“I didn’t say you should.” His glance at her was savage, his voice dipping to a low whisper she had to sway toward him to hear. “I waited the week of your birthday. The day before. Even the fucking day of your birthday, until the clock struck twelve. Waited for one message that never came.”
He was pummeling her with feelings. Giving her bursts of pleasure and a hit of pain.
But didn’t that basically sum up their whole relationship?
“You were right. If this was a matter of getting each other out of our systems, we should be done by now. But I don’t feel like I’ve moved on.” His tone turned guttural. “Even now, all I can thinkabout is getting you somewhere dark, with a bed. Without a bed. It doesn’t matter.”
She passed the back of her hand over her mouth, and her brain latched on to his words. Work him out of her system. Yes. Yes, that was all she needed.
The tension and desire and need between them could be released like the valve on a rice cooker, and they’d go back to sleeping well and not agonizing over how the other person was so close and so far away. Right?
He cleared his throat and shook his head. “Forget it. What’s your mom’s address?” he asked gruffly. He cursed before she could respond. “Hang on, I think I left my phone inside.”
Livvy ran her thumb over the screen of her own phone while he jogged back to the building.
If you haven’t worked him out yet, what makes you think a final screw will?
It wouldn’t. She was lying to herself in order to engage in a dumb, self-harming decision. Her body was revved up, the heat between them impossible to ignore.
You said you were going to stop. Move on. Look forward.Take care of yourself.Yeah, she had. But it was far easier to stop when one wasn’t in constant proximity to the addiction they were eager to cure. Right now, she was like a recovering smoker who vowed to go cold turkey while a lit cigarette rolled just out of reach.
At worst, she’d wake up with a slightly more bruised heart.
It’s so knocked around already, do a few more blows really matter?
She touched her chest with shaking fingers.Oh, Livvy.Don’t do this. This way lies madness.
But the relief. She’d have relief, even for a few minutes. Respite from her lust and her stress and her problems and worries. Pure pleasure, where she wouldn’t have to think about her family or her life or her lost love.
She quickly opened the browser and typed in a search.
Then she texted Nicholas.
Livvy shoved her phone in her pocket like that would make her less complicit in the frankly stupid action she’d just taken, or would make her less ashamed of the shoddy justification she’d given for engaging in said act. Her heart raced, her palms sweating. She wiped them against her bare thighs, her skin almost too sensitive for contact with herself.
Nicholas emerged from the building a few minutes later and walked down the pathway. His face was clean of all expression. He got inside the car.
He could have not seen her message. Or ignored it. She laced her fingers tight together and pressed them against her belly.
Then he placed his phone in the dashboard mount, open to a map with the coordinates she’d texted him.
“The usual rules?”
“Yes. One night,” she whispered. “I need...”
His hand landed on her thigh, shocking her withthe heavy heat and electrical tingle that ran through her body. His rough fingers stroked higher, moving her short skirt up, clenching on the soft flesh there. They both stared at the way his fingers molded the skin. How many times had his fingers dug into her thighs while he slammed his body into hers?
She needed. Christ, she needed.
Nicholas released her to put the car into drive. “I know exactly what you need.”
Chapter 7
THIS WASa terrible idea. Beyond terrible. Reckless. Dangerous.
All things she made him.
Energy and excitement roared through him. His senses felt like they’d been cranked into hyperdrive.
