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‘Don’t touch me, Monroe. We’re not having a quick shag just because you’re feeling hard done by.’
He scowled, the heat rising in his cheeks. ‘What’s this really about?’
She blinked at the shouted words. But then she skewered him with a look he could only describe as dangerous. ‘You tell me. Monroe, what is this all about?’
He cocked an eyebrow, feeling angry and humiliated and more than a little desperate. Something had changed. Something important. He knew she’d wanted to make love as much as he had a moment ago. He knew her responses now almost as well as he knew his own. He knew how to make her want him, how to make her beg. It was the one thing he could give her. It had made her fall in love with him. But he’d persuaded himself over the last few weeks that, at least, he could give her something back. He could show her how he felt with his body even if he could never say it to her in words.
Why didn’t she want it any more?
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he choked out. It was a feeble response, but it was all he had.
‘You know what I think, Monroe?’ She put her hands on her hips, her back ramrod straight and her eyes blazing. ‘I think you’re using sex as a substitute for communication.’
‘What?’
‘You heard me. Until you’re willing to talk to me properly, I’m going to be too busy to have sex with you.’
She walked out of the bedroom. He caught up with her as she flung open the door to the apartment. Grabbing her arm, he hauled her round to face him.
‘What is this—some kind of game?’
‘No.’ She yanked her arm free. ‘It’s not a game.’
‘You want me as much as I want you, Red.’ The bitterness, the desperation in his voice surprised him, but not as much as the anguish that flashed into her eyes.
‘Yes, I want you.’ Her voice broke on the words. ‘You’re absolutely right about that. But what I want a lot more is to know what the hell’s going on in your head. And until you’re willing to talk about it, the sex isn’t enough. No matter how great it is.’
He stood there in shock. Horrified and dumbfounded as she turned and walked out of the apartment. She slammed the door behind her and he could hear her feet rattling down the stairs outside. But all he could do was stare at the polished oak of the door.
He wanted to stop her. To tell her he was falling in love, too, and it scared him to death. Because he could never give her what she dreamed of. He could never give her a happy family, stability, all the things that Linc and Ali had.
He walked slowly across the apartment. Standing at the window that looked out over the lawn, he watched her slender figure cross the grass. She was running, her shoes held in her hands, her hair fluttering in the light breeze. She was running away from him and he couldn’t stop her. She wanted things, needed things he couldn’t possibly give her. He closed the curtains, throwing the apartment into gloom as he shut out the light.
She’d been right; he’d been trying to hold her with sex.
He’d been devastated after the baby’s birth. Had wanted to howl with frustration and anguish when Linc had told him that they were naming the child Ethan Monroe Latimer, after him. Because he couldn’t have a relationship with this baby, any more than he could have a relationship with Emmy, or his brother, or Ali, or even Jessie. Not really. And the birth had finally made him realise it.
What if he gave up the rootless existence that had sustained him? The lifetime of roaming that now seemed so shallow and pointless? What if he stayed in touch with them all, became part of their family? He knew the answer only too well. He’d end up some bitter, lonely old man, watching their family from the outside, knowing he could never have what they had. Eventually the love he felt for them would be swallowed up by the envy.
So how had he consoled himself? By keeping Jessie close to him, by binding her to him every night, driving them both into sexual oblivion and hoping that it would halt her questions.
He’d started creating the distance he needed to create with Linc and little Emmy and Ali, but it had been too painful to do that and lose Jessie, too. So he’d used her again. Like some consolation prize.
He sat down heavily on the couch, stroked his hand slowly across the cushions where they first made love. So this was it, then. Either he had to tell her the truth or let her go.
He didn’t have a choice. Not really. Not if he was going to survive with even a small piece of his pride—and his heart—intact.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE next week was torture for Jessie. Every night she had to steel herself not to creep out of bed and go to Monroe. He was like a drug and she a drug addict going through the worst kind of withdrawal symptoms.
Every night without fail the dreams would come. Powerfully erotic, devastatingly arousing. She would wake up covered in sweat, her nipples painfully erect, the throbbing in her sex so
intense she could feel the heat flooding between her thighs. She’d actually taken to having cold showers in the middle of the night. Which made her feel ridiculous. And the lack of sleep had made her tired and irritable, added to which, for some odd reason, her breasts had become unbearably tender.
But worse than the exhaustion—and the knife-edge of unfulfilled passion—was the loneliness. She missed him, his teasing, his companionship, and his friendship.
She hadn’t been back to the garage apartment since she’d issued her ultimatum and he hadn’t come up to the house.
