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Sawyer’s fingers froze against mine as he processed what I’d said without really saying it.
“I wasn’t a stupid kid, Jett. I accomplished things in my career that required every ounce of drive, logic, and instinct I had in me.” Sawyer slowly shook his head back and forth before adding, “He owned me and I let him. Every name he called me, every degrading thing he did to me—I was blind to it for so long.”
“What changed?” I asked.
Sawyer’s eyes shifted away from me. “I was such a fool,” he whispered.
“Sawyer—” I began but then he turned his head so he was watching me again.
“I love you so much, Jett,” he said easily, but his eyes burned with such fire that it felt like my heart was going to pound out of my chest. There was no denying the truth behind his words. But there was also no missing the emotional distance he was still maintaining between us. Too many walls continued to keep him from me.
“Promise me you’ll let me go tomorrow,” Sawyer said quietly. “I’ll tell you the rest, but I need you to swear that you won’t try to stop me in the morning.”
It was all I could do to contain my anger as I caressed Sawyer’s cheek. I urged him up my body for a kiss and he moved without hesitation. I let my tongue steal into his mouth as I practically dragged him on top of me. Sawyer gave as good as he got and within minutes, we were grinding against one other. Fortunately, I still had enough working blood cells in my brain to remember why I’d started this. As I settled my hands on Sawyer’s ass, I held him tight against my body and then I rolled him so that he was lying beneath me.
Sawyer wasn’t fazed at all by the new position. His fingernails were digging into my shoulder blades and he’d opened his legs so our groins could slide against one another. It took every ounce of discipline I had in me to break the kiss and then use my hands to grab Sawyer’s wrists and pin them to the bed.
It took several long seconds of Sawyer trying to reinitiate the kiss without success before he stilled beneath me. The lust in his eyes fell away only to be replaced with confusion and even a little bit of fear.
I steeled myself not to give in to his natural inclination not to trust and instead dropped a soft but brief kiss to his lips.
“Sweetheart, I think it’s time you and I got a few things straight because I can count on one finger how many men I’ve been lucky enough to fall so completely in love with that I can barely breathe with it. So there’s no way in hell I’m making you a promise I have no hope of keeping.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
SAWYER
Being trapped beneath Jett’s heavy weight should have scared the hell out of me but oddly enough, it made me feel safe. I probably could have dislodged him if I’d really put my whole body into it, but it still would have taken some effort because Jett’s upper body was pretty much pure muscle.
But even if I’d managed to escape him physically, there was no hope of getting away from the promise in his deep brown eyes.
How had I ever truly believed Marcus loved me? Sure, he’d said it more times than I could count, but had I ever once seen his eyes burn like Jett’s were now? Had I ever seen the proof behind the words?
Even up until this afternoon, I’d been trying to convince myself that Marcus had, at one time or another, truly loved me, but I knew now that he never had. Not the first time he told me, when he was flying me to Paris on his private plane for our one-month anniversary, and not the last time when I, in his words, forced him to prove his love by making him follow me to the middle of nowhere, Minnesota and making him put his fingers around my throat to prove that no one else could love me like he did.
Turned out that last part was true.
From the time I’d been a kid, love was something that had needed to be earned. Love meant doing what you were told. Love meant being perfect. Love meant accepting the words and actions that were only intended to make you better no matter how deeply they cut into you.
I should have been railing against Jett for forcing me to see something I’d already known for a long time.
“He’s not going to stop,” I said as I reached up to caress Jett’s cheek. He immediately turned his head and pressed a kiss into my palm.
“Yes he will, baby. He doesn’t get a say in it.”
