Page 85 of Resist

“Hmm?” I look up just as I grab the corkscrew from the drawer and meet the confliction in her eyes.

“Are you drinking it with me, or are you having something else?”

“Umm . . .” There’s something about the way she asks that tells me the answer to this question matters. “What do you want me to drink?”

“Nothing. Never mind. Forget I asked,” she says, obviously bugged by something, and then turns back to the room, leaving me wondering what it is she needs from me to feel comfortable.

I study her as our evening runs through my mind. Despite the goddamn need owning every part of me right now, thoughts connect and collide. Ones I want to shove away and push aside. Ones that make the man in me who wants to ravage and take slide to a halt when Vaughn’s words come slamming back to me.

Her footsteps stop and start beyond my view.

Her sister had demons. They ran away from her uncle. Vaughn’s sudden panic attack that first night we were on the verge of sex.

The door of the balcony slides open.

Any intelligent person can draw conclusions, make assumptions about what he did to them, and fuck if I want those thoughts in my head right now.

The faint rush of the city’s noise filters up from the street below.

I’m not a fixer. I’m not a man who wants to step in and save the day. Far from it. I’m too goddamn selfish to be that way.

So why am I walking into this knowing there’s bound to be complications? Shit, there already have been . . . and yet here I am.

When I round the kitchen counter with two glasses of wine in my hands and look out the windows to the balcony, only one thought races through my mind.

And here she is.

Her back is to me. Her hair playing in the wind and lit up from the city’s lights below. Her body the perfect complement to my memorized skyline.

I’m reckless with some things. Calculated with almost all others. And I break the rules every chance I get in my professional life.

But not my personal.

Never my personal.

And yet staring at her, seeing her here, makes me want to break rules I never even knew I had for myself.

How fucked up is that?

I was intrigued by her because she ran away. I chased and threatened because I wanted her in the primal sense. My testosterone-fueled need to have and conquer and claim. And now that she’s at my fingertips, now that I can have her, I’m uncertain what’s going to happen once I do.

I shake my head as I stare at her. As I want her in ways I haven’t wanted a woman in a long time.

If ever.

The rules. No attachment. No getting to know you. Nothing personal.

My goddamn rules.

Maybe it’s time I forget the rules and figure out the exceptions to them.

She emits the softest of murmured sighs when I press a kiss to her shoulder. That damn sound is like the permission I was asking for without knowing it. As if I actually needed one more reason to have this woman crawl under my skin and fuck with parts of me I know for a fact having sex with her won’t satisfy.

“Thank you,” she says as she takes the glass of wine I hand her, but I remain behind her, my front to her back with my chin on her shoulder.

“Thank you for the fun evening.”

She’s silent for a beat as she takes a sip and we both take in the night around us. Taillights and taxis’ horns. Streetlights and the distinct sound of the buses stopping and starting.