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He flexed his hands. He could still remember the feel of her neck in his grip, the soft flesh giving, watery brown eyes wide and filled with horror, as dry, aged flesh clenched beneath his fingers.
God, he hated that bitch. Her and her fucking friends, and the hell he had lived through for five fucking years before he found the guts to get out of it. Until he found a way to get out and still hold on to what little pride he had left.
He had no idea what kept him standing, what kept his shoulders straight. He moved to the only woman who had ever filled more than just a passing urge for sex. The woman who had filled his imagination, the pieces of his heart, and his hunger, for so many years.
He had often asked himself, why this woman? He had tried to make sense of why she drew him to her when others didn’t. Why he wanted to be different for her, why he needed to give her parts of himself that he thought were dead long ago.
There she stood, his T-shirt hanging nearly to her knees, her damp hair mussed and feathering around her face and shoulders, naked vulnerability shining in her eyes. And she needed more than he could give. He knew she needed more than he could give, but he couldn’t let her go, could no longer risk her finding it somewhere else.
“You’ve had seven years to find someone else,” he told her. “I left you alone. I didn’t come looking for you when the need to do just that ate me alive, Jaci. I gave you seven years to find a man that would deserve you, and you didn’t. Now you’re here, and I won’t let you go. If it means destroying what’s left of me, I won’t let you walk away. ”
“And if it means destroying what’s left of me?” she asked then, her lips trembling as her eyes looked too wide, too filled with sorrow for her pale face.
He cupped his hand around her neck, lifting her face to his. The pain in her eyes nearly broke him. He couldn’t let her know the truth of him, he couldn’t let that rage and bitterness spill onto her. God help him, hurting her more just might destroy him.
“I don’t want to let you go,” he repeated, realizing that if she decided to walk, he could do no more to stop her than he had seven years ago. “I’ve missed you, Jaci. I’ve ached for you. We deserve to see where it could go. ”
“And if I grow to care for Chase the way I care for you? What then? I wait and watch as he goes to another woman? Isn’t that just asking for more pain?”
Cam shook his head at that. He knew better. “It won’t happen. This is for the pleasure, for both of us. Chase cares for you as a friend, the same as you’ll always care for him. But nothing, no other man, is going to fill you like I do. ”
It had to be that way, because he knew no other woman could fill him as Jaci did. Despite the short time she had been here, she was filling parts of him that he didn’t know had been empty, that had just been waiting for her.
“I need more,” she whispered as his head lowered, as his lips touched hers, caressed hers. “This isn’t going to work the way you need it to. ”
“We could try. ” He laid his forehead against hers and stared into her eyes, pushing the pain back.
Jaci closed her eyes and sighed. She was going to do this. Move in with Cam and Chase. She wasn’t walking away from Cam again. It had hurt too much the first time, and it had haunted her too damned long.
She was smart enough to realize that some things, no matter how hard you fought them, were meant to be. This feeling, this need that bound them, was too strong, and she was tired of fighting it. Tired of fighting herself over it.
His lips caressed hers, his thick lashes sweeping down as he closed his incredible eyes.
“Let us love you,” he said. He nipped at her lips, a little pleasure-pain that reminded her of the darkness she had glimpsed in his eyes earlier. “Let me have you. ”
Her hands slid from his T-shirt-clad chest to his shoulders, then to the damp hair that lay along his neck.
“You’ll destroy me,” she said sighing.
“I’ll love you. ”
And her heart raced. It felt as though a minidetonation had been sent off inside it, flooding her with emotion, sending it pulsing through her veins as her breath caught with the intensity of it.
Oh God, how she needed him to love her. But she was terribly afraid it was the physical, rather than the emotional, that Cam was associating with the word.
Whichever it was, she wasn’t strong enough to resist him.
Her arms tightened around his neck as his lips caressed hers, patient now; deep, possessive kisses that had her lifting to her tiptoes and straining against him.
Until they heard the front door slam closed, and Jaci knew who it was. She could feel Chase’s gaze traveling over her bare legs as Cam drew back. He stared down at her, and she saw the hunger that only spiked hers.
Damn him. He made her ache for it, made her remember what it was like, and she wanted to cry with the knowledge that as much pleasure as they both gained from it, as much as they were both aroused by it, it was still a way to distance himself from her.
“This is what you want?” she asked softly.
He stared down at her, his gaze searching, darkening, filling with arousal. “I need it almost as much as I need you. ”
She wondered if he needed it to allow himself to have her. Whichever the case, it was the pleasure, a freedom, a certainty she could be as wild, as tempestuous as she wanted to be, and he would know nothing but pleasure. She would know nothing but pleasure.
