Page 184 of Branded
Maybe the two orgasms were enough for her.
Maybe she was done with me.
Maybe—
The door to the bathroom clicked closed.
I rolled to the side, watched a band of light at the bottom of that wooden door appear.
Soft and sweet, gentle eyes and curved lips…turning into tense lines bracketing her mouth, eyes that wouldn’t meet mine, a body that was turned into mine but wasn’t holding me, was just there.
Next to me.
Not connected.
I lifted my hands to my eyes, dug my palms in. “Fuck,” I whispered, realizing that I was totally out of practice with this shit, realizing that I both somehow knew Beth and yet didn’t know her at all.
At. All.
Which meant I had no clue how to play this. Had it meant as much to her as it did me? Because of that, did she need space? Or did she need me to break through the walls she was trying to rebuild?
All questions I had no fucking answers to.
“Shit,” I muttered, digging my palms in harder.
A noise in the bathroom had me freezing.
It wasn’t the sink running or the toilet flushing. It wasn’t the sound of the shower turning on.
It was?—
I threw the sheets back, stood, and was across the room before I even fully processed what I was hearing. Because I knew what I was hearing. It sat heavy in my gut, squeezed my heart tight in a fist, throttling the organ, ripping, tearing, shredding my insides.
Then I was in the bathroom.
And she was…curled in a ball on the floor, her head in her hands.
And…she was sobbing.
Quietly, almost silently, but a steady stream of tears was pouring down her cheeks, her chest was shaking, and she was curled so tightly into that ball, rocking so fiercely that I was worried she was going to hurt herself.
I moved to her, started to reach for her, but she must have heard me, because she crammed herself back into the corner further. “No! Don’t touch me!”
That had me freezing.
That had my outstretched hands halting, drawing back. “Beth, honey.”
She pressed her forehead to her knees, tightened further. “Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me.”
“Beth,” I whispered.
“Don’t touch me. Don’t touch?—”
I knew I shouldn’t touch her, knew it. But I also knew that she wasn’t there, wasn’t in that time, that moment. It was cold in the house, and she was sitting on the floor naked, and she was shaking so hard that I was worried she was going to hurt herself.
So, I went with my instincts.
Maybe wrong. Maybe stupid.
