She’d learned since that that wasn’t true.
If love was so powerful, so important, then the moment her love for Taj had died, all of her thoughts of him would have dissolved and blown away like desert sand. They hadn’t. He still plagued her sleep. He was still the man her body desired.
The absence of love hadn’t changed that. It was a sobering realization, just how much Taj still mattered. How much power he still possessed. That he could make her run. She gritted her teeth. No. She didn’t run. At least, she wouldn’t run now. Wouldn’t give him that satisfaction, that level of importance.
She took a breath and her hand turned the door handle before she’d fully processed the action, and she found herself staring into Taj’s obsidian eyes.
“Don’t run from me again,” he bit out.
“Again? Don’t flatter yourself. I was never running from you. I was running to independence. I’m not a frightened child. I don’t run from things.” She crossed her arms beneath her chest.
“Liar. In the hall just now, you were very much running from me. From the attraction that still exists between us.”
“Attraction? Have you been drinking tonight?”
“I don’t drink. You know that. And yes, attraction. It has always been there, or have you forgotten the night we spent in your father’s barn?”
“You make it sound like we…” His gaze dropped to her lips. “We kissed. That’s all.” And they’d cuddled up together, looking at the night sky through a hole in the roof, her hand on his chest, her mouth spilling out all of her stupid dreams for the future. Dreams she’d believed he’d shared in. But while she’d been counting stars, he’d been counting money. The money he would make when he married her.
“There are simple kisses, Angelina, and then there are the kinds of kisses we shared that night. And they are not the same thing.”
No, they weren’t. But the only reason they’d been different was because she’d been barely twenty and had fancied herself in love. They’d felt new and precious, and more exciting than anything else ever had.
“We just kissed, Taj.”
“And if we kissed again? You think you would feel…?”
“Nothing,” she whispered. “I would feel nothing.”
He leaned in and her breath caught. She didn’t back away from him. She couldn’t. “Is that so? You have not thought of me since you left? Not once?”
Always. “No.”
“You lie again,” he said, his voice rough, his eyes glittering in challenge.
If he was trying to intimidate her, it wouldn’t work. Her eyes were open now, to the world, to the people around her. People she’d thought loved her.
She was not a child anymore. And she would not act like one. Wouldn’t allow him to walk into her life and devastate it or think even for a moment that he could. She wouldn’t allow him to have all the control. No. She had control now. She had power.
She put her hands on his face, his stubble rough beneath her palms. Leaning in, she pressed her lips to his. They were hot and hard, immobile. Her stomach tightened, a fierce rush of need flowing through her, the kind of need she hadn’t felt since the last time Taj had held her in his arms.
He didn’t move and she angled her head, sliding her tongue against the seam of his lips. That was when he moved, like a man breaking free from chains. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to him, deepening the kiss, his tongue moving against hers.
She could feel his heart beneath her hands, raging hard, out of control. Every bit as out of control as she felt.
He took a step and she took a step back, then he took another and she followed. He released her for a moment to shut the door hard behind him, the sound jarring her back to reality.
“What are you doing?”
“You started it, Angel, shouldn’t you have the answer?” he asked.
“I don’t…” Her pulse thundered in her head and she tried to form a coherent sentence. She had meant to show him she had command now. That she wasn’t so easily manipulated. But all of those intentions had been knocked right out of her the moment their lips had touched.