Chapter 26
DEX
This seems like a marker in our journey, and I want to cherish this moment, because it feels like everything has changed.
But it’s precisely for that reason that I need to back away. Daniela is sweet, and warm and trusting. She fits against me like she was made to be mine.
Like she belongs to me.
Like she’s part of me.
Like I’ve known her for years.
But I will hurt her. I’m a mess, and she’s not. I’ll ruin her, and I can’t do that to her. But now we’re sitting apart like angry lovers. Getting her off, fucking sublime. But she had to go and ruin it by telling me she was falling for me.
Those words fucking words set off every alarm in my head. Five-alarm fire.
Get out. Get out now.
I’m getting attached, and I can’t afford for that to happen. This could turn dangerous. Complicated. All the things I don’t need or want.
I walk away in seven months, before this marriage is nothing but a broken contract. I was never supposed to feel anything real for her, and my fucking dick got in the way. Again.
My head is all over the place, a riot of all the wrong emotions; regret and frustration. I can’t do this. I need space. I need to shut this down before it’s too late. She looks at me, her lips moist lips—lips that demand to be kissed and so help me God, I so badly want to. But I hold back.
“I need to take a shower,” I tell her, scrambling to find a way to break the moment, to put my barriers back in place.
“Don’t run away, Dexter.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m taking a shower.”
“You just had one,” she murmurs.
“I did, but you just came all over my fingers.”
Her expression shifts in an instant. She flinches, like I just slapped her. Because I wouldn’t need to have a shower for that. What I want to do is lick my fingers and taste her, but this can’t go any further.
The hurt flickers across her face before she hides it, but I see it. And I hate myself for it.
I step quietly out of the hot tub, putting distance between us, trying to ignore the battle waging inside me. I don’t want to leave. I want to pull her into me and go further. But it’s better that I walk away. I can’t.
I force myself not to look back as I try to erase the image of her sitting in that hot tub, looking so very deliciously fuckable.
I spend most of my shower fucking my fist, remembering her moans of pleasure. How wet and swollen she was for me. How her eyes glazed over as my fingers pistoned in and out of her.
I’m in danger of falling in love with you, Dexter.
Her words bounce around in my head. Their depth and heaviness conjuring up scenarios I can’t let myself be part of.
I avoid her later by dealing with non-important emails and pretending to be busy at my desk. When I walk past the bedroom, Daniela is already in bed, curled up under the sheets, facing away.
I want to crawl in beside her, but I force myself to go to the spare bedroom instead. Shutting the door behind me, my shoulders slump as I lean against the door and wonder what the hell I just did.
A silly, needy part of me expected her to ask me what was wrong. To come to me to coax it out of me, but Daniela isn’t the sort of woman to chase after a man. I see that now. She is more than I first thought. She gives me the space I need and, unlike other women, she leaves me alone, even when I really don’t want to be alone.
She’s the type of woman a man would be lucky to have, and stupid to let go. I’m at risk of giving into my feelings, of giving into my emotions, because I’m starting to feel so much for her, but when she crossed a line with those words and my guardrails slammed into place.
She says she could fall in love with me, but I’ll hurt her. Sleeping in the spare room is the right thing to do, yet I can’t help but wonder where the fuck we go to from here?