“Oh baby, look at you…”
“Finish this,” she said. There were two terrible, trembling inches between them. She couldn’t hide how much she wanted him. But she also couldn’t hide how much she didn’t want to want him. “Just…let’s finish this.”
“You think if we fuck each other hard enough it will go away?” he asked her. He was already hard as steel behind his zipper. “We’ll get it out of our systems?”
“That has to work,” she said. “It has to.”
Dylan pushed back her hair, holding her face in his hard hands. He was worlds too rough. Worlds too wrong. But he was going to take what she was offering. “You really are innocent, aren’t you?”
She shook her head and he could feel her shaking in her skin. Her eyes were frantic on his.
“If we do this right, it’s only going to get worse.”
Dylan didn’t give her a chance to argue. He picked her up again, his hands under her armpits, and she wasn’t awkward this time. She put her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist and he carried her down the hallway again, this time straight to his bedroom. Where it was dark and still.
No one had ever been here with him. Not ever. And when she left, he knew her ghost was going to haunt this bedroom. This whole damn house. And it pissed him off. It pissed him off that he wasn’t strong enough to stop it. That he had no shred of control left with this girl. She stripped it all away with her wide eyes and her clenched fists and all her secrets and lies.
“Lie back,” he growled into her ear, and when he let go, she fell back onto the bed, naked and beautiful against the dark, silky duvet.
Dylan stood over her, fully clothed, his dick so hard it hurt.
Who the fuck was this girl to do this to him?
No one, he wanted to say, wanting her to be nothing. Wanting her to not matter. She was just a lying bit of trash from a trailer park who happened to pick up a phone call.
But it wasn’t true.
She was fucking killing him.
“You got something you want to tell me, don’t you?” he asked.
She blinked up at Dylan and then tried to scoot away to the other side of the bed, but he grabbed her leg. Not hard. Just enough to hold her.
“No,” she said. “I’m not going to tell you. And you’ve got no right to be mad. You’re not telling me things either.”
Wasn’t that the truth? In a heartbeat he saw what a dead end this was and how fast they were rushing toward it. And because it was his nature to destroy, he put his foot on the gas and made sure when they hit that dead end they were really over. That there would be no pieces for them to pick up.
“Past this,” he said, his eyes locked on hers. “You can stay in my place in Charleston. I want you to. I want you to be safe. And you can call if you need help. Margaret will take care of you. Or one of my guys. But it won’t be me. We are never going to talk or see each other again. Ever again. Do you understand that?”
She nodded, her cheeks bright. Her eyes brighter.
“Do you still want me?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said on a sobbing gust of air, sounding nearly hopeless against this thing between them. “I do.”
Dylan knew the feeling. But there was no point fighting it anymore. The new rules were set. Today and then over.
He tore off his shirt, the buttons flying from the fabric to ping against the wall. He felt her eyes on his chest, the Virgin Mother and his own mother’s name. He felt her picking apart his secrets, gathering up sharp broken pieces of him and trying to put them back together. Just like he was doing with her, trying to pick apart her lies and her secrets to find the truth of her.
And they would keep on doing that if he didn’t stop it.
“Spread your legs,” he said. And she did without hesitation. Without fear. “Wider.”