12. Ember #3
It was selfish to think of myself in that moment, but I did. I thought of the attraction I felt for him, the glimpse I’d had—and loved—of the man behind the charm. And I mourned the love story I knew we would never have.
Jack Mars would never love again.
Indulging my own attraction to him would end badly. I would end up hurt.
And here he stood in front of me, grief written in the downturned corners of his mouth and the faraway look in his eyes. Alone.
I knew how that felt.
I found myself slithering out from under my blanket and padding toward him. When I wrapped my arms around his waist, he went stiff for a moment, then slowly put his arms around me.
“What’s this?” he finally asked.
With my cheek pressed against his shoulder, I closed my eyes and inhaled the scent of his skin. “You looked like you needed a hug.”
His chest moved with a deep inhale, and his arms tightened around me. After a few seconds, we pulled away from each other, and I ducked my head to hide my flush.
“For what it’s worth,” I said to the middle of his chest, “I think you’re doing great.”
When I was very sure that my face wasn’t red, I glanced up to find Jack watching me. His gaze was serious, unreadable. His arms were still loosely slung around me, and when I tried to pull away, they tightened to keep me close.
“We should work on that,” he said in a low, rumbly voice.
“Work on what?”
“You always trying to pull away from me. Is it so bad to touch me, Ember? So repulsive you need to flinch away?”
No, it wasn’t bad. That was the problem. As his arms tightened around me, my pulse began to pound. In my throat. In my wrists. Behind my knees. Between my legs.
“If we’re going to make this believable to someone as clever as my grandmother,” he continued in that same low voice, “you’re going to have to get comfortable touching me.”
This was steadier ground. We’d trod on it often over the past week and a half of our acquaintance. This push and pull had become familiar. I took all my emotions—the empathy, the heartbreak, the resignation—and shoved them down. Closed the lid on that box of pain. Locked it tight.
“If this is your way of telling me we should sleep together, it’s not going to work,” I warned.
His smile was all darkness and desire. “That’s not what I meant, but I’m intrigued that your mind went there.”
I needed to get out of the circle of his arms. Touching him—touching him in a room with a bed—was a terrible idea.
And it was worse now, because I knew how it felt to wake up tangled up in him.
The memory of it made my brain go all funny.
I couldn’t keep thoughts in my head, and all my attention kept diverting to the pack of muscle of his chest beneath my palms, the hardness of his thighs against mine, the feel of his hands wrapped around my waist.
“Relax, Ember,” he coaxed. “I won’t bite. Not unless you ask me to.”
I scoffed to hide the flush of warmth his words sent through me. He was toying with me—I knew he was, and yet it still got to me. Still made me feel unsteady and needy and hot.
“Babe,” he muttered. “Take a breath.”
I sucked in enough air to fill my lungs, and his hands swept up and down my sides in slow strokes.
“There,” he continued quietly when I was breathing normally again. His hands came to rest on my waist, and he pushed me away an inch so he could look down and meet my eyes. “I was joking. Mostly.” A flash of a grin. “You don’t have to do anything you’re not comfortable with. Not with me.”
My heart gave a mighty thump, which I ignored. It meant nothing. I was just…confused.
But he was right about one thing: “I do need to stop flinching when you touch me.”
“It’s starting to get offensive, honestly.”
I rolled my eyes, and he grinned. The heavy stickiness of our previous conversation faded, leaving only closeness behind.
We shared something more than a mutually beneficial contract now.
Straightening my shoulders, I tentatively slid my hands up his chest and hooked them over his shoulders.
For just a second—so short I thought I might’ve imagined it—Jack went very, very still.
His eyes turned intent, and he watched me like nothing else existed.
Then it was gone, and he was arching his brow, amused. “Like what you feel?”
“Don’t be an ass,” I mumbled, pulse thundering. “I’m trying to think this through.”
“What’s that?”
“How anyone’s going to believe that you’re actually into me.”
“I’m not sure that’s the problem, precisely,” Jack mused, but I barely heard him.
My mind whirled around the central issue, trying to find a solution.
I needed to marry him officially. Needed the paperwork so we could both get what we wanted.
In order to do that, we had to make it halfway believable that we were into each other.
How? How could I stop myself from jerking away from him every time he came near?
Our relationship would never be real. These were facts.
I flinched because I was attracted to him and deeply uncomfortable about it. If I became more attracted to him, would it turn into feelings that would never be returned? Would I break my own heart in the process?
Probably.
Still, we needed to be convincing. We needed to file that paperwork.
And then I remembered what I’d done for my fear of heights.
For years, I’d had a strong fear that stopped me from even going out on balconies.
I could fake it, work around it, and pretend it wasn’t there, but it had gotten in the way of my life, especially when the only apartment I’d been able to secure was on the seventeenth floor of my building.
The only thing that had worked was inoculating myself against the fear.
Exposing myself to it in slow, controlled doses.
I needed to do the same thing here. I wouldn’t fall in love with him just because my body wanted him. And I would prove it to myself.
Squaring my shoulders, I refocused on Jack. On my hands resting on his shoulders. On the weight of his attention.
I met his gaze. “I know what we need to do to make this believable.”
“Oh yeah?”
A sharp nod. “Yes. We need to practice.”
JACK
I’d never grown hard quite so quickly as I did in that moment. Between one heartbeat and the next, my cock was an aching bar against the zipper of my jeans. It was the determined way she spoke and the obstinate set of her jaw. The challenge in her eyes.
It was the thought of finally shoving that prim little pencil skirt up to her waist so I could bend her over the side of the bed and bury myself inside her. The thought of “practicing” with her until there was no question in anyone’s mind—including hers—that she belonged to me.