Page 42 of Separate Lives

“God, what a fool! To think I fell in your trap once again, following you out here in this freezing hell, trying to get your attention. I bet you had a good laugh at my expenses, because no matter what crap you dish out at me, I’m such a sucker I always come back for more.”

“I don’t understand why you’re talking like this,” Jess said, wondering what insane thought process had prompted his verbal attack.

Instead of answering her, Reece went on undeterred with the speech he must have rehearsed a dozen times in his head during the past hour.

“You’ve got both the lady-killer and I figured out, don’t you?”

A case of wounded ego, that was his problem. Again. He must’ve not liked the few hard truths she’d revealed to him at the restaurant.

“Since the day you discovered what your sexy body can do to a man, you knew that by playing hard-to-get, and putting on a mock resistance to our advances, with some fake indignation thrown in, you could mold us like putty in your hands. It really must give you a kick to know you can get away with basically everything you do.”

“What has all this got to do with what we talked about at the restaurant?” Jess wanted to know. Experience had taught her that when Reece was displaying his temper, it became almost impossible to reason with him. Nonetheless, she tried.

Grabbing her forearms, Reece jerked Jess closer to him, mashing their bodies together.

“You love to keep us poor dimwits as hard as stones,” he accused behind clenched teeth. Grabbing her wrist he brought her hand down between them to cover his steely erection.

Jess tried to resist him by clenching her fingers into a fist. Unsuccessfully. The moment she felt the heat in his groin, her fingers, on their own accord, relaxed. Memories of how that naked skin felt against hers, and what it was like to have him inside her, assailed her mind, affecting her senses.

Still holding her wrist, Reece rubbed her hand up and down his aching flesh.

“Feel how hard I am?” he groaned, closing his eyes to savor the wonderful sensations her touch spread through the rest of his body. “Do you want to touch my cock? Then why don’t you go down on your knees and get busy with your sweet mouth? You certainly know how to give head.”

His malicious grin and the intentionally rude words snapped Jess out of her sensual haze.

Fuming, she tried to snatch her wrist free from his grasp, but Reece tugged it back into place. Jess tried again to free herself, and this time succeeded. But only because he allowed it.

“Do you honestly believe what you said?” she choked, unable to contain the bewildering outrage simmering inside her.

“Oh, come on, Jess. I thought you were a better player than that. Admit it, I’ve got you figured out. I know what a tease you are, yet I cannot keep my hands off you,” he accused before his mouth descended on hers abusively, meaning to punish her.

Jess was powerless to contest his bruising lips. His right hand blindly sought to rid her of the few essential items of clothing she wore below her waist. He didn’t spare niceties with the buttons or the zip of her slacks, nor did he care much about the hem of her lace-trimmed panties. With his lips still sealed against hers, Reece shoved both garments down her legs, baring her middle to his abusing touch. Deaf to both her physical and verbal protests, he dragged Jess away from the front door and pushed her against the nearest wall, spinning her around to face it. Twisting one of her arms behind her back, Reece leaned against Jess, securing her against the smooth wooden surface of the cabin with his body, while his free hand violated the velvety, sensitive curves and crevices between her legs.

The intensity of his hatred hurt her deeply. All the hopes for a relationship in which they could be equal partners collapsed into a pile of dust. Nothing was ever destined to change between them because Reece didn’t love and respect her, and never would. A dull ache pierced her heart, immobilizing her. The considerate way he’d treated her the last time they were in her apartment, or today, when he’d prepared her breakfast and had asked her where she wanted to spend the day, were just isolated events bound to be never repeated.

Hot tears of humiliation and defeat descended from her closed eyes without Jess realizing it. But since half of her face was lying against the wall, Reece saw them.

“What is it now? Another trick to excite me more than I already am,” he rasped harshly, prodding the gentle curves of her naked bottom with his jeans-clad sex. “No need for that, dear,” he jeered meanly.

“It’s not a trick,” Jess murmured brokenly, hurt he could truly believe his insulting accusations.

In reply Reece snapped the first button of his Levi’s open.

“Why do you keep denigrating me?”

The second button of his 501s came undone.

More helpless tears ran down her cheeks when Jess realized that his boundless wounded ego rendered him deaf to reason.

“We cannot even sustain a civilized conversation without you turning into a rapist,” she whimpered, feeling her body gradually start to respond to his stimulations, and slowly open under his deft fingers.

The third button of his jeans was snapped free from its hole, followed by the fourth.

By then, her anguish was so intense, Jess was sobbing loudly, and long shudders shook her body making her limp. She certainly didn’t deserve his cheap cruelty. Not when Reece was as much to blame as she was for this messy situation.

“You aren’t even man enough to face the truth,” Jess accused, using the only weapon she had left to defend herself from his assault, her voice. “You lust, if not downright love me, and this is scaring you witless, so you retort to harebrained conjectures instead of letting yourself express that love. I pity you.”

Reece laughed. “I’ll show you that I’m man enough for you.” It was a nasty, mean sound originating from his throat, and it triggered something inside Jess. Suddenly, all her physical strength and bravado came back to her.

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