Hate to Love You(74)

<<Liar, liar.>>

Hesitantly, I answered him.

<<Uhm...pants on fire?>>

James’s eyes darkened, drawing me in.

<<Are you really sorry you watched me, Paisley?>>

I didn’t answer.

I couldn’t.

Something inside James shifted. The barrier keeping me out of his head had begun to corrode and was crumbling, fast. I took advantage, punching through and reading him as if he was the last page in my favourite bodice ripper, afraid that if I looked away I’d miss out on a word or sensation.

A dull flush crept across his face but he held my gaze. He was on the defensive and I wanted to know why. I probed emerald green flecked with gold, delving deeper. He was angry all right, and full of distrust, but beyond that I found...longing?

Yes, and need.

I trembled, and the heat in my blood boiled over, creating tiny beads of moisture between my breasts and at my forehead. One of them trickled onto my lips and I tasted it, letting the salty liquid sink into my tongue. Powerful and heady, it was part of the sensuous necklace that coiled around my body, draping me in desire.

I had to be seeing things in James’s eyes that weren’t there! I must be zonked or confused. Or insane. He wasn’t demanding an answer and I wasn’t shaking my head no. He couldn’t be imagining me naked while I imagined taking him into my mouth, making him moan like I had that night in Caroline’s bed.

I saw everything I had done to him afterwards pass through his thoughts. His body went rigid and he looked angrier than before, as if he really was going to explode. He seemed disgusted with himself for desiring me, even for a second.

I was transported back where I’d been seven years before, outside the bathroom being told I wasn’t good enough, that his standards were too high to ever consider me his equal. His rejection shouldn’t bother me but my body felt as though it was twisting in on itself, right there in his bedroom, and I didn’t know whether I hated him or not. Maybe I did—in the way you can hate things that are forever beyond your reach.

I shoved the wig back onto my head. “I won’t invade your privacy again, word of honour,” I ground out. “I know that’s worth nothing to you but there it is. I’m a drug addict, an unfit mother and an inept stalker. Below you in every way and ridiculously stupid to ever think you’d give me a chance to see Ryan.”#p#分页标题#e#

I wiped a tear away angrily. Ryan would never know me as his mother; James had decided and that was that. The pressure on my chest threatened to flatten my next words before I could toss them out, round and flippant.

“This has been fun and all, but I’ve got food to fling and you’ve got snobs to snoot with.”

I rushed out of the bedroom and across the sitting room, not noticing that James had followed me until I was hauled back against his chest. His hold was implacably strong. “What channel am I on now?” he demanded.

“Channel A for arrogant arse.”

“No,” he said, holding me so tightly I felt the unmistakable prod of his erection. “A for aroused.”

His lips were at my ear and his breath on my neck and—hold on a second, was he smelling me? I had to get out of there before I smelled him back, inhaled him into my very core and refused to blow him out. I struggled frantically.

“Will you stop for a minute?” he said gruffly. “I’ve come to a decision.”

I gasped. “You’re going to have me arrested?”

James released me, making the sort of frustrated noise he did when someone was being thick at the office. “Follow me,” he said, and led me to Ryan’s door.

Baffled, but with burgeoning hope, I stepped into the bedroom. Ryan was asleep in a car-shaped bed. All I could see was his dark hair and small forehead until James walked over and adjusted his duvet. Ryan’s cheek was smooth, his face so innocent my heart contracted, hoping he never went through anything that I had. I tip-toed over and stroked his hair, trying to calm my erratic pulse.

“He’s snoring,” I whispered, and James chuckled.

“Like his mother.”

“I do not snore.”

James sent me a wry look but said nothing else. He watched me watch Ryan, and then he gave me permission to stay with him while he changed his clothes. Alone, I looked around the dimly lit bedroom. A collection of miniature dinosaurs competed for space with spaceships and a rock collection. Holiday pictures adorned the shelves, snapshots of experiences I would never share with Ryan. Phases of his life that I had missed and were unrecoverable.

I studied each happy photo. Do they really allow kids on skis when they’re just out of toddlerhood? I picked up a framed picture of a fourish-year-old Ryan, jumping off a wooden pier into azure waters. Was it the Caribbean? Thailand? The straw hut at the end of the pier looked like something out of a Thomas Cook commercial.