Page 81 of The Rogue

“Yeah, it did.”

“Because this is the thing, isn’t it? Acknowledging that it exists. That we... that we have chemistry.”

“I’ve always been honest with you,” he said. “And I didn’t want to stop... being honest with you now but it would have been easier. You know I have always admired the way that you did the right thing. The way that you’ve always been so measured and sweet. Why the hell couldn’t you stay that way?”

“It is me, isn’t it? I jostled myself out of the position we were both used to me being in. I wanted something different. It turned everything on its head.”

“It did that.”

“When you think about it,” she said, “it actually makes sense. Because we’ve been a lot of things toeach other. And we tried to be rational and reasonable at the beginning of all this.”

“The beginning of what? We just established that this actually started a long time ago,” he said, looking out his windshield at where the headlights fell on the road. Where they bled up the sides of the pine trees.

“Right. But we put it in its place. Now it’s bubbling up because of what happened with Asher. And you’ve always been there for me, Justice, and I think it makes sense.”

She let out a slow breath, and continued. “Fia said something to me at our girls’ night. She said I probably needed to be with someone I trusted. In order to get out of my own head. I realize I never actually trusted Asher to the degree that I thought I did. I wanted Asher to be my husband. I was desperate to shoehorn him into a husband-shaped mold, because there was something easy about him. There was something easy about the two of us together. But I wasn’t in love with him. Of all the issues that I had since the wedding got called off, heartbreak really hasn’t been one of them. Disappointment, yes. Profound disappointment. But about the life that I thought I was going to have, not about the man who wasn’t going to share it with me. Because he was never the one that I trusted. He was the guy I had to keep control with, even during sex. You... I trust you.”

“So you think that you want to do this.”

“I never canceled my room at that resort. I never got to go on any nice holidays when I was a kid and I really haven’t done it as an adult and I thought I deserved it. You should come with me.”

“I don’t know...”

“It’s a week. Away from here. It won’t be at your house, it won’t be at King’s Crest. Nobody has to know. I wouldn’t want anyone to know.”

“Because it embarrasses you?”

She shook her head. “No. Because everybody already has opinions about us, and you know that.”

He laughed then, maybe to dispel some of the tension that was gathering in his chest, or maybe because it was funny. “You don’t want to admit that they were right. That we couldn’t not have sex.”

“That’s half of it. Probably actually a full half.”

“For me too,” he said, because hell, why lie?

“The other part is I just don’t want anyone else to make comments or have opinions in general. I want for us to be able to figure this out, you and me. Because that’s what we do. This is a part of myself that I need help with. And I...”

“You have to want me,” he said. “It can’t just be about wanting to feel attractive. It can’t just be about you thinking I know what I’m doing. You said it earlier. It’s never going to be nothing, because it’s us.”

Few things scared him. At least at this point. A little PTSD here and there, sure, but he was a man who had lived a lot and done a lot of things. Certainly when it came to sex it didn’t feel like there were a lot of novelties left in the world. But she was his friend, and much more than a novelty. She was the most important person in his life. And she was trusting him with her body.

More than that, it was like someone had delivered a fantasy so forbidden, so secret that he had never even let himself acknowledge the desire existed inside of him.

Now that he had the idea introduced to him he didn’t want anything else. Didn’t want anyone else.

No woman had ever been forbidden to him. No woman except for Ruby.

That was making him feel a lot of things. Most of them illicit. But he needed to hear her say it. He needed this to be more than just her looking to feel good about herself. He didn’t know why the hell he needed that. He had plenty of sex he didn’t interrogate. But she was different. He knew her. He cared about her. And that would always make her singular.

“I do want you,” she said. “I’ve been trying... I’ve been trying not to. But it isn’t working. There’s a reason that when I got drunk I flung myself right at you. Because that was when I forgot. I forgot why I wasn’t supposed to say that to you. I forgot why it was a bad idea. And that’s just part of the whole thing. I want you to show me. I want you to show me what it can be like when it’s good. Because I know that with us it would be.”

“You expect me to go inside,” he said, pulling up to the house and killing the engine, “and go to bed having just had this conversation with you?”

He could see her pulse throbbing at the base of her neck, even in the low light of the truck, and he knew that if he leaned in and kissed it, he would have her naked in seconds.

“I just think we need rules,” she said.

“That’s one thing you’re gonna have to learn,” he said. “Sex needs less rules than you’ve been applying to it.”

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