Page 54 of The Reborn

“Only if you want to.” She lifted her hands in a show of innocence. “It just sounds like it’s still a bit raw and I know from experience that it helps to talk about it.”

I turned and leaned against the counter with folded arms. “Not much to say. Tricia was my high school sweetheart. We got married right before I enlisted. It lasted about six years, but too many deployments killed it. I got out to try and salvage things, but...” I shrugged, knowing it was the wine loosening my lips, which was dangerous, even though it was such a relief to put voice to the truth I’d kept private for so long.

“It didn’t work out?”

“She’d been fucking my buddy for two years while I was away, so there was that, too.”

Olivia’s eyes grew round with shock. “She didn’t.”

“Oh, but she did.”

“Bitch,” she hissed, making me bark out a laugh, that relief tasting even sweeter.

“I’ve had the same thought on occasion.”

Truth be told, I’d cussed Tricia up one side and down the other, calling her every name under the sun in my mind, as I soaked in the agonizing hurt she’d caused. She was the one who got to move on while all I was left with were memories of her and my career. And Keith? He got to live the life I’d dreamed of—the wife, the baby, all of it—while I was left to pick up the pieces. What should have been mine, just... gone. Irrevocably gone. Sometimes that truth hurt so bad it literally stole my breath.

Olivia leaned next to me and bumped me with her shoulder. “So, we’ve both been burned by assholes.”

“Looks like it.”

“Well... we can’t change that, but I do have chocolate cake.”

I looked down into her smiling eyes, taking in the flecks of gold and sweet understanding. “You can’t tease a man like that, Olivia.”

Her smile faded as my gaze tracked down her freckled nose to the bow of her lips, then further to the rushing beat of her pulse. “I never tease.”

The room began to heat, and I tasted wine and chocolate on the air as I lowered my lids and caressed her throat with my eyes. Her collarbone. The rapid rise and fall of her chest as she eased away from the counter to face me.

We were inches apart, close enough that our breath mingled, her proximity a dare. The ultimate tease, despite her words to the contrary.

“Justin,” she whispered, keeping her own gaze lowered to my chest as if submitting to my will, refusing to touch me first, her body trembling. “Please.”

That was all it took to break me.

Unable to refuse her, I lifted my hand and speared my fingers through her hair, cradling the side of her head in my palm.

She closed her eyes and leaned into my touch as if she’d been waiting for it for entirely too long, a soft sigh whispering from her lips.

I used my other hand to cup her chin and run my thumb along her lower lip, back and forth, testing its pillowy fullness. Her breathing became open-mouthed and choppy, and I could smell her arousal building, even from this small touch, which drove me insane. How long had it been since she’d been touched by a man? I was dying to find out.

Her lips pressed to the pad of my thumb in a tiny kiss just before her tongue darted out to taste my flesh. That unexpected move from this little woman—this whole experience—was just too much.

I was lost.

I gripped her hip in a punishing hold and spun us around so fast she let out a surprised gasp as I pressed her up against the counter with my body. I used both hands to cup her face before diving into all that she offered. Without thought or reason, I sank into her like a madman, all lips and teeth and tongue and unbridled lust as I had my way with her mouth like I’d been fantasizing about for days.

She clung to me like she was drowning and going to take me under with her, and I swallowed her moans whole like a starving man tasting his first morsels of bread. Her sweet tongue slid along mine, unashamed. I changed the angle of the kiss to get deeper as I pressed into her body tighter, letting her feel how hard I was for her in every way.

My hands moved down her throat, her shoulders, to the sides of her breasts.

She groaned and arched into me, silently begging.

I reached for the hem of her shirt and slid my hand along the hot skin of her stomach and waist.

Fuck being professional.

Fuck the job.

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