Not really.
Not even close.
This was connection. I wanted to give Jordan pleasure, cause her to want more, need me so badly she’d let me see her like this.
No.
I yank back. Let her boneless body slide down the wall.
She stumbles, shaky on her feet. With a flushed face, she reaches for me.
I withdraw and step out of range, refusing her touch. “You think you know me. You don’t. I can read your every thought, every desire,” I say as if I planned this rather than surrendered to an undeniable need.
A guttural curse rips out of me as I lunge for the door, slamming it so forcefully, the frame rattles.
In the hall, I press my forehead into the cool plaster and brace against the emptiness. Try to anchor myself. But I can only think of her rosy face. The imprint of her body yielding beneath my hands. The memory of her cries. Her warm pleasure pouring down my fingers.
For the first time in forever, I have no plan. No control. The variables have shifted. The rules changed.
Nothing makes sense in the face of the relentless pull drawing me back to that room.
To her.
To the place where I lost myself completely and the cold didn’t matter anymore.
I force myself upright. Take a breath. Walk away.
This stops.
Here and now.
Because if it doesn’t, there’s no telling what I’ll become when her trust blazes through all my defenses. No telling if I’ll ever find the man who existed before she touched me, before she inspired me to want.
Before she compelled me to feel anything at all.
Chapter 11
Jordan
When he slams the door, the window shudders. The echo vibrates through air still thick with tension.
I stay on the floor, my legs useless, my heart hammering wildly enough to crack my ribs. My body pulses with aftershocks, little electric currents zipping through nerves that should be dead, not singing.
The betrayal of my flesh burns hotter than shame.
What have I done? What have I let him do?
Worse, I begged for his touch, wordless and desperate against his hand.
I press my palm to my mouth, trapping the sob that tries to escape. My skin reeks of Kirill. That cold metal scent mingles with a darker, muskier one. My thighs are slick with the evidence of my surrender.
I squeeze my eyes shut, but the darkness only worsens the shame. I see his face, feel his fingers inside me, hear the rough catch in his breath when I came apart.
“Stop it. Stop it stop it stop it.”
But my treacherous body refuses to listen.
My muscles hum with satisfaction, with completion. The sweet release after years of nothing, of emptiness packaged asspiritual fulfillment. My skin’s too sensitive, my nerves a live wire seeking connection.
