Love Triangle Six Books of Torn Desire - Willow Winters Page 0,209

over boys.” I turn onto my back so I can see him. “Rachel’s three years younger. She sometimes had crushes on the guys I’d date, but we have different types.”

“What’s your type?”

“Hot guys with dark hair and green eyes named Brian.”

He tightens his arm around me. “Good answer. What about your sister?”

“She’s been with this guy, Ben, for like three years. They’re gonna get married someday. She’s more outgoing and spunky and he’s sort of an introvert, so I guess her type is quieter guys.”

“Opposites attract,” he muses.

“Sometimes. I dated a guy who was my total opposite once and it didn’t work. You have to have some things in common.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know.” I lift a shoulder. “Core values?”

“What do you value?”

“Family. Friends.”

“Don’t most people value those things?” He runs a finger down my cheek as I nod. “What characteristics do you value?”

“Honesty. Humor. Intelligence. You?”

“Work ethic, leadership, and confidence, among others.”

I mentally note that they’re all work-related, which makes sense for someone who runs his own business. I was hoping to get more of a personal insight into him through this conversation, though. “For yourself or for others?” I ask.

“Both.” He focuses his eyes across the room as he talks. “I surround myself with people who hold those traits as values. It’s what’s made my business so successful so quickly.”

“Yet you’re dating a woman who takes summers off.”

He laughs. “That doesn’t mean you don’t have a strong work ethic. My cousin is a teacher. I see what you go through. You deserve summers off.”

“Thanks,” I mumble, never sure how to respond when people compliment my profession rather than me personally. I close my eyes. It feels so good here in his arms, so warm, and my body is so exhausted from our night together, from three orgasms in the span of a few hours. I drift off to sleep.

Fingertips slowly ascending my thigh, so slow and full of anticipation I think I might die of need. Lips clashing, tongues battering, hearts pounding. We’re so close that I feel the beat of his heart against my breast hammering as hard as mine. But why? Is this different for him the way it is for me? Raw, unfiltered passion. Hands groping, gripping, grappling. The taste of beer on his tongue, cold and bitter, mixed with peppermint, and the chill of the cool liquid splashing into my belly button before he laps it up with his tongue. Fingers twisting in my hair, pulling as I come, come, come. He comes next, thick, hot ropes erupting from him and onto his fist, onto the naked flesh of my pubic bone. Then it all starts over again, the seduction, the foreplay, and finally the main event. Again I come, come, come. This time I come so hard that I come undone.

I wake with a jolt.

“You okay?” a voice whispers in the dark.

“Yeah,” I whisper back. It’s a lie.

I’m not okay.

I’m not even close to okay.

Brian holds me, pulls me more tightly against him as he worries about me—my needs, why I woke with a jolt in the middle of the night, if it was because of a bad dream.

It wasn’t a bad dream. Far from it.

It was a dream that pressed a needy ache in my core and dampened my panties. A dream of a night that did happen, a replay of the events—that one night I still wish wasn’t limited to just one night. One night that satisfied every need I’ve ever had—until it was time to leave. One night that meant more to me than it did to him.

Guilt blooms in my chest as the reality hits me.

It was a dream of another man.

* * *

Brian and I see each other nearly every night when he isn’t working. He texts me throughout the days, little messages here and there to let me know he’s thinking about me. On the nights when he doesn’t have dinner meetings, we go to dinner, sometimes along with Jill and Becker and other times alone. On the nights he has to work, he comes by afterward and almost always stays until morning.

Each day that passes pushes my one-night stand further into the past. The memory should be starting to fade by now, as memories do, but it hasn’t. I’m still consumed by what happened.

I avoid Vail. If a song comes on the radio, I shut it off. If I happen to see his name in my Twitter feed, I scroll right by without allowing my eyes to