“Ivy, look, I’m not going to lie. I want you so fucking bad I’m going crazy with it. But if there is something I need to know before we do this, now is the time to tell me.”
Ivy shrunk from him and tried to tug her hand free, but he held fast. Her pale eyes did the darty back-and-forth thing they did whenever he picked at her like this. As if he was getting close to seeing something she didn’t want him to see, and she was searching for a place to hide. Skittish. Like a trapped kitten. And he hated himself every time because people shouldn’t be forced to tell their stories if they didn’t want to.
But they’d never been a flight of stairs away from fucking before, so Sean braced himself against his guilt and pushed on. He lifted his free hand to her face, let his palm curl over her cheek, holding her like that until she leaned into his touch and released a tiny sigh.
“The other week, when we almost—” He bent his neck to keep her eye contact. “When I got on top of you, you froze and I lost you. You went somewhere else. I don’t want that to happen tonight. But I need you to meet me halfway.” The callus of his thumb stroked the soft skin right under her eye. “Tell me,” he gently urged, his voice quiet, but determined.
“I was in a bad situation before,” she started haltingly. “I made poor decisions about who I left a party with and the consequences were—unpleasant. Hope was there when it happened. She doesn’t want it to happen again, obviously. Neither do I. But this is different.” She looked up at him, her blue eyes melting into a pleading look. “So different. And I don’t want it to stop. I don’t want you to go.”
Schooling himself not to react to what she’d told him had been the biggest exercise in restraint he’d ever experienced. She hadn’t given many details, but he could read between the lines enough to know what had happened was a hell of a lot more than ‘unpleasant.’
“That jackass, Adam, who showed up in Bowie’s—was he involved in thisbad situation?” Sean asked, knowing the answer but needing to hear her say it.
Ivy dropped her gaze to the floor.
“Ivy.”
“Yes.” Her reply was barely a whisper, but it echoed like a scream in his head.
He should have killed the bastard when he had the fucking chance. “What the fuck—?”
She cut him off with a look, crystalline eyes flaring to life, burning with a new intensity. “I’ve said all I’m going to say on the matter. It was a long time ago. I don’t want to give it another single moment of my life. That’s why I’m here, Sean, with you. I don’t want to look back. I want to look forward. I want to move forward. With you.” Slowly, tentatively, she slid her palms up his chest, gliding them over the planes of his abs and his pecs.
Her touch, even through his clothes—Damn, it brought his desire right back to life. Guilt swamped him for wanting to take her the way he was imagining—hard and all-consuming, until there was no difference between him and her, until they were only one.
“Please don’t let this change things. Please don’t walk away.” Her voice was so defenseless, so pleading, he would have done anything for her in that moment. Fucked her against the wall if she’d asked. But she wasn’t asking for a fuck against a cold wall in a concrete hallway. She was asking to move forward. Away from an old memory and toward a new one. A better memory.
And, God help him, he was going to give it to her.
“I don’t think I could ever walk away from you.”Not in this lifetime, and not in the next.He kept that part to himself for now, but he lowered his head and covered her mouth, sealing both his spoken and unspoken thoughts like a vow.
She bloomed under him instantaneously. Rising on her tiptoes, she looped her arms around his neck, and he drew her in, lifting her up so she could wrap her legs around his waist. With their height difference, this seemed to be their go-to pose when they kissed, and he was more than fine with it, because it meant he could be closer to her.
He took the stairs with Ivy wrapped around him. Thank God he knew this staircase like the back of his hand since he was essentially climbing it blind with his lips suctioned to hers, eyes closed, his mind already in the bedroom. When he broke through the upper door and into their hallway, he paused before making the split-second decision to turn right toward Ivy’s apartment. If they were going to do this the right way, she’d be more comfortable in her space.
Releasing her, he relished the soft weight of her body as it slid off his. Meanwhile, his body was so hard and tight with pent-up need, he wasn’t sure he’d make it across the threshold.
Ivy made quick work of opening her door, and he followed her inside. The mood shifted as soon as the latch clicked shut behind her. Her anxiety became a palpable entity in the room, like the churning in the air before a storm.
She stood there, her back to him, hand on the doorknob, like she was contemplating whether she should bolt and run.
Sean couldn’t imagine what she’d been through, and that worried him. He needed to know how she’d been hurt and where, so he wouldn’t hit any of those triggers again.
From their last encounter on her couch, he’d learned she didn’t like being underneath, that she needed space, a way up and out. So he’d start there.
Slowly he moved up behind her, letting his footfall make noise so she knew he was coming. He placed his hand over hers on the knob.
“Don’t say it.” The irritation in her voice surprised him. “I know what you’re thinking, Sean, and don’t even think about saying it out loud.”
Sean lifted her hand and brought it up to her chest. He drew her back against his own chest and they stood there, Ivy cradled against him, their fingers interlocked against her heart.
“And what exactly am I thinking, Ivy?” he murmured above her head, a smile quirking his lips at her surly, standoffish tone.
“You’re thinking that we don’t have to do this. And if you say it, I’m gonna kick you in the nuts.”
“We don’t—”
Ivy whirled, as he’d anticipated, because if she was anything, she was true to her word. He moved to the side in the nick of time, as her knee came up.
