Restless and a little ashamed, I knew I couldn’t lie there any longer. Not with him staring at the ceiling and trying to pretend I wasn’t even there. There was no afterglow, no closeness to bask in. It was time to let it go. I slipped out of his arms, extricating myself as gracefully as I could. I was freezing cold suddenly, and ready to spool up under my covers, close the door and block him out, block out the knowledge of what we’d done and what a damn mistake it had been. I had wanted to be with him like that, and that desire had consumed me. My fear after seeing him on the news had tipped me over into desperation. It was my own fault. I’d walked right into heartbreak with my eyes wide open. That didn’t make it one bit easier to take though.
Back in my room, body still throbbing from everything we’d done, a pleasurable ache of satisfaction that was bittersweet, I pulled on pajamas and rolled onto my side to get some sleep. I kept thinking about how I’d felt pacing the floor, sick to my stomach and my throat closing up with sheer terror until he walked in the front door and I knew he was okay. I still trembled remembering it. There was no sleep for me, despite how exhausted I was both physically and emotionally. I didn’t know what to do with this, with the feelings I had for Damon, the fact we’d made love and I admitted I couldn’t face a future of fearing for his life every time he went to work. There was nowhere to go except down the road of regret.
14
Damon
One crazy night, that’s what I told myself. That’s all it was. She hadn’t been prepared for how frightened it made her when I risked my life in that fire. Emotions ran high, and I was riding the adrenaline from saving a man’s life and cheating death. Trixie ran into my arms, so relieved and happy to have me home. Nothing could have kept me from having her that night. She had come to me, tear-stained and needing comfort, saying she’d always cared for me and wanted me. I couldn’t resist her under the best of circumstances, and after escaping an inferno with my life I was not at peak willpower. I wanted to celebrate, to slake myself in her sweet body and show her how I longed for her.
I had imagined it a hundred times or more, the way it would be when I finally held her and touched her and made her mine. The sweet vanilla scent of her hair, the taste of her that intoxicated me. Her skin was like silk but warmer, and her need had been as great as my own. It had been unforgettable. And it had left me wanting more. I wanted her in every room of the house, in every way I could think of. Instead of doing away with my distracting attraction for her, taking her to bed had made it worse. I thought about her constantly and fantasized about every possible way I could get her back in my bed. Or on the couch or bent over the kitchen table. It just kindled more hunger in me, and that was frustrating. Because there was no answering longing in her face, no unquenchable desire in her manner. She acted like I didn’t exist, or if I did exist, I was someone she treated politely, distantly as a stranger.
The distance itself infuriated me. My hands itched to touch her, to stroke and caress. Every time I so much as passed her in the kitchen I wanted to put my tongue in her mouth, slide my hand up her shirt, initiate another cataclysmic round of bed-rattling sex. I wanted to reclaim what was mine. With my mouth and hands and cock. I hardened and throbbed for her, woke up with my hand around my dick, stroking, an agony of need and yearning for her, my own familiar fist a poor stand-in for her tight, sweet body. She said she’d dreamed about me taking her for a ride in my truck, taking her parking out by the falls. I thought about that night and day, and I felt obsessed by the idea, by the fact that I hadn’t gotten to do so many things with her yet. And she was pulling away from me, not letting me in her life, in her thoughts, in her bed.
It was worse than if I had never had a taste of her at all. I was shaky like an addict who couldn’t get a fix. The sheer force of our attraction, the chemistry that snapped between us with the extreme pleasure that lashed through me when I came inside her sweet, hot passage was one of a kind. I needed to make her see that. But I couldn’t pressure her. It was bad enough that I’d taken advantage of her worry for me after the fire. It was worse that I wasn’t ashamed. I wanted Trixie Owens, no, Trixie Vance, back in my bed and I’d do whatever I had to. If it meant seducing her, taking her out to the Rockford Falls for a picnic like a date or making out in the back of the theater in Overton or going someplace fancy for snails and champagne, I didn’t care. My obsession with her went beyond the physical, although that need was painful. I wanted her back, on my couch, in my arms, laughing at the dinner table. All of it. If I’d lost her over going to bed together, maybe I could get her back the same way. By making her want me, without the threat of danger, just me.