Page 87 of Truly Madly Magically

I don’t want these friends who have always been so sure that I was special, like they are, to finally have indisputable proof they’re wrong.

The only thing I want right now is the man in front of me, but not like this.

I don’t want him trying to comfort me, or getting through to me, or whatever complicated thing he’s doing tonight. I don’t want his belief in me or his concern for me.

I just want him.

That simple. That direct.

Even that is covered in warped thorns, though, because to give in to this, to him, is to believe it all might be okay.

That I might be okay and worthy and...good. Special, even.

I can’t do it.

So instead, I fall back on the tried-and-true method I’ve used in the past. I pretend it’s Beltane. I jerk him to me, devouring his mouth with teeth and anger and frustration.

Maybe last night was different, deep and meaningful. Maybe I let him inside me in all those ways I shouldn’t have, but that doesn’t mean it has to change things. It doesn’t have to shift the way we usually are with each other—the way we have always been with each other.

He kisses me back with all that old heat, and I feel a surge of desperation that I decide to call elation—

Then something...gentles.

I pull back at the same time he does. I don’t want gentle. I don’t want last night. I want something familiar, something rooted in a world I understand. The versions of him and me and reality that I already know.

And control, Ruth says from somewhere outside. I don’t have time to say something pithy in return.

Zander’s thunderstorm eyes look into mine. “We can go down that road again. It’s a good road. We both like where it ends.”

His hand smooths down my spine as if he’s proving it. But I’m still going to be right here in the morning. You’re not building those walls back up on me, El.

“Because you get to decide?” An accusation that probably doesn’t have quite the force I want it to when my fingers are curled in his hair and my mouth is on his.

He lifts me, easy as you please, and I shouldn’t wrap my legs around him, shouldn’t sink into the wild universe of his kiss. Because he doesn’t answer. Because he’s not letting me pick a fight.

When I’m positive a fight is exactly what I need.

Zander—I start.

Let me talk for a minute, he replies.

He doesn’t mean with words. He means with this. All of this sensation and pleasure, heat and wild need.

Instead of the fight I want, the anger I know, I’m drowning. In him. In light.

In love and hope and his body over mine, inside mine.

Drowning.

I know what happens when I let myself drown. When I allow myself to believe. When I give in to hope.

But I keep doing it.

Pleasure arrows straight down, and I find I don’t care about anything right now but him.

But this.

But us.

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