Page 146 of Fiery Romance

Rather than answer her directly, I press a kiss to her hair.

“I can.” I swallow. “Let me turn it around.”

Her eyebrows hike. Dark fingers twist into the sheet.

She curls away from me.

“Island—”

“You think if you turn it around, I won’t know she’s there?” Her voice is sharp. Her eyes are even sharper. “You think while you’re kissing me, while you’re inside me, that I won’t be thinking of her. And you together with her? And the fact that you’ll probably turn that picture right back around to face you when I leave?”

I feel myself getting defensive. My jaw clenches. “What do you want me to do then?”

“I can’t do this.” She wraps the sheet around her body as if she hadn’t just bared everything to me, poured it all out for me to lick and touch and taste.

My chest is heaving.

My need for her is still singeing beneath my guilt and discomfort. Can I salvage this?

I’ve been denying myself for years and now that I have the woman I’m crazy about in my bed, it physically pains me to stop socloseto having her completely.

I grab Island’s hand to prevent her from leaving. “Wait.”

She whirls around, her eyes on fire and her bottom lip trembling. “Wait? Wait for what, Clay? For you to screw me in front of pictures of your wife?”

“It’s just a picture, Island,” I say as gently as I can. It’s not the right answer. I know it. I feel it. But I also don’t know what else to say than the obvious.

Anya was my wife.

She was the woman I gave my heart to. My soul. My everything.

She gave me a son and a daughter.

I can’t erase her from my past just like I can’t erase my kids from reality.

“You don’t understand.” Her eyes fill with tears.

Chaos strikes my chest. I reel forward, my thumb chasing away each drop. Female tears make me uncomfortable. But with Island it’s different. I’m desperate to appease her. Desperate for her to be okay.

“Baby, don’t cry.”

She pushes my hand away.

I stare at her while experiencing a pain that could rival every bullet wound that’s ever torn my flesh.

“It’s notjusta picture, Clay. It’sher.It’s like she’s watching me. And I feel horrible. Exposed. Naked.” She trembles. “I feel like I’m having an affair with you, and I’m taking something that belongs to someone else.”

I shake my head, my throat blocked. “I’m here. I’m with you.”

“And you’re also with her,” Island croaks. “I can’t be for you when you’re for someone else.”

“Aren’t you ‘for’ someone else too,” I snap.

My thoughts are rushing so fast that I can’t keep up with any of them. But beneath it all, I feel a building resistance.

Isn’t she the one with a whole damn boyfriend waiting in the wings?

Isn’t she the one who’s holding herself back?

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