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I wanted him to make me forget.
Just. For. One. Night.
Engulfed in his heat, I moaned into his open mouth as his pelvis began to grind harder into me while his lips kissed a trail up my throat and along my jaw. I wrapped my legs around him, knowing I was only moments away from an earth-shattering orgasm.
Then, just like that, the heat was gone as Chance suddenly roared backward as if he was pulled away by some invisible entity. Goose bumps rippled across my skin where the coolness of the night invaded the warmth of where his body had been. He knelt backwards and looked alarmed.
No. He looked fucking mortified.
“I’m sorry,” he breathed, his chest heaving, his lips wet with my kiss.
He climbed off the bed, which only gave me a better view of the outline of his erection.
“For what?” I asked, confused, my clit aching at the sudden loss of friction, my orgasm abandoned.
“We can’t do this.”
“Why not?”
He ran the palm of his hand up the back of his neck. “It would be a mistake.”
His words stung like a slap to my cheek, and it was hard not to show it.
“Not to me.”
In the pale moonlight, I could make out every dip and groove of his impressive abdominals as he stood in front of me looking like he’d just made the biggest mistake of his life.
A slow realization began to trickle through my veins, and I climbed off the bed.
“Please don’t do this,” I said, unable to hide the chilliness in my voice. “Don’t pull away because of what happened to me.”
“Cassidy—”
“I’m not defined by what he did to me,” I cut him off. “Yes, he keeps me running. But he hasn’t taken away who I am. That’s one thing he can’t take away from me.”
“It’s not about that. It’s about keeping you safe.” His chest still rose and fell with heavy breaths. “And this isn’t keeping you safe.”
“It is about that. Now that you know what he did, you don’t want to touch me.”
One second we were facing each other in the dim light, my hands fisted at my side, my heart pounding with rejection. The next he was backing me up against the wall, caging my head in his big arms and pinning me there with his hard body, his eyes blazing into mine.
“I want to touch you more than anything in the whole fucking world. Do you understand me?” His hands came down to cup my face. “I want to kiss you more than I want fucking oxygen. I want to bury myself so deep inside you and make you cry out my name it makes me hard just thinking about it. But I won’t. Because if we’re up against what I think we’re up against, then I can’t afford the distraction. And you, California, are a big fucking distraction.”
He pulled away, taking the heat and hardness of his body with him. In the shadows he pulled on a T-shirt and sweatpants while I stood boneless and cold against the wall. Then, with his kiss still burning on my lips, I watched him walk out of the room and disappear into the bathroom, closing the door behind him.
Feeling breathless, I went to my room and after an hour of tossing and turning, finally fell into a disturbed sleep.
CHANCE
I escaped to the fisherman’s cottage before Cassidy woke up. I called the prospects to come over and watch her while I was gone. Despite being safe out here, I wasn’t going to risk leaving her alone.
But I needed the alone time to put things in perspective. Needed to untangle the chaos in my head, and working on the fisherman’s cottage was a good way to loosen the knots in my mind and find the clarity I needed.
Working with my hands was a good distraction. It kept me from doing something rash, like climbing on my bike and riding to California to show one raping son of a bitch what real men thought about rapists.
When I thought about what he had—what he was—putting Cassidy through, I saw nothing but a white-hot fury. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to take all of this raging energy and punch it into his face until he stopped breathing.
But that wasn’t a possibility.
I also needed the distraction from my feelings for her. I thought I was able to control myself around her, keep her at a distance, but last night was just proof that I was losing that control.
And fuck, part of me wanted to lose control just so I could drink from those sweet lips and sink my cock deep into her luscious body.
Which was exactly what I shouldn’t want.
So I worked hard, hauling drywall off the back of my pickup and fixing it to the walls inside the cottage. Since the floorboards had been put down, things seemed to be coming together quickly inside. The rundown cottage was finally taking shape around me.
