Filthy Lies (Blackstone Dynasty 2)

My mind wandered as I buckled up the straps, when I realized I was sitting precisely where James kissed me for the first time.

The morning after my accident. I'd woken up to find him in my bedroom watching me. Hungrily watching.

If I closed my eyes I could recall his lips touching mine. The perfect mixture of firm and soft. James definitely knew how to kiss—

Suddenly another memory pushed to the front. I was kissing James, and not the other way around.

Wait.

Had I had kissed him first?

In my bed?

But that wasn't right. I shook my head as a flash of us lying in this bed together—we were kissing—and his fingers were—

Inside me.

Kiss me.

Orgasms. Intimate touches.

Touch me.

Words spoken.

I love you, James. I love you…I love you…I love you.

I remembered every mortifying thing I'd done and said to him that night. And now his comment made sense to me when he kissed me in the car after returning from Thanksgiving with his parents. "Well, I should hope it was good, because you begged me to do it," he'd said.

Oh my God, no.

"It was something you did actually…well, something you said to me last night that changed my mind."

No, no, no, no, no…

NO.

I sat there stunned. Shocked. Of what we'd done together. Of what I'd revealed to James that night.

I had no idea how much time passed before I was able to move my ass off the bed and finish getting ready for the ball. It could have been five seconds or five hours. I couldn't say. My mind was on a repeating loop of something too intimate and too important for me not to have known about it until right now.

James knew, and he hadn't said anything.

I felt humiliation to the depths of my soul. Beyond expressible words. Why he didn't tell me?

He didn't tell you because he didn't want to tell you.

The fact that James had pushed aside my request to know more made me wonder if he was incredibly embarrassed at how I'd virtually attacked him. He could be with any woman he wanted. Now I wondered if he was offering to marry me to give me access to my trust fund simply because he got me—but it wouldn't mean anything more than perhaps stolen kisses for him. He probably intended to keep the booty calls on the side too. God. I'm such a fool. No wonder…

That James hadn't wanted to talk about the things we'd done and the things I'd said to him—once he realized I had no memory of it—crushed me terribly.

Crushed. Me.

But what do I do with that now?

"Winter, sweetheart, I wasn't using you." He reached for me and dragged me against his chest. I was unable to resist him whenever he touched me, even now when I was seething with enough anger to inflict bodily harm. Upon his body. I stared at those sludgy-green eyes of his, immobile,

captured like a fly in a web. "I was letting you use me," he said clearly.