His thumb brushes my temple, his throat bobbing before I see the question form on his lips. “Do you want me to use a condom?”
I shake my head. “Maybe not this time. Plus, you know the chances of . . .” The sentence doesn’t need finishing, not with him. “I’m clean. Are you?”
The question makes me want to vomit. No, not the question, but his impending answer.
“I am.”
“Good,” I whisper, a mix of relief and something acidic warring inside my chest. I hate that we even had to have that exchange.
Patton searches my face for another moment. “Still sure about?—”
I kiss him before he can finish, before we overthink. Before the baggage of our past can ruin this moment.
Maybe we’ll unpack it tomorrow. But tonight? I just want to feel whole again after seven years of walking around with only half of me.
Our bodies writhe like muscle memory that never faded as the haze of desire drags us under again. My tongue tangles with his, desperate and persuasive, pulling a low groan from deep in his chest.
I pull back, breathless against his lips. “Finish what you started, Patton Pierce.”
fourteen
patton
You Planning to Brand Me Next?
Ithrust into the beautiful enigma that is my ex-wife.
Half my life knowing her, and I still can’t anticipate her next move. She’s as unpredictable in life as she is in adojang, pushing me away with a snarky retort and pulling me closer with a searing kiss. Claiming to be unsure about everything between us one moment, and begging to be fucked the next.
To say I was shocked when she stomped her sweet ass over to me, dressed in black leather like my fantasy come to life, and pulled me into a kiss in front of everyone in the barn would be the understatement of the century. But fuck if I was going to let her second-guess it once she had.
After all, wasn’t that the whole reason I was here—in her town, her neighborhood, and her circle? In every aspect of her life? To get her back and keep her this time?
She drives me insane.
And yet, she’s the only thing that drives me at all. No woman has ever made me feel the way she does—like a glutton and a simp. Like I’m both the strongest and weakest version of myself where she’s concerned.
I might have kept my distance physically for the past seven years, but there wasn’t a day she wasn’t the force behindeverything I did. Not a day I wasn’t working through the damn crumpled list I found.
And when I sensed the crack in her facade during that kiss last year, I knew. Her “never again” had started to shift and “forever again” wasn’t out of the realm of possibilities.
I won’t pretend there haven’t been others. A handful of models and actresses who scratched an itch the year after Nisha completely cut me off—fucking changed her number and explicitly asked for space. We’d finalized our divorce by then, and I was heartbroken and angry.
At her. At myself.
With the way she just gave up on us.
And the way I couldn’t save us.
But like with anything real in this life, I quickly realized that once you’ve had a taste of it, it’s hard to accept a substitute. Be it a Big Mac when you’re accustomed to Wagyu beef, or boxed wine when the taste of a fifty-year-old Bordeaux still lingers on your tongue.
Not one of them made me laugh like she did, challenged me like she did. Not one made my pulse race or my skin heat with a mere upward tick of her lips.
Because not one was my ex-wife.
After that year, I gave up trying to satisfy the itch altogether. There was no use trying to quench my thirst with drops of water.
Sure, I’d take a date to an event here or there, and sometimes that would stir up tabloid buzz. But over the past five years, I haven’t touched a woman besides her.
