I had to stop myself from kicking the chair, and only because I was concerned that I’d break a toe with as hard as I wanted to kick it. “Donovan Kincaid doesn’t know what to do with a kid. This is you trying to keep him from me, like you always do.” This conversation reaffirmed my decision to get a second apartment in New York City—so that I could visit more often and have more access to Aaron.

“I’m not keeping him from anyone. You are delusional.”

“And you’re ice. Cold and bitter and mean. Exactly the qualities that drove me to leave you.” Maybe I was going there after all.

“You didn’t leave me because I was cold and bitter. You left because I cheated on you.” She’d destroyed my heart with her betrayal and she almost sounded like she was gloating.

To hell with her.

“You were ice cold and bitter before that. It simply took the act of you cheating on me to recognize that I couldn’t…” I paused and inhaled deeply. I didn’t need to relive this. I didn’t want to remember how deeply I’d once believed in her. In us.

“That you couldn’t save me?” she finished for me. “Couldn’t make me whole again? Is that what you were going to say?” She was callous and cruel as she pointed out how naïve I had been to think that I could love her better.

Yes, Ellen, we are in agreement there.

I’d been stupid in those romantic notions. I was wiser now. And I didn’t see any point in returning to naivety, regardless of the pull my heart occasionally gave.

“I’m picking Aaron up from school when he’s done with the day,” I said firmly, refusing to dwell on the past any longer. “I’ll make sure he reviews his Latin before I drop him off at home. And, by God, Ellen, you better have me approved to retrieve him or I’ll get my solicitor involved.” Then, before she could refute me, I said good night and clicked off the phone.

What a goddamned shrew.

I was energized with rage, my heart racing with the power of it.

But underneath my temper was a dangerous longing. A yearning for a different time. A time when I could afford the innocent enthusiasm for human connection. Before I knew how cruel people could be. Before I understood the downfalls of being vulnerable.

What a rose-colored world it had been—a prettier, more tolerable world—when I’d believed wholeheartedly in commitments and forever. When lust and love were two sides of the same coin. Sex, an expression of feelings rather than just a pleasurable release.

I longed to be free of the reality that I wore like chains around my neck.

And then! Then I could ask a girl back to my hotel room without caring about age differences or impropriety or what state my suite had been left in. I could get lost in the breathlessness of her kiss, not worrying about anyone’s feelings or what might inevitably happen if I put my trust in her embrace. I could imagine it so vividly, what it would be like to be that kind of a man again, what it would be like to kiss a girl like Audrey, undress her, teach her. Make love to her.

My trousers were bulging again with the fantasy. I was throbbing and thick. I couldn’t make it to the shower if I tried.

I shoved down my trousers and pulled out my cock, fisting it with my right hand as I sat down on the chair. With my eyes closed, I remembered vividly the weight of Audrey on my lap, remembered the pleasurable burn of her rubbing up and down along the imprisoned length of my hard-on. Remembered the press of her breasts against my chest, her nipples so taut they spiked through the layers of clothing between us. Remembered her mouth as it gave in to my wicked desire, my tongue caressing and schooling her at once. My lips memorizing her and debauching her.

My palm stroked angrily across the inflamed skin of my cock, faster and faster, punishing myself even as the pleasure built and built and built, like static on a balloon when rubbed against a headful of hair. Like stockinged feet, trudged across the carpet. Like too many plugs jammed into a wall socket, my orgasm surged through me with electrical shock. Cum spilled out over my fist as I tugged and tugged, past the point of comfort, until everything inside me had fallen in thick ropes across my bare stomach, dirty and filthy and obscene.

I sat for several minutes, staring at the mess I’d made, my hands shaking from the release as, little by little, the delirious flash of bliss dissolved into cold, hard reality.

I was alone. I would always be alone.

I’d learned the hard way that alone was the most sensible way to live.

Tags: Carly Phillips, Willow Winters, J.A. Huss Billionaire Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net