then he was kissing me again. Making me forget all about how unlikely we were to come out of this unscathed. Instead, there was just the way his lips moved, the swirl of his tongue against my own, the need to touch him everywhere. Up his chest, over his shoulders, his hair, his cheeks, that jaw. Dear god, this man!
I couldn’t deny how good he felt. How my brain, my overactive writer’s brain, screeched to a halt under his careful ministrations. The way he coaxed life out of me and made me feel as if I was finally living again. Forget my recent dry spell, everything felt dull and gray next to his vibrant Technicolor.
“My room,” he suggested, walking us a step backward.
I opened my eyes and met his blue with my own. Saw the desire laced in his expression. The need to have me again. Claim me as he once had.
It was powerful. Heady. Potent.
And a reminder of what had happened last time.
The girl I’d been.
The girl he’d ruined.
I jerked backward. My hand flew to my mouth. Those traitorous lips.
He saw it. He knew what it meant. “Natalie, please.”
“I…I can’t,” I gasped. “I don’t want this. I don’t want you.”
He reached out as if he could change my mind. And I was sure those hands could. I knew the power they held and the things they could do to my body.
But I didn’t have any other words for him. I couldn’t be that person again.
Penn
16
What the fuck had just happened?
Natalie had just fled.
This had never happened to me before. Not that every girl wanted to fuck me, but the ones who came back to my apartment and made out with me did. And here Natalie was, in my apartment, in that incredible fucking dress with bedroom eyes…and she’d claimed she didn’t want me.
It was a bald-faced lie. And yet she’d looked terrified when she uttered it.
Terrified. Like I would hurt her again. Like I had the last time. Here it was. The moment of truth. My past coming back to bite me in the ass. Again. Just like it always did. No matter what I did to come out on the other side, it was always there, taunting me. And I saw it there on her face as clear as day. But I didn’t want it there. I wanted to make it right.
I raced after her and got there in time to see her slam the bedroom door.
To my bedroom.
I sighed. Well, this was going to be…great. I knew she wasn’t going to like that. Not after her latest moment of fleeing from my presence.
“Natalie…”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Trust me, I’m well aware. But that’s my bedroom.”
She was silent on the other side of the door for long enough that I wasn’t sure if she’d heard me. She had clearly just gone into the first room that she found. And I didn’t care if she wanted to stay in there. But I’d figured she’d want to know at least.
The door finally cracked open. She had her arms crossed over her chest. “Where should I sleep?”
“The guest room down the hall, second door on the right. I put your things in there this afternoon.”
“Fine.” She shouldered past me and went down the hallway.
I couldn’t just let it lie. “I think we should talk,” I said as I trailed her.
“No,” she said flatly. “I said what I had to say.”
“Your lips said something entirely different.”
She wrenched open the guest bedroom door. “Just forget it ever happened.”
I grabbed the door before she could slam it in my face. Our eyes met. Fury meeting desire. And then she softened for just a second, and she was back.
“And what if I can’t do that?” I asked.
She dropped her gaze and sighed. “That’s your problem. Not mine.”
She tugged on the door, and I let it go, watching as it closed behind her.
Fuck.
Forget that kiss?
That kiss? Was she out of her mind?
No one was going to forget what had just happened. This wasn’t how I’d thought this night would end up. Not even fucking close.
We’d spent the last three weeks together, alone at the beach house. Bet or no bet, I wanted Natalie. I’d wanted her the first time I saw her in Paris. I’d wanted her that first night in the Hamptons. And every moment I spent with her intrigued me more and more. Her passion for writing, the hours she spent focused on her work, the way she read into my own