Chapter 8 #2
But he was pulling her closer. He was closer. The blue of his eyes intense and sure. Certain. Determined.
His mouth touched hers. Gentle. Not testing, exactly, but giving her the space to back away, to stop things before they changed.
She should. She knew she should. There were a million warning alarm bells going off in her mind. She didn’t want anything to change.
Kissing him back was a mistake. It was wrong. It was everything she didn’t want. She should be panicking. Running away.
Instead, she sank into the feel of his mouth on hers. Slid her hands up his chest to wrap them around his neck. And she kissed him back, the wild, riot of feeling and sensation overwhelming any rational thought. Anxiety replaced by a warm flood of need.
His hands skimmed down her sides, his long, lean body was pressed to hers as his hands anchored at her waist. The warning bells were still sounding, but they were muffled. Under the warmth of him, the pulse of need. It had been a long time since anyone had kissed or touched her like this.
No.
No one had ever made her feel this.
She shouldn’t want it, allow it, enjoy it. Taking this any farther would change everything, and it was already too much. She didn’t want to change anything. She wanted things to go back the way they were.
But when his hands moved up her ribcage, fingers splayed wide, all while his teeth scraped against her lower lip, thought stopped completely.
She moaned into his mouth, arched into him. Sensation was too much and not enough. And in those extremes, all the warning bells went silent.
“I never let myself dream about this, Lara.” His mouth moved down her neck. “I couldn’t. But things are different now.”
She didn’t want different. She didn’t want change.
But when he kissed her again, she didn’t tell him that. She didn’t tell him anything.
Ty hadn’t exactly planned this. Certainly not the way it all seemed to explode into something…bigger. Hotter. Needier.
He’d had the fleeting thought that there might be an awkwardness, but there was only the perfect molding of body to body. Lara mounted no protest. She met every kiss, every touch, every need.
He tugged down the neckline of her dress so his mouth could explore more, taste more.
He hadn’t been lying about never letting himself think about this. He’d considered it a very off-limits topic, and being away made that easier, but there had been times he hadn’t been fully in charge of where his mind wandered.
It had certainly wandered here a time or two. What would the soft swell of her breast look like, but he hadn’t allowed himself to imagine taking the taut nipple into his mouth and rolling it to a tighter peak as she whimpered against him.
He hadn’t allowed himself to really consider what it would be like to run his hands up her smooth, soft inner thigh.
Higher. Lara wanted him just as much as he wanted her and it swamped him with too many feelings to sort through.
Maybe he should take her somewhere else, take this slower, but he didn’t want to.
He wanted her. So he explored her with his fingers first, testing and teasing, determining what she liked, what she needed. When her grip in his hair tightened, her body clenching then releasing, a shaky whimper escaping her mouth, he forgot all about slower. There was only now.
She met his gaze, hazel eyes unfocused and a little lost.
“Do you want me to stop?” he asked, not because he thought she did, but because he had to be sure.
Her cheeks were flushed, her breathing coming in short little pants. He’d die if she wanted to stop, but he’d do it.
Her hazel gaze, cloudy with desire, with everything he felt reflected back at him never wavered.
She shook her head. “Don’t stop,” she whispered.
So he didn’t. Couldn’t. He undid the fasten of his belt, unbuttoned and unzipped his pants.
He didn’t see any way else to do this than to lift her.
He used the wall for leverage as she gripped his shoulders.
He moved her underwear aside and found the soft heat of her and slid home.
Like every point of his life had been leading him here, to this perfect moment.
She was already shuddering apart on a gasp that sounded a hell of a lot like his name. He let her ride it out, held her there.
Then set about bringing her up to another peak, even as sensation swamped him. The smell of her perfume, the soft, perfect glide of her. Building, building, building.
He didn’t know how it could all be so good, so different than anything he’d ever experienced before. Except that it was her. And she was his.
His own release came on a kind of ear-ringing explosion with Lara shuddering around him. His muscles shook, from the effort of holding her up and remaining upright himself.
He rested his forehead on her shoulder, trying to get his breath back before he put her down. It took a few minutes to trust his muscles enough to move. To ease her onto her own feet.
He made sure she was steady before he fully released her. The second he did, she took a few steps away from him. He couldn’t tell what she was doing since she had her back to him, but he assumed tugging the front of her dress back into place.
So he took care of himself too. They were in the museum.
Jesus. He raked a hand through his hair.
Okay, that had gotten a little out of hand, but…
He nearly laughed. Maybe it was a nice story.
Wasn’t out of hand at least a little romantic?
And there’d be plenty of time for romance in the future. He’d make sure of it.
“I don’t think we should have done that.”
For a second, he could only stare at her back in bafflement.
His blood was still pumping too loudly in his ears.
He must have…misheard. Or he was just misunderstanding something.
This had been a bit too much too fast—the museum, the…
“We got a little carried away. I didn’t use anything. I’m sorry. I—”
“No, it isn’t that. I’m on birth control. It’s… We’re friends.” She turned to face him, hands clasped together at her waist. Chin raised. Eyes not quite meeting his. “That’s all we are.”
It hurt, the flat way she said that when he was still reeling from…everything, but she was wrong. “That isn’t all we are, Lara. This being a pretty big case in point.”
“You’ve had a lot of upheaval,” she said in a tone that was familiar, though he hadn’t heard it in a while.
Therapy speak. And he knew her grief counseling had certainly helped her when they’d been younger, but sometimes she brought out the words she’d learned there and used them as a kind of shield.
He’d never liked it, but he figured she had a right to. She’d lost so much.
But now was not the time, no matter what she’d been through as a kid.
“You’re looking for things that feel stable and like home. It’s understandable,” she continued. Like he was the problem here.
He had been the problem enough in his life, maybe he should take one for the team, but he couldn’t seem to do it. “No. You won’t turn this on me. This isn’t about upheaval. It’s about…the opposite.”
“This was just a blip. A one-time mistake.” She gave a little nod, like she could make it so by saying it out loud. “If we acknowledge that now, it doesn’t have to change anything.”
He couldn’t believe what she was saying, except at least now he could identify the real issue.
Change.
He felt for her. He really did. The trauma she’d suffered was huge. Unimaginable. But this had already happened. There was no shoving it back in the box they’d both carefully kept it in most of their adult lives.
She just needed to understand… He was in. He was all in. She just needed to trust that and then…
Then they could both have what they’d always deserved. “Why wouldn’t I want it to change things?” he asked her gently, moving toward her. “I want this.”
She took a step away for every one he took toward her, like he was threatening some kind of physical blow.
“Well, I don’t want it.”
She was shutting him out more effectively than she’d ever done before, and he couldn’t ignore his own hurt enough to bypass it. “And I don’t get a reason why?”
She looked at him like she didn’t understand what he was saying. His temper was starting to flicker to life. He tried to tamp it down, but it’s not like he’d railroaded her into this thing she was already closing the door on.
She’d been a willing and active participant. Maybe the experience had been different for her. Maybe it didn’t feel, to her, like it had altered her very existence, and maybe that was fine. But he damn well was going to have an honest conversation about that.
“You kissed me back. You said you didn’t want me to stop. This wasn’t some accident neither of us meant. We both knew what we were doing, and we both wanted to do it.”
“Yes, I know. I’m not arguing that. But it was a mistake.”
All his life, he thought he’d known her so well, but he couldn’t seem to find that typical understanding in this moment. “Why the hell would it be a mistake?”
“You… you’re going through a lot. Losing something, a dream. I’m familiar. I’m comfortable. So you’re reaching out for that to make this transition easier.”
For a moment he could only stare at her. She was diminishing everything that had just happened into him trying to make something easier? Like this didn’t matter. Like they didn’t matter.
Just like with her paintings. Just like her whole thing with Adam. Like it wasn’t a big deal, like she wasn’t good enough, like it didn’t matter.
“That’s what you tell yourself isn’t it? So I don’t have to matter. So you don’t have to matter.”
“Of course you matter.” She looked at him with entreaty in her hazel eyes. “But this was simply a…a blip. One we should set aside. Let’s not make a bigger deal out of this than it needs to be.”
“Bigger deal?” Everything he’d thought… Maybe he just wasn’t being clear enough, direct enough.
Too many years of knowing he’d leave meant she wasn’t used to being sure of him.
Maybe she thought it had been easy on him.
Maybe she just didn’t realize how much he’d missed her when he’d been away.
How much it meant to him to see her again. Every time.
She just needed the full picture, and then she would understand. She would stop trying to push this away. She had to.
“Lara, I am in love with you.”
But that clearly didn’t help, because she shook her head. “We’re friends. We love each other like friends.”
“No.” His response was pure instinct. Maybe if he didn’t feel so much, he could handle this better, but… “No, not like friends. You are the most important person in my life. I love you and I want to be with you, and now I’m finally building a life here so we can. Don’t tell me you don’t want that.”
“But I don’t!” she yelled it, her breath hitching, but her eyes were wide with nothing but panic even as temper flushed her cheeks. “I told you I don’t want this. Anything like this. I didn’t want it with Adam, and I don’t want it with you.”
He inhaled sharply, the pain of it so visceral it actually felt like someone had stabbed him straight through.
He didn’t like being lumped in with some guy she’d gone out with for six months or whatever. He didn’t like any of this, but if she was panicking, he had to stay calm. What was it she’d said about Adam? That everyone and everything died, so why bother?
But there were so many reasons to bother. How did she live her life without knowing that?
How did she lump him in the same group as Adam? He wasn’t some random guy.
“We’re all going to die someday, Lara. Is it really going to hurt less if you’re just my friend instead of something more?”
She sucked in a breath like he’d finally landed the blow, and the panic on her face didn’t ease. Still, she didn’t engage with anything he said. Just kept that brick wall in place.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t want this. And no amount of talking it out or yelling at each other is going to change that.”
“No, heaven forbid Lara Townsend change,” he muttered, temper beating at the ways he was usually easy on her. The ways he usually didn’t push because he wasn’t staying, and she’d been through enough.
But this was different, damn it. “Staying in one place doesn’t bring them back. It doesn’t change that things are going to hurt. And you’ve lived too long to not know that. Believe that.”
It was probably too mean, too harsh, too on the nose. He probably wasn’t being supportive enough to someone who’d suffered such tragedy.
But at the moment? He really didn’t care.
“It isn’t about that,” she said, still shaking her head. “I just don’t want this.”
That knife that had been lodged in his heart twisted. He didn’t necessarily think that was true, but in this moment, it hurt too much to argue with her, and he sure as hell had come too far in his life to beg.
So he turned on a heel and walked away.