He pressed my mouth to his shoulder to muffle my scream. And when I finally looked back at his face, his expression was divine—head tilted back, mouth curved in a smile, and eyes closed in bliss.
Bliss.
Pleasure.
None of it was love.
So when I finally regained my strength, I maneuvered myself backward. He slipped out of me and opened his eyes. I watched him come back to himself. We both heard people laughing as they walked past the sauna, and I watched his cheeks flood with heat. Mine, too, I realized, as we cleaned up and fixed our clothing.
He didn’t say a word, but I couldn’t let either of us get away with that. I’d asked a question, and neither of us had answered.
“This wasn’t love, Connor. You know that right?”
He looked at me and nodded. Nothing more. Just a slow, deep nod.
“So what are you trying to say to me, Connor? Are you saying you can’t love me? That I’m not worth anything more than—”
“No!”
His response was explosive. He took a step forward until he towered over where I was sitting on the bench. I had to arch my back to look at him, but I didn’t back down. Sure, my body was still humming from his proximity. Part of me remembered that he hadn’t done his customary, “Just once more, please,” and really hoped that this was it.
But it wasn’t. He just stared at me with that intense expression. Fierce, but that wasn’t the emotion I was looking for. And so I stayed still and matched him, stare for stare. Then he asked the question I’d been dreading, the one I couldn’t answer anymore than he seemed able to.
“Do you love me?”
I shook my head. “No.” Truth, but not the whole truth. “Maybe I’m close.”
He swallowed. “Maybe I’m close, too.”
I arched a brow. “Really?”
“Yeah.” But there wasn’t joy in his tone. Not the kind I wanted. Not the scampering butterflies of happiness that were trying to burst through my chest.
“But you don’t want to love me. Because I lie.”
“You haven’t really lied,” he admitted. “Not really.”
Was he trying to convince himself?
“I’m still a spin doctor,” I said.
He winced. Yeah, this really was a problem for him. I sighed and scooted backward as far as the bench would allow. He let me go, then rubbed a hand over his face.
“I want you. Like no one ever before, I wantyou.” The emphasis on the last word told me he was struggling between wanting me and believing the things he’d always believed. And within those very specific lines, he shouldn’t want me, but he did.
It was an internal war, one that I didn’t know what to do about. It was his decision. Just like I had to decide if I wanted a man who lived with such rigid beliefs.
I didn’t know. And while we both stared in frustration at each other, my phone rang.
The tone was loud, jolting both of us. He stepped back as I scrambled to grab it from where I’d set it down when we first came in. I looked at the caller ID and blanched. It was my mother. I thumbed it on quickly.
“Hey, Mom!”
“Gia, where are you? We’re about to cut the cake.”
“Oh, my. I didn’t realize the time had gone by so quickly. I’m coming right now.”
“But where—”
