Pieces of Us (Confessions of the Heart 3)

“So wet,” he groaned, and I was trying to get closer, welcoming the intrusion when he pressed two big fingers inside my body, and I had the craziest thought that I wished it was his cock that was pushing inside of me instead.

Good judgment demolished.

He drove his fingers deeper, the man groaning as he devoured my mouth.

Sparks of pleasure lit behind my eyes, and my hands were clutching. Tugging. Fingers digging in. Trying to find a place. To remember the way we’d been before our treasons had been committed.

I wanted to go there. To run in our meadow. To fly in that blue, vast sky. To trust. To tumble through the atmosphere and know he’d be there to catch me when I reached the end.

And I was already there. Standing in the shadow of a blue moon. Shooting with the stars.

Flying.

Streaks of pleasure. Jolts of ecstasy.

I cried into his mouth, and he swallowed the sound down, as if he were feeding off my bliss.

“Mom?” Dillon’s voice broke through the insanity, coming from the other side of the door.

I froze.

Maxon jerked back a fraction, lust raging in his eyes.

Jagged breaths spiked between us, our bodies vibrating, our pulses racing in the distance.

Crashing together where our senses were just out of reach.

As hard as reality crashed over me at what I’d just done—what I’d been about to do—and a tiny sound of horror bled from my mouth.

I pushed at his chest, and reluctantly, Maxon settled me onto my feet.

Stealing glances at me, he helped me to resituate my dress considering I couldn’t seem to get my hands to cooperate.

Oh God.

What did I do?

My body felt achy and needy, sated and still throbbing with the kind of want I didn’t have the luxury of feeling.

Maxon’s shoulders heaved with barely contained aggression. Like he was two seconds from coming back for me.

“I need to go inside.” The words clanged with regret. Ricocheted with my stupidity.

“Izzy.” He reached for me.

I whirled back around. “Please . . . Maxon . . . don’t. That . . .”

Remorse shook through my spirit, and I looked at the spot where he’d just had me pinned, so easily, as if I hadn’t learned a single lesson at all. I warily shifted my attention back to him, voice a rasp of fear. “That was a mistake. That cannot happen again.”

I wouldn’t survive.

“Mom? Where are you?” Dillon called again, and I tried to force back the overwhelming emotion.

Frantically, I straightened my hair, but I was pretty sure there wasn’t a thing I could do to straighten out my heart.

Stupid, stupid heart.

I started for the door, praying I could make it there without fallin’ apart.

I should’ve known better. I knew exactly what coming back here was gonna do to me. Make me that same naïve girl who just wanted to fall into the hands of the boy that she loved.

The boy who’d become a man.

That man who edged up behind me. A dark shadow. A wraith. “I might have made a ton of mistakes in my life, Izzy. But you and me? We’ve never been one of them. And I promise you, I’m going to be here to do right by my son. Do right by you.”

My head dropped, and I stared at the ground, inhaling a breath that was purely man.

Sex and desire and dominion.

I tore myself from it and rushed inside, not stopping to look back.

Terrified of what I would see on his face.

Nineteen

Izzy

“What did I do?” I groaned, leaning on my elbows and burying my face in my hands.

Faith reached over the bistro table where she’d met me for lunch and pried my hands away, trying to talk me down from the ledge where I was teetering.

She’d come running the second I’d sent out a distress call.

I hadn’t gotten a lick of sleep last night, body twisted up in the remnants of pleasure that streaked and clutched and throbbed, teasing my sanity, while my mind had raced with the implications of what I’d done.

She angled herself closer to force me to look at her. “You let yourself feel. There isn’t a thing wrong with that.”

Oh, I’d felt plenty, all right.

“Are you crazy? There is a ton wrong with this. I invited the man over for dinner to meet his son, not for a quickie out on the porch.”

The hint of a smile played around her mouth. “Sounds to me like you were the only one who got the quickie in.”

I pouted at her, hating the picture she’d evoked, the man hard and needy and left wanting, while I’d been tucking tail and fleeing. “That was his fault.”

Her brows lifted in speculation.

I released a heavy sigh. “Fine. It was both our faults. But if he hadn’t gone and stirred up all those memories . . . made me hurt for him . . . it never would have happened.”