When the hell did she get so chatty? “Then don’t.”
Nodding, she kisses me again, rubbing her body against mine and making me harder than ever. I can’t stop my hands from touching her, gliding over the side of her face and lower still to the most perfect breasts ever created.
I cup one, feeling the nipple harden under my palm, and then run my hand down the side of her body, gripping a curvy thigh and pulling it around my waist.
“I like that,” she says in that shy but straightforward way of hers.
“Wrap the other one around me, and you’ll love it.”
She whimpers and purrs, and I’m dying, dying to get inside of her. But I can’t, not like I want. She’s a virgin.
“If we do this, I’ll go real slow, baby doll.”
“If we do this, then we’ll be married and have to get a divorce,” she gasps, blinking up at me. Her green eyes are focused on me, though I don’t remember removing her glasses. Maybe she did.
“Divorce would be the only outcome?” My body goes rigid and not from wanting her. Hadn’t Violet said the same damn thing to me, about us, about why she was glad that we’d never gone through with our plans?
Yet here I was with a different woman, wearing the same fucking ring I’d bought my ex, and saying practically the same fucking thing. God, how could I have been so wrong about Bliss?
“I would think so, because you—”
“Don’t worry, baby doll. I don’t want you for the long term.” She blinks up at me, desire giving way to hurt. “I thought we could mutually satisfy each other to pass the time.” I trace the outline of her lush lips. “This mouth of yours has to be good for something other than kissing mine.”
A dull flush creeps up her face. “Please let me up.”
I roll away, keeping my painful smirk in place. “Don’t be in such a hurry to go. We can sixty-nine, if you don’t think I’d return the favor.”
She stares at me blankly. “Sixty-nine?”
“You’d put your mouth on my cock while I’d put mine…” My gaze travels down her body, stopping at her—
“Oh.” Her lips, swollen from my kisses, smash together before she frowns. Scrambling to her feet, she smooths down her pink shirt. “Once the storm is over, I’d like for you to find a way to take me into town, to the bus station. I’ll be happy to sign whatever you need to make this unofficial.”
“Fine. The storm shouldn’t last much longer, and once the cell phone towers are working again, I’ll text Cameron to come pick us up in his boat.”
She reaches out her left hand, her right hand trembling as she works off the wedding ring I’d given her. “Here. It’s not right for me to wear it anymore.”
“Keep it,” I say flatly, but my gaze is firmly fixed on that small band of platinum and diamonds. “It means nothing to me.”
“It could have meant something,” she says softly.
Rising to my feet, I fight the urge to touch her again, to pull her in my arms and take her to bed with me. “I’m not that man, the one you deserve to be with for the rest of your life.”
Hurt gives way to sadness. Her pretty eyes are shiny, but she doesn’t cry. I’ve never seen her cry. “But you could have been that man.”
Curling her fingers over the ring in the palm of her hand, she backs away, then turns around and leaves the room.
Chapter Nine
Jackson
Over the past five hours, I’ve gone through three different playlists and managed to write six new songs. The last one I wrote, though, is different from the rest.
I can’t get it out of my head. The melody and the words are embedded in my brain, right along with the image of Bliss. But what I did, along with the words I wrote, aren’t right.
I’m a damn fool for rejecting her. It’s too easy to fall back on the cocky asshole attitude that’s served me well over the last few years. Until now, I had rationalized it by saying that it was only Jaxon Hunter who was the asshole, not me, Jackson Morgan. But now I know I’ve let the performer merge with the regular guy, the guy who Violet claimed I used to be.
The guy who Cameron become friends with, fifteen years ago, when we’d met at Vacation Bible School. My grandmother had taken me, after my dad had dropped me off at her house for the summer.
I’d said hell a lot, in a completely churchy way, of course, and he’d snickered every time. Then he picked me to make a craft with him and almost cut off my hand with a buzz saw. Whoever thought woodworking was an appropriate activity for nine year olds had to have been sipping too much of the communal wine—though the wine at Cameron’s church was actually grape juice.