“Hey. It’s okay.” He caught her in his arms as she moved to pass him.
From behind, he wrapped her in the strength and warmth of his body, and she wished it were comforting her. She wished she could find some peace within the confusion twisting through her mind.
“Too much too fast,” she whispered brokenly, her hands latching onto his wrists as she leaned back into him, trying to absorb his strength, to hold onto it.
“I know.” He kissed the top of her head and held her safe.
But she had found that she could find the same feelings that she found with Mac in another man’s arms.
Keiley tensed at the thought, suddenly desperate to get away from him, desperate to clear her head of his scent and his warmth to make sense of the emotions she couldn’t seem to get a handle on.
“You don’t know, Mac.” Tearing from his arms, she lifted her hand in a halting motion, feeling him reach for her again, feeling her own weaknesses overwhelming her. “You don’t know what I’m feeling. And you don’t how frustrating this is. How could you? It’s not you that bastard is using as a tool to test you.”
“And you think watching him tear you apart doesn’t tear me apart?” His voice deepened, grew rougher. “You’re my wife, Keiley.”
“Am I?” She turned back to him, her breathing rough, the anger and the frustration boiling inside her. “Am I your wife or a toy you’ve grown tired of playing with, Mac? Personally, I’m starting to feel more and more like the toy.”
She watched his jaw flex, the way his eyes began to brew with the turbulence of emotions suddenly boiling beneath the surface.
“You were never a toy, Keiley,” he said. “And you can’t deny you found something you were looking for yourself when Jethro came to our bed. Don’t belittle us both by denying it.”
She wanted to lie. She wanted to scream out a denial in his face and strike out at him for the emotions she could no longer make sense of. She wanted to make him pay for the turmoil in her heart, and in her head.
He chuckled then, lighting a fuse to the anger raging inside her, the arrogance in his expression, the knowing sensuality and certainty in his eyes setting a blaze inside her head that threatened to turn into a conflagration of fury.
“Keiley, it’s okay,” his voice gentled. “You’ve sat in here by yourself, thinking about it, remembering it, knowing you can’t escape it, and I know you’re scared.” His jaw clenched as his expression softened. “Nothing’s changed.”
“Thats not true!” Her voice began to rise.
“What’s changed then?” he asked. “Tell me how it’s different, Kei. I’ll make it better.”
“Everything!” she cried. “This—this is too much, Mac.”
“What’s too much, Kei? The emotion? The need? Finding out that there’s more to us than you imagined? You always knew that. If you hadn’t, you wouldn’t have been pushing when you began to realize you weren’t getting all of me,” he told her fiercely.
His eyes. If they had been angry, if he had been angry, she could have fought. But she couldn’t fight his gentleness or the truth that he made her acknowledge. That it was more than she imagined. More pleasure, more hunger, more emotion than she ever wanted to lose.
“Look at you,” he said then. “Your eyes are nearly green with the heat inside you. You make me so damned hard I can barely breathe when you try to fight what I know we both want.”
He moved forward. Keiley retreated.
She wanted to beg him to stop, she wanted to beg him to take her. She wanted to scream in frustration and whimper in arousal.
“Stop, Mac.” She stopped. Holding her ground as he paused in front of her, his head tilting toward her, watching her with a small quirk to his lips, almost a smile, full of knowledge.
This part was the Mac that held her soul. Gentle loving. It was being brought back to her that she had sensed the depth of his sexuality during the beginning of their relationship, had sensed the secrets he held back from her. And she had ignored them. She had pushed aside her own wariness and let him hide from her. She was at fault as much as he was, yet acceptance wasn’t as easy for her.
It wasn’t Mac she was having problems accepting, though, and she knew it. It was herself. It was realizing that this wasn’t going to be a game. It wasn’t just an interesting episode in their lives. It was going to change them all.
“Look at your face,” he said, his voice soft. “Do you have any idea what it does to me to see that battle raging in your eyes? To watch you learning yourself, Keiley?”
“Learning myself? I’m not learning myself, Mac, I’m destroying myself.”
She turned and left the room, left him before she revealed more than she wanted to, more than either of them could handle.
In running from Mac, she ran headlong into Jethro, though. Dressed in snug jeans and no shirt, barefoot and leaning against the kitchen counter with a cup of fresh coffee, his gaze searching as he watched her, then flicked behind to Mac.
“Everything okay?”