Page 65 of Tamed

“But you will care. When I give you that night and walk away the next morning, you will fucking care. Because the truth is that it’ll never be just sex, not for either of us. Not with our past.”

He’s right, you know he’s right.

My throat closed, my eyes prickling. Tears? Really? Because he refused to sleep with me again? I was ridiculous. But telling myself how stupid I was and how dumb I was to want him wasn’t going to change the knowledge that sat inside me. The knowledge that had been sitting inside me ever since he’d danced with me at that gala.

He was right. It would never be just sex. Not with him.

I was in love with him, that’s what I was, and that’s why that night had been so intense. That’s why this was so painful now.

I was in love and had been for years, and I’d had my night. Yet it hadn’t been enough. I wanted more. I wanted everything. And the worst part was even wanting what I did wouldn’t stop me from settling for whatever he’d give me. Which made me the worst kind of pathetic.

Especially when it looked like that would be nothing.

I wanted to demand he tell me why he couldn’t do even a night, but I knew as well as he did why. It was our past, he wasn’t wrong about that. About who we were to each other. About Dad.

It was so complicated, and I didn’t want to be the cliched younger woman in love with the hot older man, begging for his attention. I couldn’t bear that thought. Either he wanted me more than he cared about all that other bullshit, or he didn’t. And I wasn’t going to make him choose. So, I bit the words back and I blinked away the tears, and held onto my grit.

“Okay.” I lifted my chin, staring him down. “Fine. If that’s how you feel, then what the fuck are you still doing here?”

18

Caleb

I’d hurt her, any fucking idiot could see that. She was trying to hide it with that defiance of hers, but I’d seen the tears in her eyes before she’d blinked them away.

I didn’t give a shit about people’s feelings. I hadn’t been able to when I was with Old Nick, not if I’d wanted to survive, and even now I didn’t let them touch me. But Isabel had always been different and so were her feelings, and now I felt the heavy weight of regret sitting on my chest.

Protecting her should mean her safety was more important than her emotions and I shouldn’t have any regrets about what I’d had to do ensure it.

Yet…I did.

Isabel had been brought up by a father who’d continually distanced her, who’d never let her in. Who loved her but who had no idea how to deal with her.

She was a woman who’d constantly been denied and now I was doing the same thing. I had no choice, though. There was too much in my past, too much darkness, too much violence. Too much of my father in me and I knew how that had ended. Me, coming home from school one day to find the bodies of my family dead in the master bedroom.

Dad had killed them because he was afraid for them, because he’d wanted to protect them. Because he hadn’t wanted them to die in the hail of bullets that were coming for him. Because he’d loved them.

He hadn’t loved me,though. How could he? When he’d left me to find them?

That his was a twisted kind of love I knew even at fifteen, yet that didn’t stop me from hating him for taking himself and my mother and sister away from me. Hating him for leaving me alone.

Old Nick had thrived on hate, and he’d stoked it in me. Stoked my rage too. He’d told me once that the reason he’d taken me from the streets was because he’d somehow seen in me the same darkness that had been in my father. He’d admired the lengths my father had gone to in order to protect his family. He’d seen it as an example of loyalty and that’s what he’d wanted from me. Loyalty without limits. So, that’s what I’d given him.

But it was a loyalty based on hate and fury, based on the darkness deep in my soul, on the revenge I’d eventually take on him, and that was something I never wanted to expose Isabel to.

I couldn’t let her get under my skin more than she had already, and it was a good question she’d asked me. Why the fuckwasI still here?

You know why.

The thought slid through my brain, a snake in the garden, undermining all my good intentions, all my denials.

You want her. Even though it’s wrong, you want her.

Her, on the floor of Arcadia, naked and gleaming with sweat, her lip bloody, her makeup running. And me still buried inside her…

Fuck.

“Well?” Her chin was still lifted, fire glittering in her eyes along with the hurt she was desperately trying to hide. “What are you waiting for? Go on. Leave.”

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