Chapter Forty

Carrie

Reid joins me in the car and shuts us inside, the earthy woodsy scent of him teasing my nostrils, the power that is this man consuming me and the small space, and yet, he doesn’t touch me. In fact, he doesn’t even attempt to close the space between us. He settles in next to the door and taps the driver’s seat, which triggers the driver’s reaction. Without a word, the car is in motion, and with every inch we move, the space between me and Reid seems to widen. Somehow, despite this, I feel this man in every part of me. I have never in my life been so hyperaware of another human being. I want him to touch me. I want to touch him, but those secrets between us keep me in place, and him too, I suspect. Or perhaps I’ve scared him with my list of options right before we got into the car. Maybe he doesn’t want a relationship over fucking if that translates to transparency, while I don’t want a relationship over fucking that translates to secrecy. All I know is that I can’t continue on like this and I don’t even know what that means. Maybe we’re over. Maybe we’re just fucking, but again, I just don’t know if I can do that anymore and when my gaze catches on his hand on his knee, and I notice the way his fingers are digging into his leg, I know that he’s just as on edge as I am right now. I hate that I think of those hands on my body, too, but I do. I have it so damn bad for this man.

I’m not sure if it’s relief or distress I feel when only minutes later, the driver pulls us to the front of a navy-blue beachfront cottage illuminated in outdoor lighting. Reid doesn’t look at me. He simply reaches for his door and I spare us the awkwardness of him helping me exit. I don’t slide his direction, but rather open my door and get out. I meet Reid at the trunk where the driver unpacks our bags and Reid tips him before grabbing our luggage all himself before I can offer my help. “I have the key,” Reid says, his gaze meeting mine with a hard punch of tension between us. “Grayson gave it to me before we left.”

I nod and when I try to reach for my bag, he holds onto it. “I have it,” he murmurs, turning away to move ahead of me and up the sidewalk with a brisk enough pace that he’s already unlocking the door when I reach the porch. He shoves open the door and the light flickers on, be it by his efforts or a motion detector, I don’t know. Whatever the case, he enters the cottage first, and I follow him into a narrow hallway, black wood flooring beneath my feet. Reid sets the bags down by a wooden table, and I shut the door, turning to lock it, the very act one of claiming the control that feels so damn out of reach.

By the time I face forward again, Reid’s back in control. He’s in front of me, pulling me to him, his fingers tangling in my hair, those blue eyes staring down at me, and the fact that he’s touching me is a blessed relief. I need this man and it’s addictive and terrifying at the same time.

“Reid,” I whisper when he doesn’t immediately speak, asking for answers, asking for more.

His answer is not in words. His mouth slants over mine, his tongue stroking deeply, and that’s all it takes. I’m lost and found again in this moment and this man. There are no questions, no secrets, no need for control. There’s just this kiss and I sink into it, my arms wrapping around him, under his open jacket, my body pressing to every hard inch of him I can manage, a soft moan sliding from my lips at just how good he feels. But when he tears his mouth away, his lips linger a breath from mine, vulnerability, and presence of mind has me challenging him for answers and myself for sanity.

“Was that a fuck you kiss or a relationship kiss?” I demand. “Or maybe just a distraction, a way to forget the secrets?”

“What did it taste like, Carrie?” he demands, his voice low, rough.

“Like that answer,” I say. “Indecisive.”

Tension flexes a path through his body beneath my touch and he releases me, pressing his fists to the wall on either side of me. “I fucked Elijah’s wife.”

I gasp at the unexpected answer. “What?”

“She wasn’t wearing a ring and I didn’t know who she was, but Elijah and I were rivals on a deal at the time, and I damn sure didn’t apologize.” He pushes off the wall and starts walking away, but when he would disappear into whatever the next room is, he half turns and adds, “I told him that if he knew how to satisfy his wife, she wouldn’t have come to me. I’ve done a lot of hard things in my life, Carrie, and I’m not sorry for most of them.” And with that, he turns and leaves me standing in that hallway.

I inhale and try to process what just happened. He didn’t know but he wasn’t sorry. He isn’t sorry. I repeat those words in my head about three times and my emotions land on anger. I charge after him, reaching the edge of a wide living room with cream-colored furnishings, Reid’s jacket and tie lying on the couch that faces a wall of curtains, of which one flaps in the wind, indicating an open door. I kick off my heels and follow him, exiting to a wooden porch overseeing the inky-black ocean waves crashing in the distance. Reid stands with his back to me, his hands on a wide wooden railing, the muscles of his broad shoulders bunched beneath his shirt.

I close the space between us and I dip beneath his arm and step between him and the railing. “You aren’t sorry?” I challenge.

“No,” he says. “I’m not sorry.”

“You say I’m going to hate you.”

“You will,” he says. “Maybe it’s already starting.”

“Maybe you’re trying to push me there. Maybe that avoids the relationship side of this. Maybe you want to make it happen. Is that it? You want me to get on to the hate so you can just fuck me? So you can backtrack all the rest of the talk and—”

His fingers tangle in my hair. “I don’t want you to hate me,” he bites out. “I dread the day you hate me, woman, but I can’t change who I am or what I’ve done. It’s already done.”

“I’m not asking you to change who you are.”

“Because you don’t know who I am, and I keep telling myself to walk away before you do.”

“Then I’m right,” I say. “You just want to push me to hate. You want a reason to walk back—”

“I don’t want to walk back anything,” he says, his fingers tightening in my hair, “and this isn’t just fucking.” His mouth closes down on mine, his tongue licking into my mouth, devouring me, consuming me. “How do I taste now?”

“Angry.”

“I am angry,” he says. “And I’m not hiding from that.”

“Why are you angry?”

“Because the hate will come and I can’t stop it. Because no part of me is not right here with you, Carrie. What about you?”

“I’m here,” I whisper, but I don’t say more. I can’t. He’s already kissing me again, as if he’s testing that claim of “I’m here” on my tongue, on his lips, turning me to press me against the wooden railing, his hand sliding around my hip to cup my backside. “You’re never all here with me,” he says. “You always hold back and that’s not good enough anymore. If this has to end, you’re mine until it does. You’re mine now.”

I don’t push back against that claim of ownership. I welcome it in a way I didn’t believe I was capable of welcoming such words. His mouth closes down on mine, the taste of him demanding and possessive, but there is also regret and the certainty of “the end” that I don’t want to exist. I want to drive that piece of his emotions away. I need to drive it away and I’m not sure I have ever been as aroused in my life. “This time is hard and fast, baby,” Reid says, his lips finding my ear, his hand caressing my breast over my silk blouse. “I need to be inside you.”

“Yes,” I whisper, and already he’s turning me to face the pole, forcing me to catch my weight with my hands, and already he’s unzipping my skirt and dragging it down my hips, right along with my panties, not ripping them away this time. I don’t even care that I’m outside, on a beachfront, naked from the waist down but for my thigh highs. I just want Reid and when his arm wraps my waist and he lifts me, kicking away the material, I turn easily in his arms, eager to feel him next to me. Eager for his mouth on mine again. Hungry for more, so much more, and I’m not sure it will ever be enough.

Nothing is ever enough with this man and yet I fear the day that it’s too much, and that has me tugging at his shirt, trying to drive away anything but the here and now.