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My breasts crushed to his chest as my hands slid up the coiled muscles of his biceps and shoulders to encircle the back of his neck.
His body shifted forward, coming over mine, forcing me to bend backward slightly, hold on tighter with my thighs. The position aligned us perfectly, his hard cock pressing into the small swatch of fabric covering my growing need, the friction sparking off a need so intense it was painful as I used my leverage to grind myself against him once, moaning into his mouth as I did so.
And that was what did it.
Somehow.
For reasons only he could even begin to understand.
That was what made him grab hold of his control again.
His lips ripped from mine, eyes opening almost immediately, as did mine with the surprise brought on by the lack of contact.
And I found him watching me, eyes intense, almost startlingly so.
"Reeve..." my voice rushed out of me like a sigh, like an invitation, like an in if that was what he was seeking.
But I learned just a second later that it wasn't when his eyes closed, blocking me out.
"Reeve," I tried again, my hand moving up the back of his neck, teasing into his hair, trying for soothing, sensing something was wrong. The kind of wrong that the crock pot had caused the day before.
His body stiffened at the touch then, without much warning, his forehead slammed forward into the cabinet in front of him with a muffled Fuck.
There was want and need and regret in that one word.
But more so than anything else, pain.
My stomach twisted as I angled my head up to see his face, finding a muscle ticking in his jaw, his eyes still shut, trying to work through something.
What? I had no idea.
But now, yeah, I was pretty sure that whatever it was, whatever he had been through, whatever demons he had on his heels, it was of the epically bad kind.
His hold on me eased, making me sit back straight, my legs loosening their grip to fall down by his thighs. His hands sank into my hips, giving them a little squeeze as his eyes opened, looking down at me for a long moment.
"I can't do this," he told me, voice barely above a whisper, the tone ragged, as he pulled away, turned, and walked out of my life again.
The door closed quietly as I pressed my thighs together, willing my needy body to understand as I took a few deep breaths, feeling his absence like a swirling hole somewhere in my stomach.
Because this wasn't about me.
This wasn't personal.
Whatever it was that kept making him walk away, it had nothing to do with me.
It was something inside him, something he was holding onto, something he believed about himself, or believed he didn't deserve to have.
That was what was dragging him across my floor when it was a clear part of him, even a large part, wanted to stay here with me and finish what we started.
I didn't have the faintest idea what he had gone through, what he was dealing with, but I knew it was something truly heart-achingly awful to make a man like him feel like he couldn't have something as basic, as human, as necessary as connection with another person.
Poor Reeve.
I took a deep breath, trying to stop the pang in my heart as I hopped off the counter.
Looking around my kitchen, my eyes fell on the foreign milk crate.
And the jacket piled beside it.
There was no denying the strange, though not exactly unwelcome, soaring feeling in my chest at seeing it, at knowing it was another excuse to drop by again.
This is the point where my mother would tell me - you know, if I confided in her about things such as this, which I didn't - that I was being needy and pathetic, and that there was nothing men disliked more.
Normally, I wasn't someone to go after a man.
I had too much going on for myself to do that.
I had a life that kept me fulfilled.
I didn't need to chase anything.
But as I took his jacket to the washing machine yet again, pouring my lavender soap into the compartment, I knew that this was different.
Why?
I didn't know.
I just felt it, y'know? Sometimes in life, you just feel things that make no sense, but they are there, down to the bone, unavoidable, undeniable.
Reeve was a man whose life I wanted to be in. Maybe cynics would say it was just hormones, that the kiss was good enough to addle my brain. Which, well, yes. But it was more than that. I wanted to, I don't know, just get more of him, I guess. I wanted to hear his laugh, see him smile, feel his hands on me without restraint.
It seemed like his life had been a lot of hard.
