Page 6 of Desire
He leaned away from me. “And what did you find?”
Anxiety raced through me again. What Iwas about to say felt wrong, invasive. “None of you have the same mother.” My heart was beating like crazy.
“Oh, I see,” he said indifferently.
His coolness clued me into one perceptible fact. “You knew?” I blurted.
He wiped his face with both hands. Then he stopped rubbing to look at me. “Yes, I did.”
I couldn’t stop shaking my head. I didn’t know why I was so angryat him for withholding information. It made no sense being that I was keeping just as many secrets from him.
“So when I told you a few weeks ago that I’d collected your family’s DNA, you knew what I would discover?”
He nodded.
I heaved a sigh. “Then why have me go through the motions?”
“Shit, Holly, I never committed to helping your unauthorized investigation of myfamily.”
That was true.
“Okay, then.” I spoke through my teeth with restraint. “Do your siblings know they have different mothers?”
“No,” he said.
My eyes expanded. I hadn’t expected him to answer so easily. “Why do they have different mothers?”
His eyes narrowed to slits, an expression that said the answer was for him to know and me to find out.
I sighedsharply. “Okay. Do you know what I’ll find in Chattanooga, Tennessee? I mean, at least save me from this miserable drive.”
“As I said, I don’t know anything about the family you mentioned. But keep me in the loop, and let me know what you find.” His tone was demanding, and his attitude was downright entitled.
“Why should I keep you in the loop?” I snapped.
“Because I needto know what you discover to keep you safe.”
I felt my eyebrows pull. “That made no sense whatsoever.”
Jasper remained the pillar of calm as he patted the empty space beside him. “Sit here.”
I folded my arms. “No.” There was something about Jasper always demanding I do what he wanted that got to me.
He patted the mattress again. “Come on. Just sit next to me, babe.”
I was already uncomfortable with the way I was behaving, which wasn’t like me at all. Granted, I’d never had a person like Jasper in my life. He was full of demands, and he popped up and left at will. But the look in his eyes revealed that he had no doubt I would adhere to his request. Yet my head felt as if it would explode from indecision. I wanted nothing more than to sit beside him,kiss him, and allow Jasper to take off my clothes one garment at a time to do whatever he desired to my body. The fact that he wanted to do exactly that was no mystery to me. His bedroom eyes dripped with lust.
I closed my eyes and shook my head continuously. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“You hurt me,” I whispered past my strained throat.
The bed creaked, then I felt his presencestanding in front of me. I opened my eyes and looked up. Jasper had his hands out, positioned for me to take them. His palms looked moist, and his fingers strong. The fact that he hadn’t promised to not hurt me again wasn’t lost on me.
I didn’t know how long I could resist him when he was in such close proximity. It was easier to believe I was strong enough to be without him when he wassomewhere else in the great big world and married to the daughter of a rich, evil man. Until that morning, before Jasper walked into my office, I’d thought of him as someone who had dropped off the face of the earth. But there he stood. Perhaps that was why my arms lifted and my hands positioned themselves softly on top of his.
Once we made skin-to-skin contact, he helped me to my feet.I could not resist as he wrapped his arms around my waist. My lips were touching his. The taste of his tongue, which I had been yearning for since our last kiss, saturated my mouth. It was as if I were floating on air, high off some really good shit that hadn’t yet been packaged and distributed.
