Page 75 of Those Who Are Bound

She was a destroyer who had to destroy herself.

So for the past two years, she’d concentrated on the event space, learning how to make the small repairs, pushing Donna to keep the place booked. She wouldn’t fail Gage in this—not this. She kept up with her boxing, pummeling the bag as though physically beating the temptations down and making sure they stayed there. Becks kept tabs from a distance, an unspoken agreement that seeing one another would untangle her hard-won fight for victory over her demons.

And with every step she took, she realized more and more how she must have tortured him, and the shame she experienced for that was at times overwhelming. She’d call Becks to apologize, only to have the words die on her lips—it never managed to come out. Instead, she told him how well the space was doing. She meant it as a translation as to how sorry she was.

Now, she wasAfterElliott, and she still wasn’t sure who After Elliott was because she’d never had to confront that before. Not until Lucy Moore had shown up and brought Jonah Montgomery into her life, an impossibly gorgeous man who was more perfect than she deserved him to be. He knew who After Elliott was even when she didn’t, and he liked her.And through him, she really liked her, too.

Last night was perfect. Their intense conversation at the pizza parlor had yielded to an easygoing evening—because of him. It had been a date out of a Rockwell painting, set in a small town. Pizza, beer, and ice cream for dessert, followed by companionable conversation in the dying light on a table by the river. They sat shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh, their smiles frequent and glances catching and lingering.

The trains, she couldn’t resist watching; it was ingrained in her at this point. And when Jonah had lifted her hair aside and placed his lips to that sensitive spot beneath her ear, kissing her, her entire body responded. His name had slipped from her lips as her breath left her, his touch igniting her, exciting her, the throb and heat at her center instantaneous.

He was the only man who had ever created that reaction without the tightening of a rope around a part of her body. She hadn’t thought her body could do that spontaneously until him.

Her response had been without thought; she’d had to have more, right then. Turning, she’d all but attacked him, straddling him, wanting to feel him between her legs, rubbing against him, her mouth devouring his. The heat of him, his hard body, his soft hair between her fingers; she’d needed to feel as much of him as she could.

And he’d let her. He’d caressed her thighs, her back, her side, her arms, under her breasts; driving her crazy, knowing how to please while still leaving her quivering with want. As gentle as he’d been, she’d sensed his restraint, and she wanted so much for him to beunrestrained. She sensed there was so much he was holding back.

The only thing that would have made last night more perfect would have been if she was sitting on this deck drinking her coffee with him now.

Maybe.

She’d never done that before. As disappointed as she’d been to come home alone last night to once again imagine his hands on her as she relieved herself of the tension they’d built, there was a small part of her that was nervous about having him in her bed all night. It would be… different. New.

Frightening.

Because as much as she wanted this, regardless of Becks’s assurance that she could do this, and as much as she told herself she was a different person, she knew the monster wasn’t dead. She hadn’t slain the beast; it had merely been dormant.

Seeing Jonah with the jute had prodded something toward consciousness. In her mind’s eye, she imagined a sleeping dragon that had gotten a whiff of something tantalizing, and a nostril twitched in interest; not awake, but becoming aware again.

“I just need to fight harder,” Elliot determined.“I won’t destroy him. I swear I won’t do that to him.”

She wouldn’t sacrifice him, too.

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