Page 81 of A Captive Situation

He padded over to me barefoot. Bending down, his arms plucked me up from the floor. We went back to his bed, where he laid me down and climbed in behind me. He grabbed me again, turning and situating me so I was on his lap, half resting with my head against his chest.

His hand smoothed down my hair and he bent down, his lips grazing over my shoulder.

A warm tingle seared through me.

He asked, his lips grazing over my skin, “What were you laughing about?”

His arms shifted, pulling me closer against him, and he moved up, nuzzling my hair. All of that was giving me the flutters.

“About this actually.” A sigh left me as I began tracing his tattoo on his arm.

“My tat?”

“No.” I hid a grin, lifting my chin to meet his gaze. “This, whatever this is between you and me. What we just did ...” How could I explain to him that one time with him blew an almost two-decade relationship out of the water? I needed to stop comparing, but I was on this whole awakening journey at the same time. I was healing while I was with him.

Fuck me. I never saw that coming when I hoped Jake would belt out show tunes on the subway.

He tensed underneath me.

“I was with Beck since college—”

A growl vibrated from his chest. “Not enjoying hearing his name.”

My heart leaped, and I looked again at him.

His eyes were fixed on me in a very possessive way.

More flutters skipped through me, making my body vibrate underneath my skin. I said, slowly, “I was with myex”—his eyes flashed in approval and I kept on, a small smile coming to my face—“for so long and now I’m feeling all sorts of stupidity for being with him. I wasn’t living.”

I wanted to live.

I wanted to live so bad.

“You want to live now?” His eyes grew soft. He brushed some hair back from my forehead, being so tender about it. “Fucking me made you think of your ex? I’m not sure how I feel about that.”

I shook my head slightly, giving him another small grin. “No. It’s like living inside a closet, thinking a flashlight hanging from the ceiling was sunshine. Then you came along. You opened the door. You walked me outside and you showed me the real sun. You gave me real sunshine. It’s like that.” I winced. “Don’t get a big head.”

He began to grin. “So you’re saying that I am like the sun to you—”

I growled before getting serious again.

I wanted to tell him the rest, because I needed to face it. This link with him was the reason we were in this mess. It’d been there from the beginning.

“He didn’t leave me because he’d been cheating on me. He left me because she was pregnant.”

He went still, still holding me.

My head rested against his chest. “The sex with you woke me up. A month earlier, I’d be calling Manda and dishing out the details. She’d rush over. We’d have wine and gossip all about it. I would do that because that’s what I thought I was supposed to do, but I wouldn’t have liked it. It would’ve felt empty to me. It did feel empty with me. Me and her. For so long. She’d tell me what’s going on with her life and though we wouldn’t be solving world peace, we’d be feeling on top of the world. Or that’s what I would feel that we should’ve been feeling. That’s what a good friend does for you. I don’t have that.” This was the hard truth to admit. “I don’t think I ever did.”

His hand went to my thigh, giving it a soft squeeze. “I’m sorry about that.”

“The last week’s put a lot of things into perspective. I’m realizing how empty my life was regarding them. The real thing I gotta grieve is the time I gave them. Both of them. They didn’t deserve it. And that ... I think that’ll take some time. That is, if we get out of this whole thing alive.”

He tensed all over again underneath me. His hand slid to the inside of my thigh before he turned me around. I went with him until I was straddling him.

Back to business.

His eyes were shadowed, his face hard.

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