“Stroke my what?”
“Ego,” I finished firmly. “But I have no intentions of adding to the pile.”
“You know, that’s the second time you’ve brought up my dating history.”
“Point being?”
“I had no idea you kept such close tabs on my exes.”
“It’s like a car wreck,” I said sweetly. “Hard to look away.”
“Keep lying to yourself, babe. Just going to make it more satisfying when I finally get you to admit the truth.”
“You want the truth? Fine. The truth is, you came here tonight to punish me because you were pissed off I disobeyed your orders. You wanted to scare me, and guess what? You succeeded. I was terrified when I thought you were an intruder. But that wasn’t enough for you, was it?” I shook my head and backed away when he tried to step nearer. “No! Don’t you dare come near me. I mean it.”
He stopped walking. “Gwen—”
“Don’tGwenme. I may not be able to control my body’s reaction to you, but I can sure as hell still make up my own mind. Sex isn’t a weapon you get to wield against me. My body isn’t a wind-up toy for you to play with when it strikes your fancy. You want to make a point? Do it some other way. Any other way. Or I swear, I will cut you out of my life with surgical precision and never look back.”
He absorbed this in silence for a moment, his expression flashing between exasperation, anger, and something else — something I couldn’t decipher. His voice cracked out like a whip, harsh enough to make my heart skip a beat. “You really think that’s all this was? Me, trying to… what? Fuck you into submission?”
“Sure seems that way!”
“And yesterday? At my office? What was my nefarious plan there, huh? More mind tricks?”
“Knowing you, I wouldn’t doubt it!”
He ran both hands through his hair, mussing it instantly. “Jesus Christ, Gwen. You’ll twist anything to make it fit the evil version of me in your head, won’t you? The truth could bite you in the ass and you’d deny it had teeth.”
“Oh, goodie,” I snapped, planting my hands on my hips. “More insults.”
“I’m not insulting you. I’m trying to fuckingtalkto you—”
“I’m done talking.”
“That’s not how this works. You don’t get to unilaterally decide when we’re done. You want to monologue? Join a theater group. We’re having what I like to call aconversation. And a conversation is between two people. You and me. We both get to decide when it’s done. You don’t get to order me out just because you don’t like what you’re hearing.”
I glowered at him, unable to refute his points.
“Fine,” I grumbled. “Then say what you need to say.”
He glowered back at me in silence, jaw tightening in anger.
“What are you waiting for?” I asked. “A drum roll?”
He took three deep breaths — in through his nose, out through his mouth — and I knew it was taking all his patience to keep from roaring at me. His gaze cut to the bed, which was rumpled from our tussle, for a long moment. When it finally met mine again, I shivered under the chill in his eyes.
“Let’s get something straight,” he rasped lowly, advancing a step in my direction. It took all my strength not to cower back against the doorframe. “You’ve somehow convinced yourself that what’s happening between us is me trying to manipulate you. But that’s not what this is, and deep down you know it. If you’d stop trying to twist it into some Machiavellian scheme, maybe you’d see that I didn’t kiss you as a punishment or a ploy or a power move. I kissed you becauseI wanted to.I kissed you because I haven’t been able to stop thinking about getting my lips back on yours since the moment you left my office. I kissed you because…”
He pulled in a ragged breath. “For the past two years, it’s been pure fucking torture being near you all the time, watching you date dickhead after dickhead — none of them making you happy, none of them evenseeingyou, the real you, or even bothering all that hard to try. Two fucking years of standing in the shadows. Every boat day, every backyard barbecue. Watching while they touched you like you belonged to them. Trying not to turn fucking feral because they got to taste something that always should’ve beenmine.”
I jolted in place, too startled to speak.
His?
I wasn’t his. I wasn’t anyone’s. But my mouth refused to form the words. In fact, my brain wasn’t relaying any sort of executive orders to my body.
The weight of Graham’s stare pinned me in place more effectively than an anvil on my feet. His eyes scanned slowly up my frame, lingering on my bare thighs, on my panting chest, on my neck. When they finally reached my face, all the ice had melted out of them. Instead, they were burning with heat.