Dirty Sexy Alphas (Twenty Book Box Set) - Hannah Ford Page 0,44

for another chance. But by then it had been a couple of years. I patched things up with Matt, and he told me about how you were at the top of your class, expecting to land a prestigious internship. And I knew that no matter what I did, I wouldn’t feel good enough for you. So I focused on my work, and then Alexa came along.”

Alexa. God, even her name sounded elegant.

“She has this uncanny way of making people feel either larger than life or like a bug beneath her shoe,” he said. “And at first, I was picturing a life where we built an empire together. I thought I was falling for her, but I realize now I wanted what she represented more than I ever wanted her. I used her to bury the regrets I had with you.”

A bitter laugh escaped my lips. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“She manipulated me,” Landon said. “None of it was real. She saw the company I was creating and dollar signs flashed in her eyes. She can be really fucking convincing when she wants to be. Her parents are lawyers and she was supposed to follow in their footsteps, but she didn’t want to. I was her ticket out. Her free ride.”

My heart twisted, but I tried to ignore the surge of sympathy. Because he’d had so many chances to tell me this. So many times he could’ve come clean. She might have manipulated him into marriage, but he’d manipulated me into his bed. He took me on a date, he offered me an internship. He had me imagining a world where we became something real.

And the whole fucking time he was married. He belonged to her. Even as he fucked me in his bed, he was never mine. “But your married, Landon,” I said, trying to impress upon him just how serious this point was to me.

“I asked her for an annulment a few weeks after our marriage, as soon as my head cleared. She refused. And when I told her I’d be filing for divorce, she swore she’d take my company. You have no idea what she’s capable of. I’ve never met a more ruthless woman.”

I wanted to scream at him. Pound my fists against his chest. Beg for some kind of explanation that didn’t end up with me feeling used and betrayed.

“Ruthless?” I said, my voice rising. “You want to talk about ruthless? How about the fact that last night you took me to your bed without telling me you were married? You let me think we were going to become something, but you’re not even free to be with me!”

“I should’ve told you.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

“I waited years to be with you. Jesus, do you know how hard it was for me to stop that night, three years ago?”

His words sent a flood of emotion and heat through me. Made me think of that night in my bed, my brother sound asleep and my father out of town, as Landon and I plunged toward the unknown.

I’d been a virgin. But I wasn’t a fool. As he’d pulled my shirt off and I’d pulled the blankets up over us, in a cocoon, I’d known what I was doing. He hadn’t yet pulled off my black silk panties, and he still wore his snug boxer-briefs, but as I lay underneath him, his arms braced on each side of my shoulders, his breathing growing labored, I’d been ready.

Years of wanting him, of pining from the back seat of his car, of watching him date girl after girl, and I’d been ready to give myself to him.

He’d leaned down and kissed me, his tongue tracing across my lip, and it had set me on fire. And yet, as I’d spread my legs and brought my knees up to his hips, begging him to press against me in that place where the heat had pooled into pulsing need, he’d hesitated.

He’d kissed me harder, and yet I could feel the distance between our bodies grow, tiny millimeters at first, until the night air breezed between our bodies, where before it had been skin-on-skin.

Again he’d kissed me, before shifting slightly, moving so that I could no longer feel the hard length of him in that place I was desperate for him to touch. And then he tucked his head slightly, kissing against the soft curve of my neck. He’d murmured something, but it had been too low to hear. And when I