“How much have you drunk tonight?”
“What?!”
“He had his hands all over you!” I yell back, feeling the rage creep in. “Good Lord, Riley, are you so far gone you didn’t even notice?”
She looks at me narrowing her eyes as I get closer again and wrap an arm around her, drawing her to me. She instinctively puts her hands on my chest and I stop in that moment and feel the cold, because her touch sets off a fire in me.
Her chest rises and falls quickly, revealed by a shirt that is too open and shows off too much of her. I let my eyes fall down to her chest, along her neck, up to her mouth.
Oh my God.
I swallow hard, pushing back the instinct to put my hands in her hair and pull her to me.
“He had his hands all over you,” I repeat more calmly this time.
“That’s not your problem,” she says and her voice has gone down a full tone as well. “You can’t go around trying to kill everyone.”
“I can’t let someone touch you like that, Riley,” I growl, dying from the desire to bite her lips and make them mine. “I couldn’t stand it.”
“What are you saying? Have you lost your mind?”
Yes, I fucking have.
No one will touch her.
Ever again.
“You’re the one that…”
“I don’t belong to you, Ian.”
There it is. I heard it. My heart crumbling to dust in her hands.
Riley isn’t mine. She never was.
I didn’t allow her to be.
And even though I feel her slowing abandoning herself in my arms now, putting away the armour and taking of the mask; even though I could kiss her and feel her on my skin, I can’t.
I can’t have her like this.
Not if I can’t hold her with me.
I let her go instantly.
Her nearness makes me suffer, and I can’t control it. Not now. Not when the pain is coming back to swallow me up and ruin my life.
Her eyes are asking me to stay, to talk, to clear the air, but instead I turn and go back inside to avoid this thing getting out of hand for both of us.
To avoid letting her stay here, in my arms. To avoid losing my head again for a woman I’ll never be able to love as well as she deserves.
