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Smart.
But he hadn’t had the stomach for it either. Not yet. Not this early.
He’d thought he could fester his hatred for her throughout the night—be haunted by the dreams that always sent him tossing about, rage with no outlet. All he usually had to do to conjure the rage was concentrate on the very second—the moment in time—he realized her betrayal. Then move onto the moments directly after when his world fell apart around him until it was nothing. Untilhewas reduced to nothing.
Dreams he didn’t have that night.
He’d fallen asleep before he could reignite the hatred that had sustained him all these years, her warm body atop him lulling him into serenity he hadn’t known since that last night they’d been together.
Idiotic, what he’d let happen last night.
He couldn’t afford any softness where Laney was involved. It’d be the last thing he’d do—walking down that path again of having her—trusting her.
His mouth pulling tight, Wes spun from the front window, walking back into the library to collect his clothes.
An hour, maybe two, and he’d be ready to face her again.
Let her make her way to her townhouse. Let her think she was alone again.
Then he could strike.
~~~
He was torturing her.
He hadn’t denied it, and she was now positive that was his goal. Torture her. Make her pay for all she’d destroyed.
Laney wedged open the door to the study in her family’s London townhouse, kicking aside papers at her toes. She had mounds of papers to scour and the only thing that filled her brain at the moment was where Wes’s touch had seared her last night.
He meant to torture her by making her feel things that should be long dead and buried.
And if last night was any indication, he was willing to go to great lengths to do so. Highly suspect lengths.
Not that the knowledge had sent her hand upward to stop him. Not that she had even murmured a single word of resistance to where his hands had been.
No. She had wanted it.
Wanted his hands on her, wanted to feel just a glimpse of what they had once shared. What she had never been able to move on from.
No matter how torturous last night was.
She had wanted it.
Her body betraying her full and through. She’d fallen so easily—without giving the past and all that Wes had done to her a margin of consideration.
That weakness ended today. It had to.
She had to get back to Gruggin Manor. Get back to solace. To peace. As lonely as it was, she needed to get back there.
Only at Gruggin Manor could she protect her heart that she had spent so many years cobbling back together—a broken eggshell propped together with the thinnest threads and paste.
For Wes was treading dangerously close to setting the slightest crack in that carefully crafted peace, and that would not do.
She needed to keep her heart cold. Numb.
It’d taken years to achieve that state and she wasn’t about to abandon it for one night of wicked gratification with the man that had once crushed her.
Her hands on her hips, her shoulders pulled back and Laney looked about her. The mess of papers and books about her feet in the study was egregious. Not a single scrap of vellum still sat on the bookshelves that lined two sides of the room.
