could see him as anything other than the man who had ruined her life. But now it was complicated because he was both her own personal monster and her lover.
Really, only she could make a decision this bad.
She didn’t feel better. She didn’t feel fixed. She didn’t feel like she had solved her problem. In some ways, she would be able to relate to her friends a little bit better. She would at least know what all the fuss was about. Because, as messed up and topsy-turvy as all of the emotions surrounding the sex were, the sex was, objectively, amazing.
She had absolutely nothing to compare it to, but orgasms she knew. She had plenty of those on her own. She was a capable, red-blooded woman, after all. But those were... They were all under her control. She had them when she wanted them and never when she didn’t. There was predictability to them. To achieving it all on your own.
She had no control with Gage. And he had done things to her that... She knew things. She knew plenty about sex. But theoretical sex is not actual sex. Actually having those things done to you made them wicked and almost beyond belief rather than uncomfortable and slightly giggle-worthy.
She had definitely not been giggling during the sex.
She was overheating thinking about it, and she needed to get her mind on something else.
It didn’t matter, because just then, he turned into the parking lot at Ace’s. “Thank you,” she said, practically leaping out of the truck before it had fully stopped. She said a prayer of thanks that she had actually remembered her purse, and that her keys were inside of it. She needed to get some distance between herself and Gage.
He got out of the truck, the driver side door closing hard, the sound echoing across the empty lot. Ace’s had clearly emptied out promptly tonight. Probably because other people had left in a hurry to hook up. Just like they’d done earlier. She tried to shove that thought, that memory out of her mind.
And when she looked at him walking toward her, she tried to think of him as that monstrous villain she’d imagined him to be. But it was hard. Hard when she had been intimate with the man. When she had seen the way he had responded to the news of his sister giving birth.
Harder still when he had confided in her about some of those things. That Sierra had been six when he left. That it clearly hurt him, the passage of the years, how much he had missed.
That he wasn’t some callous monster who had left town and never thought of them again. He had thought of his family. He had thought of her. It was easy to be offended about that. That he had somehow co-opted her pain and made it his own. But maybe he just had his own pain.
That thought made her feel like her chest had been cracked open for some reason. It was uncomfortable, invasive, and it seemed to demand something of her. She didn’t know what.
She went to the driver side of her truck, unlocked the door and opened it, then she turned to look at Gage one last time. There was something tortured in his expression, something drawn and tired. He looked older than he had at the start of the evening, reinforcing that feeling that today had actually contained years.
Each and every one seemed to be written on that gorgeous face. She couldn’t stop staring at him then. Looking at him like it was the first time she’d seen him as he stood there illuminated by the security lights, the sharp, blue glow highlighting his cheekbones, casting the planes of his face into sharp relief.
She looked down at his forearm, exposed because the idiot wasn’t wearing a jacket. At that tattoo. She had touched his body. Had touched it naked. He was muscular, hard and rough, hairy in all the right places, just like a man should be.
She wished that he were just a man. Just a man she had decided to sleep with for the first time. And it made her angry that he wasn’t. That this couldn’t be simple. That it couldn’t just be fun. That it couldn’t just feel good. That it had to be just tonight, and never again.
As if he read her mind, he let out a harsh, low sound, and crossed the space between them, taking her into his arms and