Lance cupped one side of her face with his hand. “Then what do we do with this?” His mouth came down and claimed hers.
Despite everything she’d said, every shred of sanity she’d clung to, she opened her lips for him. She met his plundering kiss with a frenzy that came from years of pent-up hunger. Hunger for him. She gripped his strong shoulders and gave herself over to a passion that burned hotter than any she’d experienced with other men.
He pulled her tight against him. His arousal pulsed against her stomach, and she writhed against it, shaken when she realized he was as much a slave to their attraction as she was. Her arms went up and around his neck. His hands cupped her ass, moving her even more intimately against his excitement.
There was nothing beyond how good his mouth felt on hers, how her skin tingled everywhere it touched his. She needed more. He must have been feeling the same way because he yanked her skirt upward and slid his hands beneath the silk panties she’d impulsively worn beneath it. She frantically began to pull the front of his shirt out of his pants.
The sound of a knock on the door of his office brought Willa back to her senses. She pulled away from him and yanked her skirt down over her ass just in time to turn and face a very embarrassed secretary who stuttered her way through an apology before closing the door.
In a deep, gravelly voice, Lance asked, “What do we do about that, Willa?”
Nothing. I can’t do this again. I can’t open myself to that kind of pain a second time. Willa backed toward the door, grabbing her purse on the way. “Nothing. If you care about me at all—do nothing.”
She was out the door and standing on shaking legs in the elevator before he had a chance to stop her. She brought a hand to her lips, lips still warm from his kiss. He raced after her and arrived just in time for the doors to close. He called out her name. She closed her eyes and turned away.
Lust was like a powerful narcotic. It felt good, but if a person gave in to it, it also had the ability to destroy them.
By the time the elevator opened on the first floor, Willa had composed herself. She took her shame, her embarrassment, and stuffed it deep down in the box in her gut where she kept all the feelings she didn’t want to face.
Many things were better denied.
What good would come from resenting her parents for dying? For hating her elderly aunt and uncle for not wanting to raise her and Lexi? Did it matter why Lexi had taken her place and gone on the date with Lance?
I don’t want to be angry all the time.
I don’t want to hate myself or anyone else.
Willa hailed a cab and climbed in. Lance stepped outside of his building. She told the driver to go and faced forward.
I’m sorry, Lance.
A flash of herself in her college’s clinic, discussing possibly terminating her pregnancy cut through her. Did I lose the baby because I considered an abortion?
Was it punishment for not being brave enough to tell anyone?
Not Lance?
Not Lexi?
Willa burst into tears in the back of the cab.
“Lady, are you okay?” the driver asked.
Willa shook her head. She was as far from being okay as she’d ever been.
And this is why I can’t look back. This is who I become when I do. She thought about Kenzi’s words. “None of us are who we were back then. Give yourself a chance to get to know who he is now.”
Sorry, Kenzi. I know he’s not the boy I slept with that summer. He’s a man now—a man with the power to rip away my façade of strength.
I don’t want to go back to hating myself.
I can’t risk that.
No matter how much I may want to.
Still catching his breath from his sprint down the stairs, Lance watched Willa leave in a cab and stood rooted to the sidewalk for a long time. He’d finally gotten his answers, but they came with even more questions. Willa hadn’t sent Lexi. Nothing about their first time together had been a game to her.
Which makes me even more of a dick than I thought.
Perfect.
How could anything that felt as good as being with Willa also hurt like an elephant had just kicked him in the balls. He wanted to grab the next cab, chase her down, and—and then what?
Her words came back to him. “If you care about me at all—do nothing.” What the fuck did that mean?
“Lance Barrington?” a man asked as he approached, extending his hand for a shake as though they were old friends. Lance didn’t recognize the man standing next to him expectantly.
He turned his head from the man and back toward the street. Following Willa wasn’t an option, but nor was letting things end the way they had. He answered absently, “Yes.”
“I’m Emmitt Kalling.” The man dropped his hand once it became clear the greeting wasn’t going to get any warmer. “Dax Marshall said you were in need of my services.”