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I look up into his eyes, scared of what I’ll see, and I wet my lips—as a result of nerves rather than desire.
‘I’m sorry I used my brother like that.’
His apology surprises me, as does his guilt, his remorse, but the passion is still there. The fire in his gaze... He cups my jaw softly and lowers his lips to mine. His breath is all whiskey and me as he brushes his mouth over my parted lips.
‘I just...it’s tortured me for years...’ He squeezes his eyes closed. ‘The idea of you and him...what you did together...him replacing me, surpassing me.’
I silence him with my lips. I can’t bear him talking of those years—not when he doesn’t have the full story. I want to tell him. I do. But now is not the time.
When will it be? I ask myself.
I kiss him harder, forcing out the questions, the doubt, the worry. But he breaks away, lifts his head to rake his eyes over my face.
‘I hate it that he gave you everything I could not, that he took the most important thing in my life...’
His eyes soften into mine, his love of old as obvious as his desire, and I’m caught in it, unable to breathe.
‘I know I left you, that I have a part to play, but you went to him. He asked you and you went. And all it took was three months.’
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His voice is raw, his pain as real as if it were yesterday, and my heart squeezes inside my chest.
I reach for his face, cupping it in my hands as I stare up into his tortured gaze and tell him what matters in that second. ‘We never had an affair. I loved you. I promise that I loved you with every part of me.’
And then I kiss him. I seal my vow with it. I can’t rewind history and write a better path. I can’t change the fact that I still haven’t told him the full truth.
And when I do, will he hate me all the more? Will he see it as the greatest betrayal of all?
My stomach rolls with the thought of it even as he lifts his hands to my face, mimics my hold on him, his eyes searching mine as his thumbs stroke against my cheeks.
‘I loved you,’ I say again, desperate for him to see the truth of it.
His groan is half-anguish, half-desire, and he kisses me. Slow, savouring this time. It’s not like the kiss in my office, or his seduction born of anger just now. It’s something far more intense, far more powerful. And it’s this something that binds us, that’s stood the test of time.
I’m so tired of fighting it—tired of being alone, tired of feeling nothing but emptiness and grief. Grief for Robert, for Liam, for Rose—
Rose.
I kiss him back. Kiss him until there’s a combating force strong enough to smother the pain. My tongue slides against his, rough, probing, sinking deeper. I lower my hands to his chest and feel the heat, feel the muscles flexing through his shirt, the race of his heart beneath.
‘Cain...’ I whimper against his mouth.
And he answers with a groan that’s all desire, his hands urgent as they tug me against his hardness. The feel of his need, the evidence of his desire, has me burning up inside. That throbbing ache returns tenfold as my hips writhe and my hands rake over him.
I need this. We need this.
But he’s tearing away again, his head shifting to one side, his body totally still. I open my eyes and he’s looking away, his shoulders heaving for breath, for control. But I don’t want control. Not any more. I’m sick of it.
I reach for his face and pull him back to me. ‘Kiss me,’ I urge.
Kiss me before I say something that we can’t come back from. Kiss me before the truth brings this to an end.
I nudge his mouth open, dipping my tongue inside to gently coax his own, and a shiver runs through his body. I feel it beneath my palms, hear it in his shaky breath.
‘I need to know you want this,’ he rasps out, his eyes dark and glittering into mine. ‘I need to know that you want me.’
I go to kiss him again, to show him how much I do, but he presses me away.
