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“You said you couldn't sleep.”
She regards me with undisguised suspicion for a few long seconds before seeming to make up her mind. Taking slow, cautious steps into the living area, she finally heads straight for one of the armchairs opposite me and flops herself into it.
“Here.” I toss a blanket her way. “In case you're cold.”
“Thanks.” She smiles, a small one, but it's still one of the warmest things I've ever seen.
For as long as I've known her, Thea's smiles have always been like sunshine. Not just for me, but for every person who's ever been lucky enough to be on the receiving end of one of them. She's just one of those people, I guess. So goddamn fucking radiant that you can't help but look directly at her, even if you know it'll hurt.
She's Medusa, only beautiful.
“Struggling to sleep too?” she asks, tucking her legs underneath her and pulling the blanket up to her chest.
I nod.
“Uncomfortable? I truly don't mind taking the couch if you'd prefer the bed.”
“No.” I shake my head. “It's not that.”
“What is it, then? Maybe I can help.”
I snort in response to the naivety of her words. She has no idea what she's offering to help with.
Having her in my space, barefaced and natural, without all the glitzy clothes and expensive high-heeled shoes…it's like my high-school sweetheart is sitting in the chair opposite me and not the woman who ripped my heart apart. And it makes my dick even harder than it was just before she caught me about to jerk off.
“Oh.” She sighs. “It's me, isn't it? Look, if you're not alright with having me here, then I can go. It's no problem, really. I can check into the B&B in town—if they'll even let me stay. People really hate me around here.” She's rambling, her hands knotting together nervously in her lap. Her gaze catches on the digital clock blinking from the small display screen of my stereo and her face falls. “Never mind, it's too late. I'm sure I can find something else, though.”
She stands with an assertive nod and starts to move toward the door.
My hand shoots out to grab her wrist before she can go any farther. She freezes and turns to me, her eyes wide and hurt as a result of her own assumptions.
“No, Thea, you staying here ain't the issue either,” I tell her, our gazes locked together with a ferocious kind of intensity. “Well, actually, it is, but not in the way you're thinking.”
Her forehead creases in confusion.
Pushing up off the sofa, I swallow the distance between us until our heaving chests are pressed against each other. Thea has never been short, towering above most other women at five foot nine, but I still have at least six inches on her. She blinks up at me, all doe-eyed and self-conscious. It's such a stark contradiction to the confident, glamorous woman she presents herself to be in the media.
“I don't know what you mean,” she breathes.
“Don't you?” I ask with a cock of my eyebrow.
The thumb of my hand still wrapped around her wrist begins to stroke lazy lines over her skin and her breath hitches.
“Cole?” she whispers. “What are you doing?”
I don't answer her. I can't. Mainly because I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. All night, I've been plagued by the same thought. I can't get too close, can't let her in, can't make the same mistake I did when we were eighteen by falling in love with her again.
But ten minutes in her presence and I'm willing to throw all that bullshit out the window.
She's too fucking tempting. This woman, this goddamn siren, will be the death of me. And yet, in this moment, I can't find it in myself to care.
How treacherous can one touch really be?
My fingers tremble as they reach for a long strand of fiery hair and tuck it behind her ear. Her eyelids are slow to close at the touch, even slower to open again. When they finally do, her pupils have dilated into two pits of infinite darkness.
Our fractured breathing is the only sound.
Briefly, something screams in my mind that this can only end in disaster, but I shut it away. Nothing is more important to me right now than finding out if Thea still tastes as sweet as she did six years ago.
