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“I’m past all that. I was angry at first but not now. Simon hurt me when I found out he was married, but… he also did me a favor.”
“He gave you Evan?” He rubbed her back in tight, heated circles.
“Yes,” she whispered against the rough skin at his throat. “But he also helped me realize that I’m drawn to certain types of guys who are no good for me.”
Like him.She didn’t have to say it. The jerk of his body as he drew back told her he understood.
“Not all guys are assholes,” he bit out. “Not all guys will treat you with disrespect or break your heart without a second thought.”
“No, some may even be considerate while they do the heart-breaking. How many hearts have you broken, Tad DeLuca? All that charm and those gorgeous blue eyes, then you move on, leaving human rubble in your wake.” She tried to soften it with a winsome smile but she suspected she looked like a scarecrow. “The stories you told me made my toes curl. The Brazilian cousins, that bartender at O’Caseys, the hot air balloon. Will I just be another tawdry tale in a couple of months?”
His tone of voice echoed the horrified look on his face. “Jesus, I should never have told you anything. I thought I was cheering you up and yeah, it kind of turned me on to see your reaction. Maybe it was disrespectful to the women I’d been with but, damn it Jules, don’t compare this to what I had with anyone else because there is no comparison.”
Their friendship might have placed this in a different category but it didn’t change the fundamentals. He was the unrepentant bad boy and she was the reformed bad girl and they were supposed to screw each other out of their systems and move on. He back to anything in heels, she onto Mr. Right, Safe, and Boring.
But lately, she was seeing another side to him, or allowing herself to because it had always been there: kind, caring, her best guy, Tad. What was happening between them went above and beyond the hot and dirty playtime she had signed on for.
When he had taken her hard and fast the moment she walked through the door, he had looked at her like she mattered. The beautiful bastard was making her hope. She wanted to hurt him for that.
“I guess talking about Simon brought up some stuff I haven’t dealt with.” Crediting her upset to her shitty ex seemed best all around here. She had no more tears to shed for Simon St. James, but given a chance, she would have buckets at the ready for Tad DeLuca.
He glowered. Boy, he gave good glower.
“Don’t make me a scapegoat for what this guy did.” He backed her up against the table and wedged his hard body between her shaking thighs. With both hands, he cradled her face and delivered passionate kisses that burned through her disintegrating defenses.
“This asshole treated you like crap,bella,and it’s okay to be angry about that. It’s okay to rant and rail and go nuts. Punch it out. Cry it out. Screw it out. If you need to deal with this by banging me until we’re both cross-eyed, then do it, but don’t compare me to him. I know you’re strong and you can kick my ass, but that doesn’t mean you can’t lean on me, too. I’m here for you, Jules. You are my best girl. You are in my gut.”
Another kiss punctuated his declaration, more scorching than the last, melting her heart but not the tension in her fists.
She wanted to thump the living daylights out of something, but not because of Simon and the hurt she felt then, but because the sweet, funny, sexy guy in her arms had shown her how perfect it could be. She had owned her choices and come up with a plan to ensure she never made mistakes like that again. And then she met Tad. Dreamed about him. Acted on her greedy fantasy and now she was back to where she had come from. Wishing for things she couldn’t have.
“Punish me, Jules. Get it all out,” he urged between sucks on her lower lip and hot, open-mouthed kisses along her jawline. He ground his erection into the concave softness of her sex, ripping a heartfelt moan from her throat. Rough-hewn fingers delved below the waistband of her sweats and traced a well-worn path to her center. Oh, she planned to punish him thoroughly; not for the sins of her ex, but for the cardinal sin of making her fall for him.
Making women drop at his feet was part of Tad’s skill set, but really it was hiskill set.
He had murdered whatever miniscule chance she’d had of surviving this affair between friends. She didn’t want to feel this way. She had tried to be careful but her heart had been half-engaged going in and she was already playing from behind.
She had only gone and fallen arse-over-tit in love with her friend. What a disaster.
He rubbed his blunt fingers against her blooming sex and caught her moan in his mouth.
“You’re so ready for me. Like you’ve been waiting for me.”
All her life,she wanted to say. All her life, she’d been waiting for a man like this. She wished…no, she couldn’t make wishes for things to have gone differently. Bloody pointless.
But.
Checking out would have been the clever thing to do, but no one had ever called her clever. Besides, she had checked out of her life too many times already. So she told him how hot he made her, how good he felt inside her. She told him to touch her there, to take her harder.
She told him everything she could to avoid telling him the one thing she couldn’t.
She loved a man who could never be hers but she was going to enjoy this precious time if it broke her heart to do it. Another one of those great decisions she was owning.
Only when she had screamed to his satisfaction and come so many times that she almost passed out did she let her mind go back to that forbidden wish. Not that he could be hers for the future, but that he had been hers in the past.
She wished he was Evan’s father.
Thirty
