Page 34 of Abduction
She would be better off without me, too. Her life already seemed complicated enough without someone like me injecting themselves into the middle of it, no matter how tempting it might have been. Her obvious desire for me mixed with her attempts to hold back were incredibly hot, but I knew I should have known better. It was forbidden for a reason—because it would fuck things up for both of us, and I refused to do something so outrightly stupid.
I closed my eyes and lay back in bed, trying to ignore the stinging pain all over my back. I could still hardly believe my father had done this to me, hurt me like this, for failing him, but I knew it wouldn’t be the last time if I continued to fuck things up. He expected better of me, and it was my job to make sure I delivered. I couldn’t fail him. I had done enough of that already.
And who knew what was waiting for me if I dared to do it again.
Chapter Nineteen
Amber
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IPOURED MYSELF A GLASSof water in the kitchen and stared at my warped reflection in the tap. I blinked and realized the wetness was running over my fingers. I cursed to myself and grabbed a towel, cleaning myself up.
Josh. He had done this to me. The man I was totally and utterly incapable of getting out of my head. It had been more than a week since I had last seen him, since we’d shared the kiss in the rain, and my guilt was driving me crazy—but so was my desire for more, the two of them coming up against each other until it felt as though my head might explode.
A whole week, and I still couldn’t stop thinking about him. The way he’d pulled me close, the way he’d told me how much more I deserved. Was he right? I didn’t know. But I didn’t know how much longer I could contain all this, either, without Aaron catching on.
“You okay, babe?” he called from the other room. It was the weekend, and I had taken the evening off studying to spend it with my fiancé. I hoped a little time in his presence might be enough to get all of it out of my head, but I doubted it was going to be so easy.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I called back as I made my way back through to the living room to join him. He had told me he wanted to go out tonight, but I was worried I would somehow summon Josh again if we did. If I ran into him when I was with Aaron, I felt as though I might just have died of confusion. I didn’t want to deal with it.
I came back through to the living room and plastered as big a smile on my face as I could muster. I needed to convince him there was nothing wrong. He was making the time for me, and it was only serving to make me feel more guilty that I had allowed my mind to wander as much as it had. I wished I could go back in time and undo the kiss...even if the thought of it had been keeping me up late some nights since.
“So where do you want to go?” he asked, grinning as I settled down on the couch next to him. He reached out to take my hand, and I didn’t pull it away. It was the first night in way too long he’d been home with no caveats—not having to leave early to go to work, not having something big he needed to take care of, not being on the phone the entire time as he tried to deal with some drama he had told me was already over.
“Hmm,” I murmured, tapping my finger on my bottom lip. I couldn’t stop thinking about the sushi place where Josh had taken me, and before I knew it, I was blurting it out.
“My friend took me to this sushi place recently,” I told him. “The food was amazing, maybe we could...”
I trailed off as I realized how it might have looked to the staff who had served me on the night I was there with Josh. What if one of them blew my cover? I couldn’t risk it.
“Uh, we could order from there and watch a movie here?” I suggested. “Just spend some time at home, right?”
“That sounds great,” he replied. “I’m exhausted. Been so busy with work...”
“Yeah, I know,” I muttered, hoping he couldn’t hear the edge to my voice. The last thing I wanted was for him to think I was projecting something on to him. I had already come dangerously close to fucking things up for us with what had happened with Josh, and I refused to let it go on any further.
