Page 31 of One Vow

So, I did. It was all I thought about. All afternoon. And I couldn’t really help it that when I imagined talking to him about my feelings, I pictured us in bed, sweaty and breathing hard, limbs tangled, bodies still joined.

And those thoughts did nothing to calm my need. Neither did standing in the kitchen space with him, bumping into each other and not speaking as I made a salad and he cooked a pizza until I turned from the sink and stopped to watch as he bent to check the pizza through the little glass window in the oven door.

“Tell me you love her, Finn.” Maybe if I heard the words from his mouth, I could wrap my head around not only the idea but the act of behaving myself.

He straightened and took a breath before he turned to face me. “Why?”

He didn’t say it. He didn’t tell me he loved her. He didn’t move away from me when I stepped closer. “Because I…need to hear you say it.”

I laid my hand on his chest. “Because you’re married to me, and the line between right and wrong is getting really blurry.”

I ended on a whisper because his eyes went dark, smoldered, and I couldn’t breathe.

There was something to be said for small kitchens and soon-to-be ex-husbands who weren’t yet ex-husbands. The way he lifted his hand to cup my cheek and lowered his head made the world narrow down to the strip of space between us. “Lis.”

I thought he was going to kiss me, closed my eyes in preparation, but opened them when his forehead pressed against mine.

“Shit.” I wanted to cry. He hadn’t said the words. But he didn’t kiss me either. I pulled away. Humiliated. Exhausted. Dying inside.

And because the heroine never stuck around, and I was huge on dramatic exits, I ran to my room. I shut myself in. I planned to die of starvation in there since I hadn’t waited long enough for the pizza to get done.

I threw myself backward on my bed. Why on Earth did I listen to Sofia? Not a question I hadn’t spoken before, but one I should’ve learned from a long time ago. More than once, more than a hundred times, listening to her had ended up with me doubting everything about myself. Even if later, it turned into something positive, and it had a lot, but it couldn’t this time. Not this time.

He knocked on the door, and I wished I could disappear. It would be easier than seeing him. It would be less painful than looking into the face of my humiliation. And maybe if I stayed quiet enough, he would think I died and would just go away.

Instead, he opened the door and walked in like he owned the place. Like if I ever lifted the arm from my face to look at him, I wouldn’t kick him out.

The mattress sank next to me, and his breath warmed my cheek while his fingertip ran the length of my arm between my elbow and palm where it laid over my eyes before he circled my wrist and pulled it away.

And because I couldn’t bear to look at him, not because I was immature, I squeezed my eyes shut and turned my head away. But even I wasn’t strong enough to resist when he curled his finger under my chin and guided my chin toward him. “Please, Lis.”

He let his finger drag down my throat, and had I not already humiliated myself, I would’ve sighed. My heart racing was all the indication I would give that I wanted him.

“Lis…” His voice was soft, pleading, and I opened my eyes to the storm clouds in his. “I don’t…,”

“Don’t love her? Don’t want me?” Well aware I sounded needy and unable to do a damned thing about it, I waited for his answer.

“Don’t love her. Don’t want to hurt you.” He paused and I looked away until he added, “I don’t want to leave you. Don’t want to walk out of this bedroom until I’ve kissed every inch of your body, until I’ve worshiped you the way you deserve, until I’m the only man you ever think of for the rest of your life.”

Boy, did I have news for him? And instead of just saying okay and stripping down to naked, I took a slow breath. “What’s stopping you?”

Now he looked away, stared at the ceiling then closed his eyes. “Beth Cooper. I’m marrying Beth Cooper.”

What.

The.

Fuck.

All the hormones begging me to forget his pending nuptials slammed shut and died. And then the mean part of me, the one who didn’t care about Beth Cooper’s feelings or that I would be the other woman and she would be able to claim I’d hurt her, the part of me that heard her name in the same way a normal person heard Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer, said she deserved whatever I did to her. Because she’d used her new fame and her press pass and her editing software to make me the first poster girl of the Glouster scandal. My video, with a thin black bouncing box over my eyes and two blurry spots where my equally bouncing boobs should’ve been, was the first played on national news channels. Because of Beth Cooper.

I chuckled. Then laughed. Then guffawed. Finn stared until I calmed. “Of course, you’re marrying Beth Cooper. Of course, because of the almost four billion women in the world, only Beth Fucking Cooper makes sense.”

Then I turned toward him, threw my leg over the top of his cock, gave it a rub, and lowered myself to a level it would take years and an Eiffel Tower size ladder to climb out of. “But if you think that makes me want to fuck you less right now, you’re wrong.”

“Fucking hell, Lis.” The husky tone in his voice, the way he pulled his lip between his teeth, oh, the heat of his gaze scorched my skin. And I wanted more. I wasn’t going to be able to stop soon. Fortunately, Finn could. Always. Either this guy had the willpower of a nun or he just didn’t find me attractive enough to want me the way he used to.

He laid his hand on my calf, stilling any motion I might’ve made, then rolled onto his side so we were almost chest to chest and my knee rested on his hip. One pelvic tilt and a lot of courage would tell me one way or the other if I still…had it, but the prospect of the humiliation of another rejection kept me mostly still.