His hands find my waist. Slide up my sides. My shirt disappears somewhere—when did that happen?— and his fingers move down again, settling on my hips with his thumbs pressing into the hollows above my hipbones, curving around to my lower back—
The angle. The way he grips.
The way Adrian used to grab me before—
My whole body goes rigid and my lungs seize. Everything locks.
I'm off him before I consciously decide to move, bare feet hitting the floor as I stumble backward, standing there in nothing but my jeans with my arms crossing over my bare chest.
Eight years. Three therapists. Homework assignments I did in the dark, crying, trying to make my body remember what wanting felt like instead of what fear felt like.
And here you are. Broken. Still broken.
Cole is on his feet immediately with his hands raised and palms out. He doesn't come toward me. He sidesteps, putting distance between us, moving toward the door like he's giving me the whole room to breathe in.
"Nothing else needs to happen."
His voice is steady and calm with no frustration, no disappointment, no hint ofyou started thisorwhat's wrong with you now. "I'll be in the monitoring room if you need anything."
He's hard. I can see it straining against his pants, obvious and undeniable, and he's still leaving. He's walking away from what I offered because I flinched, because my body betrayed me, because I'm too damaged to—
His hand reaches for the doorknob.
"Wait."
The word tears out of me, wrecked and raw, and I barely recognize my own voice.
Cole stops with his hand on the doorknob, knuckles white against the brass. He doesn't turn around, doesn't move, just waits there giving me space to take it back, to change my mind, to remember all the reasons this is a terrible idea.
I should let him go, lock myself in my room and pretend the last ten minutes didn't happen. I could call my therapist in the morning and schedule an emergency session. I can do anything except what I'm about to do.
"Come back."
Now he turns. His eyes find mine, dark and searching. But he doesn't move toward me. Doesn't close the distance. Just stands there, shirtless and hard and waiting for me to decide.
He's making me choose. Again. Always making me choose, always putting the power in my hands even when my hands are shaking.
My feet carry me across the carpet before I can overthink it. One step. Two. Three. Until I'm standing in front of him, close enough to feel the heat radiating off his bare skin.
I kiss him, softer this time. Real. My hands flatten against his chest and I feel his heart pounding beneath my palms, fast and hard, proof that he's not as controlled as he pretends to be.
He pulls back.
"Tell me what you want."
Like it's simple. Like I can just say the words out loud. Like I haven't spent eight years trying to forget that I ever wanted anything at all.
I try to kiss him again, rising onto my toes to chase his mouth, but his hands come up to frame my face with his thumbs pressing gently against my cheekbones, holding me still.
"Words, Angelina." His voice is rough but patient, strained but steady. "I need your words."
He's making me own this. Making me own wanting him. Making me say it out loud so I can't pretend later that it just happened, that I got swept away, that I wasn't a full participant in my own destruction.
Bastard. Beautiful, infuriating bastard.
Heat floods my cheeks. Eight years of therapy, of homework assignments, of vibrators prescribed like medicine.Touch your body, Angelina, learn what you like, reclaim your pleasure. And I threw them all away when they couldn't fix what Adrian broke.
"I want you to touch me."