Page 26 of Deny Me
But now…
“Jealousy doesn’t become you, King.”
He fought to keep his emotions off his face, out of his voice. “This isn’t about jealousy.” A total lie. His heartbeat rivaled a jackhammer trying to break through his ribs. “I— We need to know exactly what’s going on.”
“I’ve told Elliot all your team needs to know. As for your question”—Charlotte straightened her spine again, as if doing so would somehow make her taller than a pixie, more battle ready—“Wes and I are none of your business.”
The words burst from her lips like a grenade, but they didn’t hit her target. Because they weren’t the right words. If Charlotte and Wes were in love, she’d have declared it outright.
The relief nearly brought him to his knees.
Charlotte brushed past him, knocking into his arm. It was pure instinct to reach for her, to grasp that slim waist and swing her around to face him. Pure instinct that pulled her close, then closer still, till their bodies met and heat sizzled down his spine to settle in his balls.
His Charlotte. His woman.
He sucked in a breath and let pure instinct guide him.
His mouth met hers.
Chapter Twelve
King’s lips felt exactly as she remembered, and yet, totally foreign. Their shape, their texture, the way his tongue fit in her mouth, those were familiar. But the way he kissed her…
They’d been apart for ten years, and he was no longer a young man learning his way around a woman’s body. No, he knew what he was doing, and it showed. She tried to shut out the thought, knew he had to have practiced on someone other than her—a fact she thought she’d accepted long ago, but the hurt flared anyway, enough that she went stiff against him.
King wasn’t letting go.
His palm cradled the back of her head, his fingers digging into the fall of her hair, positioning her exactly where he wanted her. Hard lips brushed, massaged, kept hers open to allow him complete access. Their tongues tangled, thrust and parried, coming back again and again to slide and stroke the other. His taste in her mouth…
God, she’d missed this, more than she’d ever let herself acknowledge. And not just his taste or his kiss. King had always reserved his emotion for the people who’d earned his trust. His family, cold and distant, had taught him to hold back, to appear emotionless, but when he let go, it was a dam of feeling breaking over her, drowning her in his essence. He’d shown her that cold and distant face since he’d come back into her life, but here… Here was the real King.
She couldn’t resist; all she could do was surrender.
Memories burst forth—the way his body had felt under her fingertips, the way his heart used to raced when he touched her. Her breasts bare, nipples hard against the slight, crisp hair dotting his chest. His palm at the small of her back, just as it was now, holding her still for the press of his hard cock against the softness of her belly. The world faded away when they were like this, when she was sheltered in his arms.
She wanted this more than anyth—
“Charlotte Eve Alexander!”
Those hard, sure hands were gone in an instant. Her mind whirled, trying to remember up from down, trying to make sense of the sudden emptiness of the space around her. And then the words registered.
“Charlotte!”
She groaned silently, eyes squeezed tight. Of all the people to walk in on her kissing her ex-fiancé… “Give me a minute, Mom, please.”
“I will not.” Rage quivered through her mother’s voice. “I will not let this man barge his way in here and take advantage of you.”
Charlotte opened her eyes to the sight of King’s broad chest barely moving beneath the thin T-shirt he wore with his fatigue pants. The hard line behind his zipper told her he wasn’t completely unaffected, but he wasn’t even breathing heavy.
So much for shattering his reality as much as he did mine.
Shame kept her from daring a look into his face. Instead she turned on her heel. Facing her mother’s anger was far easier than facing the fact that King no longer felt anything more for her than a simple passing chemistry. Easily aroused, and just as easily forgotten.
“Mom—”
“No.” Her mother shook, her hands fisted at her sides as if it was the only way to keep from attacking. Charlotte’s heart ached, witnessing her struggle for control. “For too many years you let this man dictate how you lived your life—or didn’t live it, running away from every possibility of love, of a family.Don’tlet him back in. He’ll just destroy you all over again.”
King hadn’t forced her to run from life, but her mother was right about one thing. King did have the power to destroy her. She should listen to the woman who had raised her, the woman who’d guided her through the hardest moments of her life. And yet, even her mother couldn’t know the secret parts of her heart; no one had, for so, so long. The safety of being bare and accepted by the person who truly saw you, knowing that person would shelter and protect you just as you would shelter and protect them. It was why she returned to the land she and King had bought during their engagement, the place they’d planned to build a life together. So she could pretend that safety still existed.
