Page 35 of Abduction
I pulled up the menu and handed it over to him so he could pick out some dishes to order, and started going through films on the streaming services we had. Something romantic. Maybe set in Bali. Anything to make sure I showed him how focused I was on what was to come, and not what I had been up to when he was at work.
God, what if I was totally misreading everything? What if he really had just been working overtime to try and make money for our honeymoon, and I had used that as a reason to go frolicking around and kissing a guy I barely knew? I leaned in to Aaron, putting my head on his shoulder and trying to push that thought out of my mind. I needed to stay focused on us, on this relationship, on the here and now, and not on what was really on my mind.
We ordered our food and picked a film—some romcom set in a beautiful beachy location, not Bali, but not far from it—and snuggled up together. He put his arm around me, and I tried to remember how this had felt when we had first been together. How comfortable I had been in his presence, how easy it was to just spend time with him. I needed to get back there. All of this, it was just pre-wedding jitters, and I would have been crazy to let myself get taken in by it. Everyone had these moments where they second-guessed things, right? It didn’t mean I had to throw everything away and forget it had ever happened in the first place.
“This food is amazing,” he told me through a mouthful of it. I smiled and nodded. He hadn’t even asked about the friend I’d said had taken me there. He really trusted me. He didn’t even think twice about it. How stupid I had been, thinking someone else might be able to come in and fill the gaps in my heart. I was with the person I loved, with the person I was going to spend my life with. I stared at the screen, at all the sweet, steamy romance, and promised myself I would have it all with Aaron.
As the first sex scene unfolded, I felt his hand on my thigh, his usual sign that he wanted to put the moves on me. Honestly, I wasn’t certain I was in the mood, but I would try it. I didn’t know when I was going to get him alone like this again, and I didn’t want to give him any reason to go looking somewhere else for his kicks.
“Come here,” he murmured to me, trying his hardest to be sexy. I had to bite back a giggle, but I leaned over to kiss him.
His hands slid to my waist, and he pulled me on top of him, but they lacked the confidence of the way Josh had touched me. Aaron’s kiss, too, was...softer, but not in a good way. Almost lazy. A little too wet. I grasped his face in my hands and kissed him harder, trying to draw up the same feelings of lust and want that had consumed me when I had been with Josh, but I couldn’t seem to get them to come up.
Okay. Okay. Focus.This was the guy I loved. I felt safe with him. I knew our sex life was pretty good; I just needed to let it happen. I closed my eyes, but instead of letting me focus further, I found my mind shifting to Josh—imagining he was the one underneath me, how much I wished I was doing this with him instead.
My mind was all over the place, and it wasn’t giving me the chance to focus in on this physical moment. I pulled back, catching my breath and shaking my head as I slid off of Aaron and on to the couch beside him.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. I ran a hand through my hair.Oh, just that I can’t stop thinking about a guy I made out with when you wouldn’t answer my calls.I couldn’t tell him that. I wouldn’t. It would hurt him so much, and it was my guilt to bear, not his.
“Nothing,” I replied. “I’m just tired, that’s all. I don’t think I’m in the mood for...that tonight. Is that okay?”
He sighed heavily and looked away from me, leaving a long, long pause as he waited for me to jump in and change my mind—he did this a lot, showing me how much it was going to annoy him if I didn’t have sex with him in the hopes I would give up and do it anyway. But tonight, I knew I couldn’t. Not even if I wanted to. I needed to get some sleep and try to work out a way to evict Josh from my mind completely before he got the better of me.
“It’s fine,” he replied finally, glancing back over at me. “You’re tired from classes, right?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” I agreed, glad he had given me some kind of excuse. I needed to get away from him right now, or I was worried I would blurt out something I couldn’t take back. He didn’t need to know about what I had done. I was sure it would never happen again, which was the only thing that really mattered.
I quickly hopped off the couch when the film was done and cleared away all the food containers before he could start complaining about them, and he switched on one of his mindless shoot-’em-up games to help him relax. He didn’t get a lot of time away from work, and when he did, he told me, he wanted to make the very most of it he could. Which mostly involved sitting around firing fake bullets at fake zombies, but I wasn’t going to complain, not when I needed some time for myself.
I made myself a cup of tea and ran myself a bath, hoping to de-stress after everything. This was supposed to be a fun night with the man I was going to marry, and instead, I was hiding out upstairs and hoping he didn’t notice how crazy I was acting. I wished I could have pulled myself back together and just forgotten about Josh, but it wasn’t so easy.
Every time I stepped out of the law department, I would find myself looking for him, wondering if he had come back to find me again. He had stayed away, just like I had asked him to, but I wanted to see him. I needed to see him. My body cried out for him in a way it had never done for anyone before, and it was starting to drive me a little crazy knowing there was nothing at all I could do about it.
I needed to forget him, but how could I, when there was still so much I wanted to know about him? Not least how good he was in bed. I could tell from just the kiss we had shared he was amazing, and it nagged at me that I’d never get to find out. Not to mention where he had come from—his job, his family, his career, all of it. He clearly had plenty of money to spare, and he had no issue throwing it around to show everyone what kind of person he was.
When I climbed out of the bath and wrapped myself in a robe, I brushed out my hair at the dressing table—and found my eyes wandering to the jewelry box where I had stashed the bracelet he’d given me.
I had decided it was way too much of a risk to wear it in front of Aaron—or anyone, really, since I was sure they would want to know where it came from, and if I admitted it was from a man who wasn’t my fiancé, I was sure I would set tongues wagging.
I popped open the box and pulled out the bracelet, holding it carefully as I turned it this way and that so it caught the light. It really was beautiful, one of the loveliest gifts anyone had ever gotten for me, and what it meant, too, was even more sweet. Josh had wanted me to remember how much I deserved and how much I was worth, and I was so, so grateful for it, for how far he had gone to make sure I knew it.
Was he thinking of me now? Probably not. After I had officially told him we were done, I was sure he had gone to any number of the other women he spent his time with to get his mind off me. I wished I could say the same thing, but even Aaron making moves on me wasn’t enough to make me forget about Josh, about the way he had kissed me. The way he had held me, so strong, so firm, as though he knew exactly what he wanted and didn’t mind taking it...
God. Just thinking about him was getting me hot and bothered. I put the bracelet back in the box and rested my head in my hands, trying to pull myself back together. I couldn’t keep going on like this, obsessing over someone I had barely gotten to know at all.
The only reason spending time with Josh had been so much fun was because he knew nothing of the real me, of my real life. If he had, I was sure he would have been bored with me in a matter of moments. Iwasboring right now, with my life revolving around my studies and my fiancé spending most of his time at work. Not like I had much of a life to speak of. Maybe it was why it had been so easy for Josh to step in and spice things up, because I was craving something in the way of fun.
Well, it was behind me now. I wasn’t going to spend my time obsessing over him. I needed to get on with my life. He probably was already, and I would have been beyond pathetic to keep pining over someone who had taken me out to a nice dinner and gotten me a pretty bracelet. Was I really so shallow? Exactly. I was over it.
I climbed into bed and switched out the light, closing my eyes again. But as soon as I did, the image of Josh floated behind them again, and I felt a surge of desire pulse through my system. Nothing like what I had felt before, when Aaron had tried to make a move on me.
I slipped my hand down between my legs and focused on the thought of him. One more night with him on my mind wouldn’t hurt, would it?
At least, not any more than it already had...
