She pushed against my hold. “Let me go. I told you I’m not fucking you again!”
As much as she thrashed her body against mine, she knew exactly what word she had to say to make me let go…and she didn’t.
I wrapped a leg over her and pinned her arms, but she kept thrashing, clawing me with her nails when she got one of her hands free.
“Fuck, Maia. I heard you crying. Just fucking let me hold you.”
She stilled. “I don’t want your comfort.”
“Then tell me tostop.”
She tensed like she was going to say it and force me to leave, but she didn’t say a word. She remained rigid in my arms, still struggling a little, but at least she’d stopped crying.
“Are you okay?” It was a stupid question, but I had to ask.
“I’ll be fine,” she said dismissively. “I’m just mad at myself for giving him this kind of power over my life. He almost outed me on TV.Who does that?”
The guy you spent years with when you could’ve been with me?
Not helpful. And not even true. I’d been on the road almost that whole time.
“My offer to call him still stands.”
“As does my request that you go fuck yourself.”
I huffed a laugh. “Get some sleep.”
“Do you have amnesia or do you just not listen? I told you I have insomnia,” she snapped.
“I don’t sleep well these days either,” I said, not sure why I was admitting it to her. “I can get to sleep fine, but I wake up in the middle of the night freaking out because I don’t know where I am. I guess it’s from being on the road so much, but it happens when I’m at home now too.”
“So get a nightlight,” she said dismissively.
I smiled against her hair. The more she snapped at me, the more relaxed she was getting in my arms, like she was channeling it all at me and letting it go. Why did that make me feel good when I didn’t want to care?
“See, I tried that,” I said calmly, as though she’d been trying to make a helpful suggestion. “But the light messes with my sleep without fixing the problem. For those few seconds when I first wake up, I can’t make sense of where I am even if I can see my surroundings.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because maybe we can help each other. You didn’t seem to have any problem passing out last night when you were with me, and having someone in bed with me seems to stop the adrenaline from getting so bad that I can’t get back to sleep.”
It wasn’t true. I’d had plenty of people in bed with me over the years and it hadn’t helped, but lying here holding her felt better than lying in another room by myself, waiting to see whether sleep or panic would take hold first. She didn’t need to know that, though.
“Fine,” she said. “But I’m still not fucking you.”
I didn’t miss the way her hips pressed back into my crotch as she said it. She was being a brat and wanted me to force the issue so she could act like I was the only one who wanted it, like she wasn’t just as hungry for it as I was.
Not this time. I meant what I’d said on the plane. If she wanted me again, she was going to have to own that.
I slid a hand down into the pajama pants the hotel had helpfully provided for her upon request. “Don’t worry,” I said, adjusting my other hand so I could cup her breast, resting her nipple between two of my fingers without doing anything more than that. “No hanky-panky.”
She rolled her hips, grinding back into my now very erect cock. “I mean it, Zane. I’m not fucking you.”
“My hand is just cold,” I said, and she stiffened, finally catching the reference.
“Mine too.” She reached back and slid her hand into my shorts, but stopped short of my cock, just like she’d done all those years ago in Miss Alice’s house.
Back then, it was easier to resist her, more fun to make ourselves wait because I knew we could fuck ourselves stupid the next day. Now, I wondered if this was really it for us. If she really left in the morning, would I regret not swallowing my pride to get one last hit of the chemistry between us?
