me and I am willingly giving it to him because I don’t want it without him.
His face falls. He drops to his knees and crawls to me, picking me up awkwardly and placing me on his lap. His arms come around me tightly. “I’m sorry, Rain. You’re not a whore. You’re anything but, and I’m a dick for calling you that.”
“I’m not a whore,” I sob. I can hear my father screaming at my mother. You useless whore!
“You’re not. Listen,” he says firmly. He grabs my chin and brings my eyes to his. He wipes my tears away with his thumbs, and then brings my face as close to his as he can without kissing me.
I want him to kiss me.
“I didn’t mean it. I was mad. I saw you kissing my best friend and I snapped. Please forgive me.”
“Never call me that again.”
“Never,” he promises fervently.
I believe him. Because next time I won’t cry. He will.
“I was trying so hard to forget you and then we started dancing and he kissed me. I didn’t mean for it to happen.”
He kisses my wet cheeks, sliding his lips over my tears. “I know you didn’t. Of course I do.”
I sag against him. “What am I doing? I need you tell me point blank you don’t want me. I need to hear it, otherwise I’ll torture myself.”
He looks away, at his bed, at his dresser, anywhere but at me. “I’m just a guy?”
He isn’t going to do it. Kent will not release me from this disastrous attraction. I try and get off his lap, and the selfish bastard he is, he wraps his arms around me so I cannot move. I need to free myself from this man before I become the girl I’m trying not to be.
“Yes!” I screech. “You’re just a guy to me.”
“That’s a lie.”
“We barely know each other.”
He squeezes me tighter. “You need to sleep this off. Come lie in my bed.” He rises fluidly with me in his arms.
The last thing I want is sleep. Why can’t he say I don’t want you? “Let me go.”
He doesn’t respond.
“Let me go.”
“I can’t!” he hisses, setting me roughly down on his bed. “I can’t let you go. After Willow there’s no way in hell I’m letting you go, Rain. I don’t understand what’s going on between us, but there’s something there. I want it more than I’ve ever wanted anything. It’s been a dark year and then you come in and it’s still dark, but for the first time I’m starting to realize it doesn’t have to be this way.” He pounds on his chest. “I don’t have to be this way.”
His admittance is so sudden I have to look away. He’s been so adamant that we were only partners in his game. He promised I didn’t have to worry about him wanting me, that he wasn’t the right guy for me. To hear that he might have struggled with his desire the same way I did with mine shines a brand new light on this torturous want of mine.
A movement catches my eye. “Kent?”
He pauses with his hand outstretched for the door.
“Don’t leave. Stay with me?”
“I don’t sleep in my bed with women.”
“Because of Willow?”
He nods slowly. “I can’t stand the idea of sleeping with anyone else in my bed. She and I owned that bed right there.” He kicks the end of it. “We made love in it, talked in it, and promised each other things that never happened in it. I can’t sleep with you in the same place I made love to her.”
I can’t stand the way he talks about her.
I want him in this bed. I will have him in this bed.
“Kent Nicholson, you will get in this bed with me or I’ll walk out of this room and never come back. Do you want that? Because I don’t want that, Kent.”
“What do you want? You can tell me,” he promises when I balk.
“I don’t understand why. Or maybe I do. Maybe that’s why this is so hard. But I think all I want is you.” I swallow hard. “And you want me to, don’t you, Kent?” My uncertainty is thick in the air.
Please say yes.
For a few seconds Kent simply stares at me, red-eyed and torn. Then he nods once, a silent admission of his want. “The second you walked into this apartment I haven’t been able to think about anyone else. There was something about you. It was so good, so everything