Chapter 22 #2
I stand, letting her pass. When she finally returns, I can tell she’s been crying. It shouldn’t bother me, dammit.
The flight stretches in front of us—hours of recycled air, cold light, and too much proximity. Every inch between us feels charged enough to start another war, so I get on my phone to distract myself.
Hours later we land in Chicago and make our way outside where my SUV is waiting. The cold hits the second we step outside, sharp enough to cut through the heat still coiled under my skin from that damned blanket and her hand dragging mine where it had no business being.
She gets in first, gathering that soft little sundress around her like it hasn’t been driving me half-mad since this morning. I follow her into the back seat, and the door shuts behind us with a final thud.
Chicago slides past in broken ribbons of light. It’s too much history in too little space.
Elizabeth turns toward the window as if she can escape me by looking hard enough at the city. Her dress pools around her knees, pale and innocent in a way that feels like mockery.
I should keep my distance.
I should remember the plane. The lies. The baby I am trying not to think about as another man’s. I should remember every reason to leave her alone.
Instead, I watch the reflection of her face in the glass and want.
God, I hate myself for it.
I hate that I can still want her when everything between us is rotten. I hate that wanting her has survived humiliation, fury, fear, and blood. I hate that none of it seems strong enough to kill it.
“You were crying on the plane,” I say.
She laughs without humor. “How observant.”
“Birdie.”
“Don’t.”
My jaw tightens. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t sound like you care.”
I turn toward her fully. “You think I don’t?”
She looks at me then, blue eyes bright and wounded and mean enough to make a better man back off. “I think you care when it suits you.”
Maybe she’s right. I know one thing. I should let it go.
Instead I say, “Then why did you put my hand under that blanket?”
Color rises in her throat. Good. At least I am not alone in this misery.
“You didn’t stop me.”
No. I didn’t. Because I am weak where she is concerned.
“Just like you’re not going to stop me right now.” I lean closer, slow enough to give her time to stop me. “Tell me you don’t want this.”
Her breath catches.
The city moves beyond the windows in fractured gold. The engine hums. The driver stays invisible beyond the screen that slowly rises. The world narrows to the space between us, to the tension pulling tighter and tighter until it feels like something must break.
But, she never utters the word ‘stop’.
I close my eyes for one beat, because I already know this is a mistake.
Then I kiss her. The first touch of her mouth is almost enough to make me pull back.
Not because I want to. Because I don’t. Because I know exactly how easy it would be to lose myself in this, and I am already far too close to the edge.
But she kisses me back.
That is what does it. The submission of her choice.
Her hand fists in my jacket. Her body turns toward mine with a soft, furious sound, and suddenly all the restraint I have been clutching in both hands feels frayed beyond saving.
I kiss her harder to drown out the noise in my head. The accusations. The rage. The voice telling me I am a fool for touching her like this, wanting her like this, after everything.
It doesn’t work.
If anything, it makes it worse.
Because every second of this is proof that I am exactly the man I hate. The man who should know better.
My palm finds her waist, then her side, and I feel the tremor that moves through her. Her breath breaks against my mouth. Mine follows a second later. The heat between us goes sharp, the kind that makes thinking impossible and self-contempt feel like fuel.
She says my name quietly. God. I hate the sound of it, and I would kill to hear it again. I draw back just enough to look at her. Her lips are swollen. Her cheeks flushed. Her eyes dark and uncertain and wanting enough to destroy me.
“We should stop,” I say.
It is the truth. It is also the last thing I want.
“Then stop,” she whispers.
But she doesn’t move away and neither do I.
The challenge in it, the hurt, the permission she is too proud to call permission—it all hits at once. I look at her and know, with perfect clarity, that I am about to do the one thing I have been trying not to do since she stepped into that sundress this morning.
Something in me gives.
The next kiss is slower. Worse, maybe, because now there is no pretense left. No argument to hide behind. No blanket, no plane, no clever cruelty to make it into a game. Just the two of us in the dark back seat of a car, choosing each other in the most disastrous possible way.
I pull her into my lap.
She inhales sharply, hands catching at my shoulders, but she settles there as if some part of her had been waiting for it. The skirt of her dress shifts. The leather creaks softly beneath us. Outside, Chicago keeps moving, indifferent and glittering and far away.
Inside the SUV, there is only heat.
Her forehead rests against mine for a second, both of us breathing too hard, and I think maybe this is still the moment to stop. Maybe this is where I put her back in her seat and hate myself in peace. Then she kisses me again, and that fragile thought dies.
What follows is not gentle, but it is not careless either.
She reaches between us, undoing my pants.
I help her lift her dress and then hold myself steady as she slides onto my cock.
We both make sounds of pleasure before she starts rocking on me.
It is hungry and desperate and full of everything we have refused to say.
It is her hands in my hair. My mouth at her throat.
The way she clings to me like she wants to punish herself with it.
The way I hold her like I cannot decide whether I am protecting her or taking something I have no right to.
Maybe both.
I keep one part of myself hard and controlled even as the rest of me frays.
Every time she shifts against me, every time she makes one of those quiet, delicious sounds, I feel another piece of my self-control go under.
And beneath all of it, beneath the wanting and the terrible relief of having her close, there is disgust.
At myself and how badly I want this. At how quickly I would burn for it. Because this should mean something unforgivable. Instead it feels inevitable.
When my hand brushes the slight curve of her stomach, I freeze for half a heartbeat. The reality of it punches through everything. Real. So painfully real.
She feels the pause and looks at me. For one suspended second, the heat changes. Softens. Deepens. Becomes something more dangerous than lust. I almost pull away then. But she catches my face in both hands and kisses me anyway, and I am lost.
So I let the moment take us. I let the motion of the car and the dark and the city lights and her mouth on mine blur everything ugly into something primal and reckless and almost unbearably human.
I let myself have her there, in that cocoon of leather and shadow, with every part of me split open by wanting and self-loathing in equal measure.
When it is over, the silence feels wrecked.
She stays against me for one long breath, maybe two. Then she pulls back enough to look at me. I can’t imagine what she sees. A man who got what he wanted and hates himself more for it, not less.
I smooth a hand over the back of her dress, more to steady myself than her. “This was a mistake.”
Her expression flickers. “You say that like you’re trying to convince yourself.”
“I am.”
The honesty of it lands between us.
Outside, the SUV slows. The building comes into view through the glass. Steel. Light. Height. Safety, if such a thing still exists for either of us.
I help her fix the hem of her dress without comment. She pushes her hair back with trembling fingers. We do not look at each other while we put ourselves back together.
But before the car stops completely, I reach for her once more, my hand covering hers for one brief, brutal second.
I hate myself for wanting you, I think. I hate myself more because that changes nothing.
Then I let go, and the SUV pulls to a stop.