Page 80 of The Rebel

That it would be years—if ever—that I’d get to do this without a condom, something we’d decided on in Canada because I’d run out and so had the small store in the lobby.

It was that realization that had me squeezing her until she drained every drop out of me.

Until her body stopped shuddering.

Until her screams died down.

Fuck me.

This was it.

The end.

A moment I wasn’t ready for and a moment I wanted to fucking run from.

This hurt.

More than I wanted to admit, even to myself.

I gave her a final quick kiss, and I lifted her off my lap, setting her on the bed before I got up and reached for my clothes, pulling them onto my body as fast as I could.

“What are you doing?” she asked from the edge of the mattress, where she sat.

As she watched me, she pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, eyes wide, breathing heavy, as her body started to come down.

I didn’t reply.

I hurried through the motions, and when everything was zippered and tied and buttoned, I slipped my hands into my pockets. That was the safest place for them.

“I’m out of here,” I told her.

Those words fucking burned, but I couldn’t take them back.

“You’re …what?”

I wasn’t going to let her know what tonight meant to me. What it was going to symbolize. How often I would think of it.

Because it didn’t matter.

Not when everything was about to change between us, and this—this thing I’d grown to really like—would be long over.

“I’m leaving,” I said.

“But I thought?—”

I gazed at her from the doorway of her bedroom, a place I’d paused to cut her off from speaking, and said, “You thought that us fucking would change the outcome. Not a good plan, Rowan. You knew what this was. Nothing more than a taste, and it wasthe last one. From here on out, we’re business partners. Aside from that, we’re done.”

Business partners.

Goddamn it.

And a woman I’d have to spend almost every day with.

All of those hours obsessing over how badly I’d want her.

How much I’d fucking need her.

Only seconds had passed since I’d last tasted her, and I was already angry at the idea of not being able to touch her. In a few days or even weeks or—fuck me—months, I was going to be like that bear that sat on my desk in my home office.

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