“You were afraid I was going to walk away for good after you blew me in the car.”
He was right. She’d power-tripped him, then felt guilty and tried to make up for it by giving him the on-top power position, metaphorically speaking. But there’d been more to it. More than she wanted to try to define or even think about. “I begged. What more do you want?”
He cocked his head. “Don’t you know?”
Well, shit. She’d tried, she really had. She’d told him she wanted him, she’d begged, she’d said she’d die if he didn’t do it. What more did he want? Her breath hitched with the fear of what he wanted. Words. Those words. Love words. She couldn’t. She wasn’t ready. She wasn’t even sure she felt them. Boy, the man knew how to douse the sweet little flame he’d left burning in her. “You’re really hard to satisfy, you know.”
He cupped her cheek. “That’s what I’m afraid of, Max. That I want more than you’ve got it in you to give.”
She swallowed, but the lump in her throat pained her. She could not address the unspoken question in his words. She could not give him that love word she knew he wanted. She could only fall back on her age-old snarky banter. “Tit for tat, Long. I made you beg, and you made me beg. We’re even now.”
“Even?” He shook his head. “I wasn’t playing a game, Max, I was making love. What were you doing?”
Making love? In a filthy back alley? “I ... I,” she stammered.
“Tell me, did you ever make love with your husband? Or did you just fuck him?”
The question slapped her hard across the face. Cameron said she didn’t know how to make love, that she’d never known. The first time she’d taken Witt into her body, he’d told her to use those words. Making love. She had used them. But they both knew she’d only said them because he wanted her to.
“Do you know the difference?”
No. She didn’t. That was the problem. Cameron and Witt thought there was a difference, and she just couldn’t say what it was. Because she never had made love. Ever. Because sex was always about something needed or something to be gained. Witt was right. She’d wanted to ensure he didn’t walk away yet. If she admitted that, he’d walk away now. “Why are you pushing at me? You liked what we did.”
She expected him to counter that with something. Instead he dropped his hand from her cheek, stepped back, and said, “Do me a favor and don’t go alone to the Embassy tomorrow. Because I won’t be there to protect you.”
*
What was that supposed to mean? It sounded frighteningly like he was washing his hands of her, that he was done with helping her investigate. Done with her. Max handed her car keys to the attendant, then turned her head to the left looking for Witt’s truck. There it was. Her heart surged with relief. He’d walked away from her in that alley with that enigmatic phrase, but he’d follow her home. A knight in shining armor. At least for the rest of the night.
She’d disappointed him again. Maybe she was fated to disappoint him.
A woman dressed in black crossed her field of vision. It was a full ten seconds later and long after the lady disappeared into the hotel that Max identified her.
Julia La Russa.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Max should have jumped from the car and followed Julia like James Bond, or Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon. She hadn’t. She should have stayed to ask Angela all those important questions. She hadn’t done that either. She’d simply driven home, Witt’s truck beams behind her the whole way.
I just don’t freaking care right now.
Once she’d arrived at her apartment, she hadn’t considered approaching Witt, hadn’t wished that he would approach her. They had said and done enough to each other. She didn’t need anymore. Not tonight. She climbed the multitude of steps to her one room, then collapsed on the bed, kicking her shoes off five minutes later.
She thought about brushing her teeth and taking a shower, but the taste, scent, and feel of Witt was penance for not doing or saying the right thing. Again. Or maybe she couldn’t let him go, as if the physical senses would bind him mentally and emotionally as well. She lay in her bed staring at the miniature truck he’d given her for her birthday sitting on her bedside table atop the box it had come in.
What does he want from me?
She might be skewed on the making-love issue, but she had loved Cameron with everything in her. She was capable of love. But she didn’t want to love another man. Love meant inevitable loss.
So why couldn’t she bear to take a shower and wash Witt off her body?
“You should have told him you were sorry.”
“I did.” In the only way she could.