Exposed (Ethan Frost 3)

“Chloe! Chloe! Answer me!” The urgency in his voice gets through the fuzziness and I know I I’m out of time.

“I’m okay,” I tell him again as I push shakily to my feet. Then I stumble over to the sink and rinse my mouth out before splashing water on my face, and on my wrists as I try to make sense of the different bits of knowledge floating around in my brain. As I try to get my shit together.

It’s that last thought that pisses me off and gets me moving. Damn it, I’m no shrinking violet. I’m no weak girl who can’t take care of herself. Not anymore. Not ever again, even if I do have a man who wants nothing more than to do it for me—no matter what the consequences.

The thought makes my stomach turn, again, but I shove the fear and the confusion and the sadness down deep as I turn to open the door. It’s time to confront my husband of four days.

Ethan’s standing right next to the door, so close that I can’t step out of the bathroom without brushing against him. Not that he would let me, even if I tried.

Instead, he wraps his arms around me, pulls me in against his strong, powerful chest. He feels so good, smells so good and comfortable and familiar, that for a moment I can’t help burrowing in. Wrapping my arms around his waist and pressing my face into his chest as I take the comfort he’s all too willing to give.

But there’s something wrong with taking comfort from the person who’s upset you in the first place, my brain screams at me. And so I pull back, try to step out of his arms.

But Ethan’s holding on, one hand cupping my face while the other rests on my hip and keeps me in place. “Hey, what’s going on?” he asks. “Is this from too much to drink last night or are you sick? Do I need to get a doctor?”

The concern in his eyes melts me, as does the softness of his touch. But I steel myself against it—against him as I try to find the words to start the conversation I know we need to have. “It wasn’t the champagne,” I finally tell him.

“Poor baby,” he murmurs as he propels me toward the bed. “We’ll get you in bed and then I’ll call the front desk, get the number for a doctor—”

“I don’t need a doctor, either.”

“You don’t know that. If you’ve caught a virus, maybe he can—”

“It’s not a virus!” I tell him, fighting to keep my voice even. “It’s you!”

He freezes in the act of pulling the covers around me. “I don’t understand.”

It takes every ounce of self-control I have not to shove him away from me. Not to yell at him. Not to call bullshit on his whole bewildered act. But I don’t want to start my marriage out that way, either, and so I just sit on the edge of the bed for long seconds, staring sightlessly out the huge picture window in front of me as I try to figure out what I’m supposed to do. What I’m supposed to say to this man who means more to me than anyone else in this world. This man for whom I would give up anything.

This man who doesn’t seem to feel the same way about me.

“Chloe, sweetheart.” He strokes his fingers lightly up and down my spine and damned if my traitorous body doesn’t respond to his touch even while my mind struggles with what to say and how to say it. “Talk to me.”

When I still don’t respond, he gets onto the bed, too. Only he slides himself around me, so that we’re both sitting on the edge of the bed, with me between his legs as he wraps his arms around me and presses warm, soft kisses to my bare shoulders. And he waits, in silence for me to figure out what I want to say and how I want to say it.

I’m trying to be careful, trying to pick the right words. But it’s too much. The question bursts out of me without my permission. “When were you going to tell me?”

To Ethan’s credit, he doesn’t ask what I’m talking about. He doesn’t prevaricate, doesn’t try to talk around the subject that’s filling the room up more completely than a two-ton elephant ever could.

Instead, he lowers his head to my shoulder and—for long seconds—just breathes. Then he says, “When there was something to tell. I knew it would upset you and I didn’t want to bother you until I had a clear-cut idea of how things were going to go.”

“You didn’t want to upset me, huh? How’s that working out for you?”

“About as well as the rest of my plans that involve you.”

“You’re meeting with one of the most dangerous men in Las Vegas, in the country, and you weren’t going to tell me. What if something happened to you?”

“In my defense, I didn’t know until five minutes ago that I was going to meet with him.”

“Don’t bullshit me, Ethan.” I shove him off me and stand up so that I can face him. So that I can see the dark, haunted blue of his eyes in the early morning light streaming in through the curtains we left partially open so we could see the bright Vegas lights against the night sky.

But he isn’t looking at my face. Instead, his eyes are raking over my body and I realize for the first time that I’m standing here stark naked in front of him. Which is no big deal—he’s my husband, after all, and has seen me naked hundreds of times in the last few months. Except, I can feel myself responding to the heat in his eyes, feel my nipples growing hard and my sex growing wet at the desire for me he doesn’t even try to hide.

This isn’t the time, though, and no matter how much my body responds to him, my mind isn’t the least bit interested in making love. So I grab his shirt off the chair where he dropped it last night and pull it on. There are no buttons left on it—I’ve been as rough on his shirts this week as he’s been on my underwear—but I pull it closed anyway, then cross my arms over my chest in an effort to keep it from falling open.

“Don’t,” he tells me, all but flying off the bed to stop in front of me. “Don’t hide yourself from me. Please.”

His hands go to my shoulders and he pushes at the shirt, not giving up until I drop my arms and it falls into a puddle at my feet.