Tough Luck Hero (18 page)

What happened to resistance?

Well, nothing had happened yet. So she would just see.

“I mean, thank you for thinking it's ridiculous that Natalie could be jealous of me.”

“I just don't think she possesses enough humility to be jealous of anyone,” he said. “It has nothing to do with you.”

“Except this does.” Lydia took a deep breath. “She said she was jealous because she could tell that when we met, you were attracted to me.”

He went still. “Did she say that?”

“Yes.” Lydia looked back down and pressed the paper down, making a deep, straight crease, then going over it again. “That is exactly what she said. That she knew there was...something between us.”

“Irritation?”

“But why?” she asked, her ears ringing, her cheeks burning. “Why do we irritate each other so much? Nothing actually happened.”

He said nothing, but she heard him shift. And suddenly, he was grabbing hold of her chin, tilting her face up so that she was forced to meet his gaze. His blue eyes burned into hers, his thumb sliding across her skin, leaving a trail of sparks behind.

“Because,” he said, his voice rough, low. It was intimate and so enticing she could feel herself leaning toward him, leaning into his touch. “From the first moment I saw you I wanted to kiss you. When you looked at me, I felt like I got slapped.”

“You did?” she asked. She was pretty sure she'd managed to form the words correctly. It was hard to say because her lips were numb so she couldn't feel them moving, and then on top of that her ears were buzzing and she could barely hear herself speaking.

“Yes.”

“Then why were you mean to me?”

“Nobody likes to get slapped in the face, Lydia.”

The words settled between them, settled in her. He was right. And it was the same reaction she'd had too. Seeing Colton for the first time had felt like an assault, and no one responded positively to an assault.

Especially not people like them.

Yeah, people like them. They weren't so different, she and Colton West. They both wanted to do the right thing for the people they cared about. They both guarded themselves. They both prized control.

For Lydia that meant carving out her own space in her home, for Colton it meant, well, it seemed to mean building up walls of respectability all around him. The semblance of a life without ever letting anyone too close.

They were the same, and they handled it in different ways.

They didn't like their territory threatened. They didn't like to be challenged. And they really, really didn't like their control being tested.

But was it a loss of control if they
decided
to lose it?

Her blood was running hotter, faster, and much like when she'd been drunk, she wasn't entirely sure if she was capable of making a smart decision right now. Apparently Colton was a lot like alcohol.

Maybe it would be different if she could remember the sex. If she could remember then maybe she would have enough shower-fantasies to get her through the hard times. She'd pretty much decided before Colton that sex was nothing more than a bit of nice companionship. It was fine, but she'd never felt the need to be crazy about it.

Now there was a little kernel of what if. Hope restored. Maybe the fuss was about something. Maybe it could be earth-shattering. If she knew, then maybe she wouldn't feel so needy now.

But she didn't know. She couldn't remember. So that made this...well, it was unique.

“Do you think maybe we fight to keep from...this?” she asked.

He chuckled, his breath fanning over her cheek, sending a shiver down her spine. “No, I think we fight because we annoy each other.”

She laughed, helpless, trying to keep from dissolving into giggles there on her living room floor with Colton West holding her chin in his hand. “I suppose that's a fair enough assessment.”

“You're uptight,” he said.

“You're arrogant. High-handed. Is that the same thing? Well, maybe it is.”

“I'm going to kiss you.”

“I'm supposed to be resisting you,” she said, the words almost a plea.

“You are?” he asked, his brows shooting upward.

“Yes.”

“And here I made it a point to stop resisting you.”

“What a surprise. We're disagreeing again,” she said, another laugh escaping her.

He made her breathless. He made her giggly and weird and she had no idea what on earth to do with it. He made her tremble. He made her want.

“I'll make a deal with you,” he said, his voice the richest of seductions, dark and warm as it poured through her like a potent drink. “I kiss you, and you can decide where you stand on your resistance.”

She nodded slowly, and he barely waited for her to finish the gesture before he leaned in, closing the distance between them entirely. He had kissed her last night, though it had been for show, but still, it felt as if she had been waiting for this for weeks. Months. Maybe all of her life. She felt like Sleeping Beauty, asleep until Colton's lips touched hers. And now, parts of her body she had never fully engaged with were starting to wake up. Were starting to ache. Were starting to need.

He slid his tongue along the seam of her lips, gently encouraging her to open for him. She complied, because there was nothing else she could do. His kiss was gentle, soft, so unlike the kiss he'd given her last night in front of everyone, which had been firm, but dry. So unlike the kiss at the woodshed that had been fierce and full of regret and anger. This was a tease. This was him drawing out every bit of her desire that he could. Coaxing it from her slowly, stroke for stroke, with each wild, delicious pass of his tongue.

When he pulled away, it was too soon. Her heart was thundering hard, her whole body shaking. Her stomach seemed hollowed out, and she felt a deep emptiness, something like being ill. A strange thing, because she never would have associated desire with sickness. But that was how she felt. Sick for him. For this.

“This isn't a good idea,” she said, her voice thick, drugged.

“What's the worst that could happen? If the two of us make love again, what's the very worst thing that could happen?”

She closed her eyes, trying to ignore the beating of her heart in her temples. Trying to rise above the heat that was washing through her. Trying to find some sanity.

“The earth could crumble into pieces and fall away,” she said, her eyes still closed.

He leaned in, his lips brushing her ear, his hand cradling her cheek. “Okay, and if the earth crumbles and falls away, we still had sex. And I think that kind of takes the sting out of it, don't you?”

“Well,” she said. “We would be dead. So, it would be difficult to say.”

“Would we?”

“Us. All of humanity.”

“All of humanity? All because we took our clothes off?”

She nodded, the motion creating friction between her cheek in his palm, sending a delicious shock of sensation through her. She pressed her knees together, trying to minimize the ache at the apex of her thighs. It didn't work.

“That's a lot of responsibility,” he said.

She swallowed hard. “Too much. So, we should just stop this. It's crazy.”

“Or, we do it anyway.” He shifted, moving nearer. And oh, she could smell him. All masculine and clean and perfect. “Because the earth isn't going to fall away.”

“What if it does?” she asked.

All she had were wild theories that she knew weren't true to keep herself from leaning in and kissing him again. It was the only thing keeping her clothing firmly in place. Catastrophes. Made-up catastrophes that would result if the two of them ever touched again. But she was finding it hard to remember why she needed that. Finding it difficult to recall why she was resisting in the first place. When they could just have each other. When they could just have this.

“I still don't remember,” he said, his voice rough. “I don't remember what happened that night in Las Vegas. And I want to. Do you know how much that tortures me? To have you walking around in front of me all the time, knowing that I've seen you naked, knowing that I know, somewhere inside of myself, what you look like without your clothes on, but not being able to recall the image? Do you know what it's like to know that I've tasted you, that I've touched you, that I've had my hands all over your beautiful, bare skin, but that there's just a big blank space in my mind where it should be.” He laughed. “The damn ironic thing is that it's because of the alcohol that we did it in the first place, and it's because of the alcohol that I can't remember.”

She sucked in a deep breath, looking down. Needing a reprieve from his face. It was too much. Too tempting. “But it's for the best that we don't remember. Because then we're not...we're not tortured.”

“You're not tortured?” he asked, sounding incredulous. “You don't feel completely tortured right now?”

“I mean...okay, it's a little bit of torture.”

“Honey, you might as well have me on the rack.”

“But I...I don't know myself when I feel this. I don't know what's happening to me. I don't want men that I don't like. I don't have casual sex. For me it's always been part of a relationship. Something to make me feel...companionship. It's not about...this crazy attraction.”

“So, how's that worked out for you?”

She looked up at him again, frowning. “I'm single. I mean, apart from being married to you.”

“Sure. Apart from the whole marriage thing,” he said, his tone dry.

“You know what I mean.”

“All things considered, maybe it isn't working out that well for you. Maybe there's nothing wrong with trying this.”

She wanted it. She wanted it so badly. But wanting wasn't having. And she wasn't that woman. She wasn't the kind of woman who made a man lose his cool, who made him beg to be with her. And even if she were, she wouldn't be the kind to say yes.

“One more time,” she said, the words rushed, reckless as she felt inside. Tumbling out of her with all the subtlety of a rock slide.

There was no turning back now.

“One more time?” he asked.

“I feel like you do. I feel like it's torture to not remember. I feel like maybe if I did...maybe this wouldn't be quite so torturous. Then maybe we could just finish this marriage thing and go on with our lives. Maybe we won't be completely tormented by the what-ifs.”

It made sense. Because in Lydia's experience the promise of sex was a whole lot hotter than sex itself. She was usually more turned on by kissing than she was by the whole nudity/penetration thing. Not that it didn't have its merits, it's just that she was usually a whole lot hotter imagining what might happen, than actually dealing with what did happen.

Maybe it didn't make sense. Maybe she was so deep into justifications she just started to buy whatever sounded vaguely logical because she was desperate.

Either way, she didn't really care. All she cared about was what might happen next. Where he might touch her... Where he might kiss her.

She let her eyes flutter closed, and she waited. She waited, and nothing happened. Then, she felt the brush of his thumb over her bottom lip, slow, steady.

“You're going to have to open your eyes, peaches.”

She did. The electric shock of his blue eyes boring into her was almost too much to bear. Making her shiver inside. Ratcheting up the tension between them to an almost-impossible degree.

He continued to trace the line of her lower lip, his movements purposeful, exquisite. He was touching her with his thumb. That was it. Touching her on the lip, not even anywhere salacious, and she was melting. It wasn't difficult to understand why she had succumbed to him so easily on their wedding night.

It had been easy to imagine that it was some kind of madness contained inside the shot glasses at Ace's. It was easy to pretend that it had been a one-off. The glorious friction, the delicious slide of his hand over her face, was proving that it was probably more than a onetime deal.

She was starting to think it was something that lived inside her. Buried down deep. Something that only he could call up. Colton West, who was supposed to be just as dispassionate as she was. Just as controlled. And yet, they tested each other.

Opposites attracted—she'd heard that over and over. But they weren't magnets. They were people. And while she would have said only a few weeks ago that they were opposites, opposites that wanted each other dead, she understood now that neither of those things was true.

At the moment, same, opposite, it didn't matter much. The only thing that mattered was want. Want and have.

That thought made her feel giddy. Made her shake. She lived her life with so much rigid control that wanting and having were never the same thing. She weighed every option, every consequence. Overthought everything to death. It had taken her a year to decide what kind of car to buy. Had taken hours of reading
Consumer Reports
.

But there were no consumer reports to read on Colton. And even if there were, she wouldn't care.

She felt...suddenly she felt unprotected, exposed. Without all the little rules and walls that she imposed on herself surrounding her, there was nothing to keep her safe. Nothing to deflect his intense gaze. Nothing to hide the desire that she felt for him. She just had to own it. And follow it.

Her day usually looked a lot like a multiple-choice test. All of the options neatly laid out before her, predictable and simple. But this...this just felt like a wide, dark chasm of unknown. She was just going to have to jump into it, consequences be damned. She was ready. She was giddy.

Just this once. And then you'll leave it behind and everything can go back to normal.

That made it feel manageable at least. Made it feel a bit less scary.

“Kiss me,” she said. No, she demanded. She didn't think she had ever done that before. She had always waited for a man to lean in. Had always just kind of waited, accepted.