Rock Wedding (Rock Kiss #4) - Nalini Singh Page 0,66
that was all nerves and sensation and need. But he’d satisfied her too. As he had tonight. Even when everything else had gone wrong between them, the sex had been phenomenal.
During their marriage, she used to call it “making love”—at least in her own head. Her stupid mushy heart had liked the sound of it… but she had to be honest now. They weren’t making love now, hadn’t been making love then. No… she had been.
Because she’d loved Abe in a way he had never loved her.
Careful, Sarah. Don’t you fall again. Don’t you let yourself be broken when you’ve barely put yourself back together.
“Only until the baby comes,” she said on a driving wave of fear and primal protectiveness.
Abe leaned up on his elbow to look down at her, all gleaming brown skin and taut muscle. “What?” He ran his free hand over her abdomen and hip.
She shivered, held on to her thoughts through sheer strength of will. “This,” she whispered, looking away from him because facing a sexually sated Abe and having rational thoughts were mutually exclusive events for her. “Us.”
His hand went motionless on her skin. “I thought you said I could have a role in our kid’s life if I proved myself and my sobriety?”
She turned onto her side so she was facing him—and he was scowling now, so she could hold an actual conversation instead of being led around by her hormones. “Of course you’re going to be a father to our child,” she said at once. “I want that more than anything.” Memories crashed into her without warning. “You have to stay clean though, Abe. I can’t handle all that again—and our child shouldn’t have to.”
His jaw muscles tensed, as did his shoulders, but he didn’t get angry. “Yeah,” he said, “I get that. I won’t fuck up our kid’s head by getting shitfaced.”
“That’s what I meant about us too.” She took a deep breath, and his scent, it was like a drug through her system. “It’ll confuse our child if he or she finds us in bed together, or if they figure out we’re having sex.”
Raising his hand, Abe brushed her hair off her face, a passionate intensity to his gaze that held her captive. “Only if we aren’t together in reality by then.”
Her heart slammed against her rib cage, hope spiraling upward in a golden burst. It was tough, so damn tough not to jump into the arms of that hope. “We self-destructed, Abe,” she whispered. “No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get through to you about—”
“I had to be ready first.” Abe’s voice was rough, brutally honest. “You couldn’t help a man who didn’t want to be helped.”
“It wasn’t just that.” Then she said it, said the most hurtful thing. “You didn’t love me.”
Abe’s face closed off. She’d seen that a hundred times before, should’ve become used to it. But it still hurt just as badly as the first time he’d shut her out. “There you go,” she said through a throat gone raw. “Leaving me behind while we’re naked in the same bed. I never felt as lonely as when you did that.”
CHAPTER 23
SARAH’S SOFT WORDS HIT ABE HARD, drawing blood. He knew that hadn’t been her intent. Sarah had always had a heart of pure mush. “I’m sorry,” he began, because it was time to stop being a coward, to man up and admit his terror.
“It’s all right, Abe.” A sad smile, her fingers brushing his lips. “You can’t force love. I don’t expect it, wasn’t trying to guilt you into a false confession.”
No, he would not let this bullshit stand. “That man you knew during most of our marriage?” he said, tugging away her hand and pressing it against his heart. “He wasn’t Abe. Or he was a fucked-up version of me.” The music had survived his addiction, but the drugs had damaged everything else. “But I was stone-cold sober the night I met you and I’m stone-cold sober now—and no woman, no woman, does to me what you do. I fucking love you. Always have, always will.”
Sarah’s throat moved as she swallowed, the thickness of her lashes coming down over the dark of her eyes for a long, still moment. “The physical connection isn’t enough,” she said, and he knew she didn’t believe him.
His world threatened to shatter.
But then he realized: words were easy. It was the doing that was hard.
He’d have to do. He’d have to love her until she had no choice but