mother, bohemian existence that was a completely unrealistic vision of how that would actually be.
But she knew there was more to it than that. That vision was just a concrete picture of the longing inside her.
But underneath that longing was some fear. That she still needed help. That she needed some real security. Safety.
It was why she’d asked Ryder.
She had actually dated plenty of men who would be fine with the kind of thing she was proposing. But Ryder wouldn’t be. He was right; she did know that.
And so he was right again to ask why she had thought that she could ask him for that and get the outcome she had imagined she would get from the made-up man in her head. She wasn’t thinking about Ryder anymore. And she was ignoring the way her lips burned. Because it wasn’t fair, and she didn’t like it.
Don’t you?
She ignored that, too. She didn’t like the way this quest had thrust her into some weird situation where she had to continually ask herself honest questions. That was Ryder’s fault, too.
The continual taker of her moral inventory. Her rock. Her touchstone. For better or for worse. And in this case for maddening.
It wouldn’t bother you if you didn’t want to have his baby.
She gritted her teeth and made her way farther into the bar.
And she looked at the men there. Men that would be expected to touch her if she wanted to sleep with them. If she wanted to get pregnant. And she could only think of Ryder.
The problem was, she couldn’t seem to banish thoughts of Ryder from her mind. No matter how hard she tried. No matter how many men she looked at.
His words kept echoing in her mind.
Your type doesn’t turn you on.
That wasn’t true. Of course her type turned her on. It was why they were her type. They were interesting to her in ways that went beyond the physical.
She could have orgasms. Just not with a partner. And she had decided a long time ago that worrying about that only stressed her out to a degree that made it all not very much fun, and therefore, she didn’t want to do it. Therefore, she would just go ahead and focus on the sweet physical touch that she liked, and the conversations that she had with them before and after, and she would go off to her own space, her own bed and have orgasms when she wanted to.
None of that had to do with what she was doing here now. None of that had to do with any of this, and she was furious at Ryder for what he had done. For kissing her.
Kissing her.
Him.
It hadn’t been like a kiss. Not the way she knew them. There had been no tentative question, no testing things at all.
He had pulled her up against his body—which had been hot like an inferno and hard as a brick wall—and he had claimed her mouth like he had every right to it. Like he knew what she would like. Like he knew full well how much tongue she wanted sliding against her own and how much pressure she wanted against her lips. Like he would know how fast or slow to touch her between her legs, how hard or soft, and when to ease up and when to go on.
She had never been with a man who had grabbed her quite so confidently, and he was the last man on earth who should have, since she hadn’t indicated at all that she wanted to kiss him.
Maybe, just maybe, at the last moment she had dared him rather than retreated. Maybe she had seen in his eyes that she could have stopped him, and had chosen not to.
But that was only a maybe.
And the next thing she’d known he’d been kissing her.
And really, it wasn’t like she should have reasonably been able to guess that was what he was about to do, even though he was holding her like that. Because they’d had seventeen years of not kissing, so the fact that they had suddenly started kissing was a whole weird thing.
She stood by the fact that he was the one who was wrong and not her. That he was the one who had changed things somewhat irrevocably and she could only feel annoyance about it.
She suddenly felt utterly and completely alone standing in the middle of the bar. She hated that feeling. It reminded her of being a child. Helpless. Standing