Page 60 of Undeniably Enemies

“Maybe? You don’t know?” She’s incredulous and flustered as she shoves her wild hair back from her face. “How was it you? I was eighteen when you first texted. That was two years before that night, and we never exchanged numbers.”

“Owen wanted you to have my number in case you ever needed anything. I was closer to you in LA than he was in Boston.”

She stares up at me as she searches her memory. “Why don’t I remember that?”

I hitch up a shoulder. I have no answer for her, but that’s what happened.

“You bought the books. Why?”

“Because I was walking past a bookstore and…”Ithought of you so I went in and bought them. Because you make me desperate, and I don’t understand it. The number of times I’ve jerked off imagining her fucking herself with her toys to these books is embarrassing. I read them thinking about her reading them. I don’t know how or when it happened, but she’s taken over everything.

“And what?”

I shrug. “And bought them.”

She blows past that, her anger its own life force as it pulses through her veins. “Dammit, Jack. I told you things.”

“That you shared with a stranger and not me.”

“Because I didn’t think I’d ever see this person! There’s safety with that, even if there isn’t. I didn’t know who you were! Why would I voluntarily tellyouanything?”

“Because you feel this too,” I tell her bluntly, growing tired of the lying and the game playing.

She bites into her lip and looks away. “We have fucked-up, unhealthy chemistry. That’s all it is.”

That’s not all it is, and she knows that. She’s just unwilling to admit it. Hell, I was unwilling to admit it until about two minutes ago, but seeing her here, looking at her...

I take a step, then another, and she watches me approach. Reaching over her head, I shut the door, trying not to wince at the outline of the doorknob on my freshly painted walls.

“I’m so furious with you I can hardly stand here and not strangle you. First, I have to deal with you in the ER, now you live next freaking door to me, and now this! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“To avoid this fight.”

That sets her off a bit, and she shoves my chest. “You son of a bitch. You had no right! You should have told me. The things I told you?—”

“I told you things, too. Even though I did know who you were.”

She shakes her head, venom in her eyes. “You were messing with me. I was a game to you.”

I cup her jaw. “You have been a lot of things to me over the years, Wren Fritz, but a game has never been one of them.” My lips sear down on hers in a fierce kiss I’m positive I’ll never come back from.

One kiss. A match to a fuse. And we detonate in a mess of tongues and teeth and lips and hands and hate. I walk her back until I have her pressed against the door, and a low growl tickles my throat as she flicks my tongue with hers.

Fuck yes.

I yank on the neck of her sweater, and she tears at my shirt. Seams rip, hands fumble, lips battle. “Stop kissing me.”

Neither of us stops.

She bites my lip. “This can’t happen.”

I tilt her head the other way and press her deeper against the door so I can palm her tits over her sweater. But this fucking sweater is in the way, and I wrench it over her head. She’s only wearing a paper-thin cropped white tank top underneath, her pretty tits and hard nipples barely hidden from me.

“No bra?”

She squints at me. “I don’t exactly need one, do I, asshole?”

“Oh, sweetheart.” I rip down the top of her tank top and stare at the goddamn stunning sight before me. The one I wasn’t afforded five years ago. I’ve pictured what she looks like naked a million times, and none of those did this reality any justice. She is perfect. That is until she swats me away.