Page 22 of Teach Me
“Don’t. This is not your fault.” A sigh escaped, loud in the quiet between them. He raised his head and stared hard into her eyes. “I’ve been giving you some pretty mixed signals.”
A frown pinched the skin between her eyes. He had, kind of. So… “Why?”
“Because I want you. Because the heat between us burns me alive.”
“So it is mutual.” At least her instincts hadn’t got that wrong.
Conlan lifted a sleek brow. “There is absolutely no doubt about that, sweetheart. When I’ve got you against me, my cock could pound nails. I want you until the burn wipes out any good judgment I might have. It would take hours, days of you beneath me before I could get this god-awful need out of my veins.”
Her belly clenched. No one had ever needed her, wanted her like that. She was wallflower Jess, invisible to everyone but, apparently, Conlan. The idea that this big, beautiful man saw her… God. What could she say to that?
Before she came up with an answer, Conlan went on.
“But I don’t want you to expect something I can’t give.”
“And that is?”
“Commitment.”
She swallowed. Silence.
Her nerves stretched and stretched and stretched, so far she thought they’d snap. “So, let me make sure I understand this. You say you’re unavailable, but what you really mean is you’re available for a fun time in bed but not, what, a relationship?”
“Exactly.”
It was her second-best option, so why wasn’t she happy? “Why?”
He left the desk, left her to walk toward the wall of windows lining one side of the office. Con lifted a muscled arm to rest his forearm above his head on the glass. “Do you know what JCL stands for?”
“No.”Does it matter?
“It stands for Jack, Conlan, and Lee.”
“Who’s Lee?”
“He is…was…best friends with Jack and me growing up. He died.” A heartbeat. Two. “We were on tour in Afghanistan. I was wounded in a convoy attack. Lee was killed trying to save me.”
Her chest ached just picturing it. To watch a friend die right in front of you… But— “What does this have to do with us?” She wasn’t heartless to his pain, but shewasconfused.
“He did it on purpose. His girlfriend dumped him a couple of weeks before. Told him he wasn’t worth waiting for. Truth was, she’d found someone else as soon as he was out of sight.”
“So she was a bitch.”
He choked out a brittle laugh. “She was.” He dug a rough hand through his hair again, as if he could pull his tension out along with a few strands. “She was, and she wasn’t the only one.”
It was Jess’s turn to be silent.
“The three of us, we met in middle school.” Conlan turned to rest against the window, those thick arms crossed over his chest. “Lee’s mom was already out of the picture; we never did figure out where she ran off to. Jack’s mother died the year before”—a brush of his hand said that was a story for another time—“and my mother, Delia, died in a car accident that year.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Delia was almost as much of a bitch as Sarah. Not at first; at first she was everything she thought my dad wanted. Until she realized she had to share him with me. Then she got very unhappy very fast.” He shook his head. “The only good thing about my childhood was that my dad saw it happening and did his best to protect me from it.”
Something in his tone shook her, and that word,protect. Had Delia been more than just a bitch? Thinking about the little boy he must’ve been, how vulnerable his body and spirit would’ve been, made her heart ache.
“So…”
“So.” He raised his head to meet her eyes. Steel glinted in his darkened pupils. “My dad managed to get free—and me with him. Lee wasn’t so lucky. Even knowing Sarah had cheated on him, was planning to marry someone else, for fuck’s sake, he loved her anyway. He loved her enough that he couldn’t bear living without her. He didn’t kill himself, but the bullet he didn’t bother to dodge did the job just as well.”
