Losing Control

‘Are you sure you didn’t start with him three months ago? Start sowing those seeds of doubt yourself?’

I stare resolutely up into his face, refusing to let him catch a glimpse of what he’s doing to me.

‘I don’t like what you’re insinuating, Lexi.’

My stance softens at the pet name and I feel my temper soar, angry at my body’s betrayal. ‘Quit with calling me Lexi. It’s Alexa.’

‘No... To me, you’re Lexi.’

I inhale, to fend off the dizzying dance his insistence creates, but instead his familiar scent invades me, cocoons me.

When will I learn my lesson? Don’t get too close. Don’t breathe him in. And, above all, don’t fucking touch him!

I try to pull out of his grasp, but he has me held fast. ‘That was a long time ago,’ I say.

‘Was it?’ he murmurs.

Too close. Far too close. His free hand snakes around me, curving my frustratingly pliant body into his.

‘Because right now I want you every bit as much as I wanted you then.’

‘Cain...’ It’s a whisper, and my body trembles with it. The pent-up desire, the continued fight. My good sense battling my neglected libido.

He’s the only man to have made me feel this way, and I have this irrational fear that he’s the only man who ever will. It doesn’t matter what we’ve been through, what he put me through.

I shake my head, try to kill the thought dead, and I feel the splash of something on my ankle. It forces me to focus on the coffee cup still in my unsteady hand, and I stare at it rather than him.

‘How about some honesty?’

His voice is gruff and my eyes snap to his, surprise making me forget that there’s a reason I don’t want to look up at him this close.

‘Shall I start?’

My tongue is tied, caged by an overwhelming urge to pull him down and form a tryst with his.

‘What do you say?’

I nod. It’s all I can manage when my lower body is pressed against his. And I know it’s not his hand that’s holding me there. I know it’s my own treacherous need to feel his desire straining between us. To have that heady reassurance that this is no lie. He wants me. Regardless of everything else, he wants me as I want him.

His gaze darkens as it falls to my lips and I realise I’ve wet them on impulse. I can feel their sheen in the cool air-conditioned room, feel how they’re slightly parted and demanding what I won’t dare to.

‘This morning is the first time I’ve spoken to Ethan,’ he says.

I go to respond but he stops me.

‘Let me finish.’

I oblige and his hold around my fingers relaxes, no longer gripping as he starts to caress them, the gentle touch as hypnotic as his gaze.

‘I haven’t spoken to Ethan in over seven years.’ His voice is soft, earnest. ‘Yes, when I returned last week he soon learned of it, and he reached out to me. What you just overheard was me returning his call.’

I want to say I don’t believe him. I want to throw his words back in his face. And he must know it, because his fingers over mine still and his jaw flexes.

‘Lexi...’

He sounds pained now, and his eyes, staring down into mine, are just as tortured.

‘I am not the enemy. I’m here to help you. Regardless of the past.’