She stared at me. Then her backbone went rigid and she stopped pushing her tits toward me. “Well,” she said, “what if I want to, withyou?”
“What if Idon’t?”
She drew back like I’d slapped her. But then she fired right back, “What the hell happened? What changed since I saw you, like a week ago? You took me to your place and lit candles and kissed me for like threehours…”
“So?”
Her plump lips twitched in a legit pout. “So… So we had sex and now you’re just trying to blow meoff?”
Yeah, that was aboutit.
Could she not get the fuckingmessage?
She had to be able to fucking feel it. My skin was practically crawling with disgust. I knew I was acting different. I was even looking at her differently, like she was beneath me or something—like I couldn’t even stand looking at her, and that was the fuckingtruth.
But there was a shitload of pain behind it that I was not gonna let hersee.
Too bad for both of us, Roni Webber was not a girl to back down from a fight or a man, even a pissed-the-hell-off one. She had way too much experience for a girl her age. And right now, all of it was fucking eatingme.
Every time I looked in her green eyes, the want I had for her just churned in my stomach with therevulsion.
“It’s just not gonna work,” I told her, as dead-cold as I could manage. I’d never been a cold dude, but it was the only way I knew how to deal withher.
Just shut her out,completely.
“I… I thought…” She was struggling, really struggling to pull together the pieces in her head. “I thought… this was the real thing. You know, like…real.”
She stared at me, at a total fucking loss when I saidnothing.
“I thought you felt… the same. We spent so much time, and… I thought we both wanted… I trusted you. Iconfidedinyou.”
I stared back at her, silently fucking furious, because she wasright.
I didwant.
I did start totrust.
Andshe screwed mybrother.
She sure as fuck never confided in me aboutthat.
She was still standing there, in my face, and I needed hergone.
So I took her hand, pulled her close to me and twined my fingers through hers, holding her there. Her nose was an inch from mine when I told her, slowly and deliberately, “You and me, we’re not goin’ down thatroad.”
She stared up into my eyes, looking hurt and damn confused. “Whynot?”
“Because,sweetheart, you tried to go down that road with Piperfirst.”
She ripped her hand frommine.
“You think I wasn’t gonna find out?” I said, low and fucking accusing, letting some of that hateful fire that had been simmering in me all week burn right through thecold.
She was shaking her head slowly, staring at me, and tears were starting to brim in her eyes. And all I could hear in my head was my brother’svoice.
You know thetype.
You’ll never be able to trusther…
