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I immediately dropped my legs from his waist, and he yanked his shirt back down as he stumbled backward away from me.
This was wrong, I finally realized. This was all horribly wrong.
We weren’t supposed to kiss, especially not when I looked like death warmed over, my mood was like that of a haggard fishwife, and I’d just said the most atrocious things to him.
But worst of all, I wasn’t supposed to kiss Duke’s brother.
That was his niece currently crying down the hall.
“Oh God,” he uttered in a dazed, mortified voice as if all the thoughts I’d just had were finally occurring to him as well.
Clutching his head in both hands, he gaped at me in disbelief. Then he stumbled even further away, choking out a broken sob before he whirled around and rushed toward the exit.
I hiccupped a strange sound as the front door shut behind him. Then I hugged myself and slid to the floor, my legs momentarily boneless and too weak to support me.
All the while, Ava Grace screamed for attention, and I just shook my head, terrified about what kind of backlash was going to come from what I’d just done.
18
VAUGHN
A week passed.
I went to work, I came home, I watched reruns of Breaking Bad, and I stayed as far away from Lucy Gamble as I could get.
I didn’t go over. I didn’t call. Didn’t text.
I was way too distressed for that shit. So I became one of those douches who just ghosted a woman completely, even though she and I hadn’t even been in a relationship in the first place.
But seriously. What the hell had I been thinking? I had sexually assaulted the mother of my brother’s child.
Okay, maybe assault was too strong of a word for what had happened, but I didn’t know what else to call the savage, grappling way I’d manhandled her and then nearly consumed her whole. It had been wrong, whatever term someone wanted to ascribe to it.
So fucking wrong.
Even though, God, it had felt so fucking good.
My hands shook and the back of my neck began to cold sweat every time I thought about it.
Merely wanting her had been bad enough. In my book, Lucy had been firmly slotted under “things that had belonged to my brother,” even though I was fully aware that hadn’t been the case.
Still…
Every forbidden glance and stray, passing attraction I’d felt had made me repulsed with myself, as it had been. But practically banging her against the wall after she’d had what was obviously a stress-filled, exhausting night was probably the most despicable thing I’d ever done.
And my body craved a repeat of it.
Jesus, I had no idea how I was ever going to face her again.
I would eventually, unless I wanted to sever all familial ties I had with Ava, which I absolutely could not bring myself to do.
But there didn’t seem to be an apology strong or sincere enough to say to her. She would never forgive me for this.
Sitting on my couch, arms crossed over my chest as I watched Jesse and Walt trying to kill a fly on the television, I replayed that night at Lucy’s house over and over through my head on a loop.
The one thing I kept coming back to was how she’d kissed me back, the way her hands had gripped my shirt and her hips had pressed insistently against mine.
Not that it meant anything I secretly wanted it to. But hopefully, it didn’t mean she was as pissed at me as I feared she was.
