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LILY
His eyes darkened, his face dipped lower, so close that I could feel the rasp of his breath. His head blotted out the too-bright lights. I couldn’t hear the beat of the music anymore, but I could feel it. Rhythmic, pulsating. My heart matched its tempo as anticipation rose. When his mouth came down on mine, foreboding flashed through my mind. This was wrong. Halley would never forgive me. But as his strong arm encircled my waist, pulling me the rest of the way against him, my mind dissolved. Sensation took the place of reason because Con was kissing me. Really kissing me, his devilishly expert tongue parting my lips. Desire deepened in my belly and dampened the apex of my thighs. My legs were shaking, but it didn’t matter because he was holding me against his hard chest so tightly, I was hardly supporting myself.
I’d never been kissed like this. In a strange, disjointed manner, the faces of the boys I’d loved ran across the projector of my half-closed lids. All of their faces were blurry, even that of my most recent ex, the one I thought maybe I would get back together with when we were at the same law school. And then they were gone, dissolving like my trepidation as Con deepened the kiss, his tongue tangling demandingly with mine.
Instinctively, my fingers had curled in the front of his shirt. Now I wound my arms around his neck, pressing myself full against him. It was as though the rich, filmy fabric of the dress didn’t exist. I could feel every muscle, hard against me. The ridge of his pectorals, the hard pane of his stomach, the bulge of his belt buckle, and then a larger, harder bulge beneath, pressing into my hip.
The parade of boys I’d loved before receded even further into the past. I’d never once felt like this with any of them, like I wanted to keep going. I wasn’t completely innocent, but somehow, I’d known that whatever I felt for them wasn’t enough. This was what I had been waiting for.
Then, suddenly, there was an explosion of light. Con jerked back, his hands flying up to grip my arms, still wrapped around his neck. His disturbingly dark eyes were blacker than ever as they scanned the area, looking for the source of the bright flash. He looked dazed and wary, like a dangerous animal that had just been jolted out of hibernation.
A bouncer separated himself from the queue at the front door, his large shoulders cutting through the crowd as he made his way toward us. For a horrible, confusing moment, I thought we were his destination. He was going to throw us out. Public indecency. A dozen other hysterically puritanical fears chased their way through my mind before I realized where he was really going. Toward two girls who were so clearly from out of town that even I could peg them as tourists. They had a selfie-stick raised, and they were grinning up at it, trying to discreetly get a celebrity I vaguely recognized in the shot. But again, their flash went off. They exploded in laughter.
“No pictures,” the bouncer said when he reached them.
One of them began to argue. I looked back at Con, hoping to find his smoldering gaze on mine, ready to reignite the interrupted kiss. He was looking at me, but not the way I’d hoped. Something had fractured in his gaze, and I saw self-recrimination mixed in with the lust. His fingers were tense, bracketed around my forearms. Even as I swayed toward him again, he pulled my arms down from around his neck.
Disappointment and confusion swirled in my chest. There was still heat in his eyes, but a wall had gone up.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, my voice breathless.
Con shook his head, then nodded in the direction of the door. Letting go of my arms, he put a hand to the small of my back and firmly guided me through the crowd, out into the warm night.
“I should say goodbye.” I looked over my shoulder for Victoria, but she was nowhere to be seen. Con shook his head when I started to go back.
“No.” He bit off the word. “Let’s go.”
A thrill ran through me, but the look on his face quickly doused any hope I had that the reason he wanted to leave was to resume what we’d started. We started walking back toward my—Halley’s—condo. His face was grim in the glow of the streetlamps. He kept his hands shoved in his pockets. I had to take two steps to his every one to keep up with him.
We walked in ominous silence for a few minutes, until my heel twisted beneath me, and I let out a sharp cry.
Con turned in time to see me grab the nearest light post. I reached down and rubbed my ankle. It had been a quick pain, already fading. “Are you okay?” he asked, but his voice was devoid of any emotion. His leg jangled impatiently, like he wanted to keep walking.
“Go on,” I said peevishly. “You don’t have to wait for me.”
“Of course I have to wait for you,” he said in the same dispassionate way. “I’m walking you home.”
I straightened, putting my weight back on my ankle without bothering to test whether it was ready to take it. I wouldn’t be weak around him. “I didn’t ask you to walk me home,” I snapped. “Maybe I’m not even ready to go home.”
I’d have happily gone home if he was coming with me, but I didn’t even have to ask. Every muscle in his body seemed tensed to get as far away from me as possible. His eyes though—they were still drinking me in.
Con was staring at my ankle. Now his gaze traveled slowly up the length of my leg. I felt it like a laser beam. Heat bloomed in my cheeks when he reached my curve of my breasts and lingered before lifting his gaze to the hollow of my throat. He must have been able to see my heart pounding in it. Finally, he reached my eyes.
“You’re going home, Lily,” he said quietly. “And you’re getting in bed alone, like a good girl.”
“Maybe I don’t want to be a good girl.” I meant for my voice to sound defiant, but somehow it just came out sounding small. Pleading. I barely recognized it.
An unhappy smile jerked the edge of his mouth. “It doesn’t matter what you want.”
He was saying it to me, but something about his tone made me think he’d been saying it to himself, too. Maybe over and over again, the same way I had. Hope blossomed in my chest. “What do you want?” I asked, my heart pounding at my nerve. I was seconds away from throwing myself at him.
Con’s dark eyes flashed, then shifted in the direction of the tall white apartment building that rose up from the opposite side of the avenue. “It doesn’t matter what I want either. Neither of us can have it.”
Before I could think better of it, I reached for his arm. “Why not?”
He moved his arm out of my reach so smoothly that I grasped only air, but before my mind could even process what had happened, he was pulling me against him again and stepping backward until we were both in the shadowy alcove of a closed storefront. My body melted against his, and the relief of being against him made my knees weak. It wasn’t over, he was going to kiss me again. We were going to go upstairs together, and—
But no. His face was not coming closer to mine. His jaw was hard, and his voice unyielding. “You’re practically a kid. I’m supposed to be looking out for you, not thinking about doing things to you that I’d kill a man for doing to Halley.” His voice was harsh with self-revulsion.
