Tempting(64)

“Because I needed to know that you still suffered. Still surrounded yourself with everything that she’d put here.” He pointed a shaking finger at me, and I felt it like a knife in my chest. “You were the reason she was out on the road that night. You are the reason some drunk asshole wrapped her car around a tree, because you didn’t feel safe driving home after your three pussy-ass beers. Why she was stuck in that car until she bled out. So I need to know that you still feel like shit. The same way I do.”

Every word spat from his mouth felt like flames licking up my skin. I kept every thought of that night so far from my memory, that being thrust into it singed every part of me.

“And you really think I wouldn’t?” I whispered, voice cracking. “I loved her. You know I loved her. And she would have been home safe if it hadn’t been for me. I don’t need you coming here, after all these years to remind me of that.”

We stared at each other, the violence in his eyes just making me feel so incredibly tired. So bone-deep exhausted that I wanted to curl into myself and not come out for weeks.

“I know you don’t need it,” he finally said. Then he pointed at his own chest. “But maybe I do.”

“Then take your issues somewhere else. I’m not going to offer up a place for you to lay it down.”

There was second where he looked like he might relax. But then his eyes narrowed in on the driveway. I turned to look and cursed under my breath when I saw Adele walking up toward the house with a smile on her face.

“I need you to leave.”

He laughed. That fucker just laughed. “And why the hell should I?”

“Because I don’t need her involved in this. Nobody but you is hanging on to this anger over Diana. And it’s not her fault,” I said, pointing back at where Adele was nearing the door. The locked door, thank God. “If she walks in while you’re still here, then we’re going to have a problem.”

We stared at each other, neither of us moving while Adele tried the door. Then knocked.

“Nathan? Can you let me in?”

“Please, Elias,” I ground out. And the look at utter satisfaction that covered his face made me feel sick to my stomach.

“How long? Just answer me that. Just tell me how it took before you moved on.”

She knocked again, a little harder, a little more insistent. “Nathan?”

No part of me wanted to answer his question. Not a single one. He’d use it against me somehow, even if it wasn’t today. “Four years. I waited over four years before I touched another woman. And she’s the only one that I have.”

Elias nodded, and I couldn’t read the look in his eyes even if I wanted to. He could cloak every genuine feeling from his face, it was one of his best gifts. The only reason I knew he believed me is because no man would want to admit to being that pathetic. Being celibate for that long. “I’ll show myself out the back.”

“You remember how to get out?”

Then he smiled, without a trace of humor in it, showing all his stark white teeth against the dark hair of his beard. “I remember everything, Easton. Everything.”

I let out a slow breath when he turned and walked through the kitchen, finally pulling it back in when the back door slammed shut so hard that the windows rattled.

Dick.

I still felt shaken when I opened the door for Adele, but she was smiling so big that she didn’t even notice. She just threw herself into my arms as soon as the door closed behind her, hoisting her legs up and around my waist.

“Woah,” I said, feeling calmed by her tactile greeting and her wide smile. It was one I didn’t see on her often, such a broad, genuinely happy grin. “Someone’s having a good day.”

Adele nodded, leaning in to give me a sweet, close-mouthed kiss. “I am.”

I braced one arm under her ass, and smoothed the other hand up her back until it tangled in the edges of her hair. Her cold hands cupped my face and we stared at each other. After just looking at Elias, wondering how anyone could decipher his emotions, it was such a stark relief to see everything in Adele’s emerald eyes.

They glowed. She glowed.

“I’m very glad you’re here right now,” I said, though the words were such a simplistic statement of the overwhelming tidal wave of emotions raging through me. She smiled again, and peppered tiny kisses all over my face, lingering on my lips after she’d covered every other inch she could reach.

“I am too, Professor Easton. Now, take me to bed.”

“Yes, ma’am.”





Chapter Twenty-Nine





Hooking a hand in the front of his jeans, I pulled him up the stairs, feeling high on my decision. Everything would be okay. How could it not be, when I had Nathan looking at me like I was something—someone—powerful? He made me feel invincible. His blue eyes were so warm, his smile cutting into his cheeks so deeply; it was a heady feeling, to know I’d made him happy merely with my presence.