Once and Again - By Lauren Dane Page 0,40
light framing her.
“We can keep it quiet until the school year ends. He won’t be my student anymore. Be with me, Lily.” He hated that it sounded as if he was begging. But he needed her. And now that he’d had her in bed again, he wasn’t going to let that go. This was it for him. She was the one.
She turned, keeping her distance, which was a good thing because she looked so sexy and tousled he would have been all over her if she’d been within reach.
“We have to keep it quiet. I mean it. I won’t hurt him any more than he’s already been hurt.”
Now that she’d acquiesced, he relaxed into a satisfied man. “Adds some spice I say. Keeping it quiet.” And it wasn’t that much longer.
“All right. We can keep doing this part.”
“This part?”
“The sex part, silly.”
Oh did she think so? Did she think he’d look at her face and believe all she wanted was a hot fuck? Did she think he’d ever, for one minute, be satisfied with what his parents had and then proceeded to destroy over decades?
“I’m not interested in you as a quick, furtive fuck.”
Lily heard the anger in his voice and moments later figured out why. She moved to him, sliding back into bed and close to him again. Damn it, she still loved him. Probably never stopped. But it wouldn’t do to get attached. No. Still, she didn’t mean to hurt him. That she’d make a comparison between his drunk of an abusive father and his skank of a mother, even not meaning to, was untenable. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. You’re not him and I’m sure as hell not her. I meant we can…”
“This is how it is, Lily. You aren’t just some random woman I’m dating. I’m up front with you right now that I want something deeper. We have something deeper. We always have. So don’t insult either one of us by saying something stupid. What we have is more than friends. And that’s how I like it. We’re together.”
She sat up, angry herself. “Really? Like before?”
“I deserve that. And more most likely. But things are different. We’re different. You’re the only woman I want. Full stop. There’s no one else. Nothing else, but you. I wouldn’t be able to assert that as totally surely as I can now if I hadn’t lost it and known what it was to be without you. But secret for a little while or not, we’re together, Lily.”
Torn between wanting to believe and wanting to deny it, she said nothing as she watched him, so beautiful and male, spread out in bed like the best-looking item on any menu ever.
“I like it when you look at me that way. Say you’re with me, Lily.”
She sighed. “You broke my heart, Nathan. It took me years to get over you. Years. It wasn’t the kiss, it was the way you loved me one minute and tossed me away the next. You made me feel like absolutely nothing.” That her voice broke as she said the words should have embarrassed her, but it felt good to say. To let him know the outcome of what he’d done.
Good to remind herself that this little fun time in bed was great, but the devastation he left, that she slogged through as a result of his so-called love, had been a heavy burden for some time. She had enough burdens just then.
“All my life, until you, I’d never felt that. Being with you made me feel beautiful. Smart and strong and perfect.” She snorted a laugh. “You loved me and then you made me feel like I didn’t even exist.”
He looked stricken and for a moment she felt bad. But just a moment.
“I’m sorry.” He sat up and leaned over to tuck her hair behind an ear. “I never meant to hurt you. I was careless. Careless and selfish and more like my dad than I want to admit. That I made you feel that way when you were so much to me, I’m ashamed of that.”
“I didn’t wait to hear your explanation. I couldn’t see you there with another person. Doing with her what you did with me. I had to go. I never thought you’d…” She shook her head. “It’s gone. Done. Past and neither of us can go back and change it.”
“Will you let me earn your trust again?”
That was the question, wasn’t it? But she was here in his