felt overwhelming.
Yet not something I wanted to end.
“What are you thinking?” I asked because it was becoming agonizing trying to guess or imagine what lay behind those dark eyes.
“The chaos that rages within me when I look at you confounds me. As a fortysomething-year-old man who’s spent his life determined to understand and tame every impulse within him, to control all those things, to resist any weakness that might be present, it scares me.Youscare me, Ty.”
“You scare me too.”
“If you knew the things I think about when I look at you—what I want to do to your body, what I want from your heart—you’d be that much more afraid. But you would also know that I will always put your safety above all else.”
I set my hand over the one he had on my face, stroking my thumb against it.
