Page 12 of Made for You
Colt shot me an annoyed look—for stealing his beer or coming home empty-handed, I wasn’t sure. Likely a mixture of both. “You forgot two things on a three-item list?”
“Fuck you,” I muttered, finishing off the beer and tossing the bottle into the recycling bin next to the sink.
“What the hell’s eating you?” Nash asked.
“He’s probably still mooning over that woman from the bar,” Colt said, smirking faintly as he started forming hamburger patties for later.
At the mention of Siena, my chest went tight.
Colt’s smirk faded as he glanced back up and met my eyes. “You heard from her?”
After a beat, I nodded. “Yeah. Ran into her just now at the store, actually.”
Nash leaned forward, resting his forearms on the counter. “And?”
I shrugged, trying to play it off like I wasn’t bothered. “She doesn’t want to see me again.”
Something unreadable flashed across Colt’s face. “Did she say why?”
“She said it was a great night, but that we should leave it at that.” I exhaled through my nose. “I asked if I did something wrong. She said no, but …” I trailed off, shaking my head.
Nash’s voice was cautious when he asked, “Did something happen to make you automatically think that?”
I hesitated. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
Colt frowned down at the burgers. “That doesn’t make sense. You said it was good.”
“It was the hottest night of my life,” I said, and then felt myself flush. “But now I’m wondering if maybe I crossed a line. I was …”
I blew out a breath, trying to figure out how to explain to my brothers what that night had been like without giving them a play-by-play of all the ways I’d made Siena come.
“Rougher than usual,” I settled on, rushing to add, “not in a bad way, I don’t think. She asked for it. Hell, shebeggedfor it. But I let go with her in a way I never do, and now I can’t stop thinking that maybe I scared her off.”
Nash was quiet for a beat, then he hopped down off his stool and crossed the kitchen to pull three beers out of the fridge. Passing one each to Colt and me, he popped the top off his. “Did shesayyou scared her?”
“No. Nothing like that.” The look on her face as she’d let me down came back to me, and I tried my damnedest to interpret her expression. Wary, yes. Conflicted, certainly. But not scared or frightened. At least I didn’t think so. “Just that we’d had our fun and should move on.”
“Some people don’t do repeats,” Colt offered. Then, with a snort, added, “Youdon’t do repeats.”
I huffed out a small laugh before my lips dipped into a frown. “And the one time I want to, look where it gets me.” I leaned my hip against the counter and crossed my arms over my chest. “But it didn’t feel like that’s what this was. I genuinely thought we connected. The way she looked at me … the things she said.”
Colt set a cooked burger on top of the growing pile. “You trusted her.”
It wasn’t a question; more a statement of fact.
I stared into my beer for a second, then gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod. “Yeah. I did.” My words came out sounding gruffer than I meant for them to, my voice thick with something that felt a lot like regret.
Truth was, I hadn’t let myself go like that with anyone in … hell, maybe ever. Not just the roughness of it—though, yeah, that too—but the way I let myselfwant. The way I hadn’t held back. There were secret, buried parts of me I kept locked up tight—desires I rarely acted on—because most women weren’t looking for a man who liked control the way I did. Who enjoyed taking his time drawing pleasure out of a woman until she was near tears … until she couldn’t speak. Until she was writhing and begging and completely and utterly at my mercy.
But Siena? She hadn’t just tolerated me at my most unrestrained—she met me there. Matched me stroke for stroke, word for filthy word. I didn’t just give her everything—I trusted her to take it.
And I thought she had.
Which was why this—the silence, the refusal to even talk about it—was fucking with my head more than I cared to admit.
“Yeah,” I said again, quieter this time, the truth of it settling low and heavy in my chest. “I trusted her.”
I swallowed another mouthful of beer, the bitter taste sharp on my tongue. “And now I can’t stop thinking that maybe I misread everything. I mean,clearlyI misread everything, otherwise she would have jumped at the chance to see me again.”
