My lip quivers. “And you do now?”
His brows furrow. “Do you not see what I’ve built for myself? The name? The movies? The deals? I’m exactly where I want to be in this business. It’s everything outside my career that I want to change. So, what do you mean?”
“The way I see it,” I say slowly, “the only thing you have that truly matters is a marriage certificate to a woman you don’t even love. I’d like to think the Corbin I knew back then wouldn’t have sacrificed that much for an image he can’t even change if he wanted to.”
This time, he doesn’t answer.
My fingertips dig into his cotton shirt, bunching it as I clench a fistful in my hands. “I have been in failed relationship after failed relationship because I’ve never been able to get over you. I’ve had to see pictures of you on magazines in stores holding your wife’s hand and kissing her and hugging her while I buy food for one because guys realize I’m not worth the complication. I’ve let myself down for loving you and the worst part is…”
Don’t say it.
“I can’t seem to stop.” I choke out the last word through the tears that trail down my cheek.
His throat bobs as he brushes them away, his own eyes looking nothing like the bright silver the world is used to admiring. The dark tones are pits of agony that I know are reflections of my own.
Then … it happens.
The years of separation.
Of anger.
Of heartache.
Everything that’s left me buried in work just so I don’t have to think about the boy who left me behind comes crashing down.
The lips on mine are familiar yet foreign, soft but hard, searching and needing. He leans into me until our bodies are pressed together and a satisfying weight settles on top of me as his mouth and teeth and tongue bring me back to a time when we fumbled and laughed and worked our way through every kiss. He wasn’t a virgin when we met and knowing that back then killed me a little. Sabrina Christy was a name I’d have engraved in my head when he admitted she was his first—some old classmate at the last school he was in. I envied her ability to have something I couldn’t while he took the very same thing from me when I offered it.
And now his experience is obvious. Corbin Callum knows what he’s doing. My bet is he’s had plenty of practice since the days of fumbling with bra hooks and cursing at leggings.
I want to hate him for it—for having so much experience when the amount of men I’ve let in my life since him is so minimal. Yet, I can’t find myself to feel anything other than desire and yearning and guilt, all wrapped up into one.
His tongue tastes and twists with mine, and I drink him in every time he angles his head for a deeper kiss. My arms wrap around his neck as my pelvis arches into his until I feel something deliciously hard brush against my inner thigh.
“Fuck,” he curses, moving his lips down my neck and his hands down my body. I’m panting and writhing and wanting and hating myself more and more by the second.
The heat gathering between my thighs becomes so intense that I’m afraid I’ll combust right here on the spot. It outweighs the reason that screams at me to stop before I make a huge mistake. I do what I’ve never done before. I guide his hand down my stomach until he’s cupping me where I need him most.
The groan he awards me with comes with the slightest twitch of hardness that I know is trapped uncomfortably in his jeans. But he doesn’t move to undo the button and zipper like I want him to. Instead, he reaches for the waistband of my leggings and pulls them down until they rest just above my knees.
His eyes flare. “You’re not wearing any panties.”
Slightly embarrassed but too turned on to really care, I just shake my head and dig my fingernails into his arms.
“I’ve got you, Little Bird.”
I’m not sure what he means until his head dips down and his mouth covers the most sensitive part of me. My hips jerk up as he licks and sucks the bundle of nerves before sliding his tongue down the length of my slit and tasting me from bottom to top.
“C-Corbin.” My grip on him has to hurt, maybe even draw blood, but I don’t care. He keeps working me with his mouth until his tongue pierces my opening and moves in and out while his nose brushes my clit in a torturous rhythm.
My legs widen as far as they can with my leggings still wrapped around my knees, giving him more access to sink into me. Shakily, my fingers weave into his hair and pull as I start feeling a familiar tingling in the pit of my stomach as my movements become jerky.
Mentally, I tell myself to stop enjoying it. Internally, I scream to end this moment between us before it goes too far. But my brain and heart want two different things, and I can’t stop the battle inside my body. I’m at war with my morals and have nowhere to go.
I torture myself for staying away.
I torture myself for keeping him close.
I’m trapped between right and wrong.
“That feels so good.” I cover my face with the crook of my arm and moan out his name as he focuses on my clit again while using a finger to get me off quicker.
Stop this, my inner voice demands.
But I ignore her.
My legs tighten around his head as I come, my moans becoming incoherent and breathy. He keeps sucking me until my body goes completely still from the numbness of an intense orgasm I haven’t felt in far too long.
Closing my eyes, I catch my breath and try not to think about the sound of his zipper moving down and the ruffling of denim shifting against perfect skin.
“Please,” he whispers. “I need you.”
When I look at him, his eyes are wide and glazed over with lust and something else. Something I told myself is impossible to see in eyes like his.
Love.
And, for a moment, I wonder if the reason I haven’t been able to let go is because I’m not supposed to. Like maybe this is meant to be something worth fighting for no matter the circumstances. But how far would I have to go?
My head slowly nods as his hands go back to my leggings to peel them off the rest of the way. I help him shed his shirt, then take off mine, until there’s limited clothing separating us. The tented front of his boxer briefs have me itching to reach out and touch him, but he shakes his head like he knows what I want.
I’ve always remembered our first time, and the times after, no matter who I was with. The first man I let into my bed following Corbin had to deal with my breakdown following the sex that left him redressing in record time before making an excuse to leave.
“You’re gorgeous,” he tells me, kissing me while lining himself up at my center. The taste of me on his lips shows how much we’ve changed. No longer does he hesitate but dominates. He knows how to work my body and give me everything I’m too afraid to ask for.
I suck in a breath as he enters me inch by inch, his lips teasing mine as he stretches me out.
My lids flutter closed as he nips my chin, my jaw, and my neck as his hands move to grip my hips. His fingernails dig into my bare skin as his pace picks up.
“Do you remember this?” he asks, licking an area on my neck where he bit. He changes angles that hits me deeper, harder, and faster. “I remember. I couldn’t keep my fucking hands off you then. You’ve always been so beautiful.”
Tears well that I can’t explain. I kiss him as a distraction from the feelings weighing down my chest, holding onto him as his hips drive into me in a way he never used to before.