AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She had to hold herself away, lest she allow her body to crave his touch.
To cravehim.
He didn’t want her.
He’d made that crystal clear before she’d been raped, and after, well, she didn’t want someone who only saw her as a victim, as a belonging to protect, a broken object to try to piece back together.
Who only wanted her because something had happened to her.
Not because of who she truly was inside.
But because she didn’t pull away that night, he held her close, capturing her eyes, holding her gaze, studying her like he could see every thought inside her head.
And then his hand was sliding over her cheek, along her throat, down her arm.
His fingers were wrapping around her wrist, and then weaving through her own.
Warm.
He was warm and strong and…
The bolt of feeling through her belly was a sick mix of pleasure and poison.
Enough jarring juxtaposition that she didn’t fight him when he led her onto the front porch, when he closed the door behind them, when he drew her down to sit on the top step beside him.
“You’re not sleeping,” he murmured, his free hand lifting, his thumb brushing lightly beneath each eye.
More touch.
More pleasure and poison.
“Don’t,” she whispered, drawing back.
He didn’t fight her, just immediately let her go, let her retreat.
But he didn’t step away, didn’t leave her alone and go into the house.
And they sat there, in silence, in pain.
“What can I do?” he whispered, after long moments.
Nothing.
There was absolutely nothing he could do.
This was her burden to carry, to shoulder, to dispose of…maybe.
Or maybe it would always be with her.
“I wish I’d never called you.”
He went stiff, as though there was an electrical current running through his veins. “Why?” he asked, agony in every word. “Why would you say that?”
“You saw me like that,” she murmured. “You saw me, and now we’re connected and…”
“What?”
“And you didn’t want me before, didn’t want me then, and you’re only hanging around now because I called you that night, and you think it-it’s some fucking moral obligation to help me.” Her voice grew stronger the longer she spoke. “But you don’t really want me. Notme, not this broken fucking woman that I’ve become. I’m not some used-up puzzle you have to help piece back together. I’m fine on my own.”
