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“That’s all?” I asked, trying to be flip. Trying to pretend I wasn’t rattled down to my core. I glanced at him and my breath caught.
He sat there, so still but he was…burning.
“You’ll have me. And you’ll have sex, just the way you like it. Because, Ronnie, I know all the ways you like it.”
I remembered with white-hot clarity his fingertips on the back of my legs. The insides of my elbows. I remembered the way his sweat tasted. And his come.
I used to lie in bed after sex, torn between laughing and crying, because it was like my whole self had been thrown open to the world. Like I was just feeling everything I could possibly feel.
It had been heady and exciting.
And I missed it. That was the wild truth of it. I missed feeling so much.
But I couldn’t just forget what feeling that much had cost me.
“I’m willing to negotiate any part of this situation you want. I’ll concede every point, but I won’t listen to you pretend that you don’t want what we had. Or that you don’t remember.” His voice was thick and low. Dark.
I cleared my throat, gathered the pieces of myself into something I could hold onto. “Of course, I do. The sex was amazing. But the truth is, Clayton, I can’t imagine being that vulnerable with you again.”
I watched the words register on his face and I saw him realize how deep the scars were. He took a step back and those dirty, sexy memories withered and blew away.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Me, too. But I’m not sure that will change anything.”
He stood up from the rocking chair and held out his hand to me. I ignored it with all my strength.
“Cards on the table,” he said. “That was your edict. So…let’s get all our cards on the table. Let’s see if what we had is still there.”
I couldn’t imagine doing what he asked. I wasn’t that brave. That foolish. That reckless.
“Please,” he said.
And somehow those words were the weight that shifted the balance. I put my hand in his and made the leap.
I was numb and buzzing all at the same time and he kept pulling me until our bodies touched. Just a little. Teasing, small sips of contact. He inhaled and his belly touched mine. I inhaled and my breasts touched his chest.
I couldn’t look at him. The vulnerability was too much.
“You don’t feel this?” he asked.
“Nope.” Lying protected me. Lying was a wall between us.
“You’re breaking your own rules, Ronnie.”
Damn.
“Veronica.”
He laughed and I felt it, the rise of his chest against mine.
“No lying. Your rules.” I turned my face away and he only pulled me closer. “Tell me if you don’t feel this.” I was silent. If I didn’t say anything, I wasn’t lying. “Ronnie,” he breathed and I swallowed a moan. “I’m going to kiss you.”
“I…” The thought fizzled out between my brain and my tongue.
“Will you let me?”
I licked my lips, sure I was going to say no. But I nodded.
Yes. I nodded yes.
“Words, Ronnie. I need the words.”
“Just kiss me.”
And then his lips were on mine. Thick and soft. A heartbreak of a kiss.
And he kissed me slow. Carefully. Like a memory he was trying to coax back into reality, and it worked. This kiss was even more powerful for having been absent for five years. Clayton’s kiss was like no other kiss I’d ever had. Other kisses were weak and tame. Flimsy.
Clayton kissed me like he wanted to consume me.
I tasted his breath. His mouth. Him. His tongue touched a corner of my lips and I gasped with the electric shock of it. The thrill. He took the moment and pulled me closer; his tongue swept inside my mouth and the kiss went on and on. And on.
Yes, I felt my body connecting to itself in a way it hadn’t in a very long time. Yes. I’d missed this. I wanted this.
I stepped back, breaking the kiss. I stepped back again, and then again, until he was no longer touching me and my brain, which had short circuited at the beginning of the kiss, blinked back on.
“You’re so sure that will work?” I asked, trying bravado (but not very well).
“I think it already has.”
He sounded smug and cocky, and I shook my head. There was no way it would be that easy. That I was that easy.
“Listen,” he said. “We announce our engagement, and the day after Dylan’s deadline to return we get married and claim the estate.”
“That’s…six months.”
“I can wait.”
“What happens if I call off the engagement?” I asked. “Will you take back the money for my sisters? The foundation?”
“It can’t be real between us if you’re planning your escape.”
“You’d really take the money back?”
“You’re the one who said no lying. This is real or it’s not.” We watched each other for a long time.
