Faked - Karla Sorensen Page 0,52

impossible."

My loud laughter took us both by surprise, but it broke his face into a small grin.

"Why are you so sure I'd regret this?" I asked him.

He used the tip of his finger to trace a line across my forehead and down along the edge of my cheekbone. My eyelids fluttered shut at the gentle caress, so different than how he'd been kissing me. "Because of how your face looked about two minutes ago. Something stopped you. Something you can't mute"—he tapped my forehead again—"in here."

How had I not noticed how observant he was? My mouth fell open slightly at how quickly he'd picked up on the unraveling of my thoughts. The inability to get out of my own head was usually my downfall anyway.

To think and think and think about something until I knew exactly what I felt about that thing. Until my head and my heart were on the same page.

Right now, with Bauer, was the first time that I could remember when I just let myself feel without needing to know how everything might work out, and how this might look when the sun rose over the small cabin insulating us from reality.

When he pulled away, his hands falling from my body, I instantly felt cold even though the cabin was warm.

"Bauer," I said quietly.

The firelight in the cabin threw a magical glow on his profile as he paused, and I saw the desire there in the tight line of his jaw, the way he held his hands so carefully at his sides. His big body, so much stronger than mine, was all but vibrating in the dim, flickering light.

"It's okay," he said slowly. "I'm not mad. I just ... I can't handle it if you wake up and look at me with disappointment in those blue eyes, princess."

My heart broke for him for the first time since I'd met him. No matter what else he'd revealed, what snippets of his past he'd given me, this was the first time I felt just how deeply he'd learned how to protect himself. Him pulling away was so much more about him than it was about me.

"And do you normally give speeches like this to the women you sleep with?" I asked. But I asked it tentatively, with a gentle voice free of censure. "Make sure they won't regret a night with you?"

Bauer swallowed hard. His eyes searched my face. "They know what they're getting into. They're not thinking past one night, trust me."

"But you think I am?"

The tip of his finger tilted my chin up, and his thumb brushed my bottom lip. "I think you look at me differently than they do, Claire. And if you can't quiet those things holding you back, I don't want to be the man they all think I am. Not with you. The one who'll push where you let me, who'll convince you with my lips"—he dropped his thumb but still stared steadily at my mouth—"and my hands until you convince yourself."

My mouth opened to argue with him, but no words would come. Bauer had convinced himself that he was only capable of casual transactional relationships, maybe for a hundred different reasons that had nothing to do with his upbringing. Reinforced beliefs were hard to break down, and I wasn't expecting this from him. Not once we kissed. A kiss like that, especially.

He was trying to do what he thought was right, what was honorable. The man who tried so hard to pretend he didn't care what people thought of him was placing my own reservations so far ahead of his needs that I couldn't think of a single intelligent response.

Which was why I let him walk out of the kitchen and fall back onto the couch with a heavy exhale.

The sound was so rife with unspent tension that my lips curved into a sad smile.

What a predicament I'd found myself in.

I walked up the stairs to the loft slowly, not because I was ready for bed—it was still early, the light outside the cabin a muted gray as evening fell—but because I just needed a little space to think.

As I perched on the edge of the bed, I touched my fingers to my lips. What a fine time for Bauer to allow his chivalrous side to surface, I thought ruefully.

After that kiss.

Twenty-one years suddenly felt like an impossibly long time to go without experiencing a kiss like that. Sure, I had some experience, probably the least of my sisters, but it