Sitting on the edge of the made bed, I tap my fingers together in my lap. As she comes to sit beside me, she pushes a glass, heart-shaped frame into my hands.
Inside is a lightly crinkled photo of Preston and me at one of the Primrose Realty awards banquets a couple years ago. He’s in a gray suit, gripping my hips tight as I sit diagonally on his lap, one of my arms around his neck to keep from falling to the floor.
I remember having to do that because he wouldn’t let me have my own seat, and he was constantly moving around as if his goal was to see me slide off and humiliate myself.
My knuckles blanch as my hold on the frame tightens, disgust welling up inside of me like a funnel cloud.
“Preston and I just… didn’t work out.” I hand the picture back, and she frowns at it as if trying to see past the snapshot. “We had different ideas of what a relationship should look like, and they weren’t compatible.”
Nausea presses along the lining of my stomach, the lie barely even registering on my tongue as I say it. I’ve repeated the mantra to myself so many times at this point that it’s almost believable.
“Couples sometimes grow apart. But he was good for you, wasn’t he? Kept some of your… impulsive behavior at bay.” I bite back a retort about how he only amplified them, and she shakes her head. “Plus, your father sure does love him. It would’ve been so good if you’d married into an oil family.”
The fractures in my heart seem to deepen, threatening to break the organ up entirely. “Good for who?”
For a moment, she doesn’t say anything. Leaning forward, she places the frame on the bed, then reaches over and wraps her hands around mine. I don’t even realize how tight my fingers are tangled until she threads hers through them.
“I know you can’t see it now, but everything we’ve ever done has been in your best interest. If we seem reluctant to let you go with this… Wolfe boy, it’s only because we know how dangerous he is. You know what he did to your father.”
Yes, but no one knows why. My knowledge of the man is limited, and yet he doesn’t seem to be the sort of person who leaves any loose ends, so the fact that he allowed Daddy to live and also got caught seems suspicious.
Like he’s been dragging it out all this time. Causing Daddy to live in a constant state of paranoia, afraid of when he’d come back.
Or maybe there’s a greater force at work here. Maybe none of us know what really happened at all that night.
Meeting her gaze, I lift a shoulder. “Preston’s not any less dangerous. Jonas is just more vocal about it.”
“If something happened…” Pausing, Mama swallows. “If he hurt you—”
“Mama, I’m fine. Honestly, you’re worrying for no reason.” Ripping my hands from hers, I gesture manically at myself, forcing a tight smile. Hoping it looks less fake than it feels, because I don’t want to talk about what she’s trying to dredge up.
Don’t want to think about it.
Dwelling brings the nightmares, and the nightmares bring the urges. In the last few weeks, I’ve been controlling them a bit better, and I don’t want to backpedal now.
Though even as I brush her words off, the memories resurface, scraping against my brain like the sharp bristles of a hairbrush. My stomach gurgles, cramping around emptiness, and I’m once again glad that I didn’t eat during brunch because it would be making a reappearance now.
“Okay,” Mama concedes, sitting back on the bed. “If you say so, dear.”
Jonas is quiet on the drive home, which makes me feel about two feet tall. I’m not even sure how to drum up a conversation, considering the last moment we had together before leaving the house involved him being knuckle-deep in my pussy.
Getting me off while Preston glared.
If I’d been thinking clearly, I wouldn’t have let him do it at all.
Probably.
I think.
In truth, my body seems to like having Jonas Wolfe’s hands on it, and if he’d told me to get up on the table and spread my legs so he could fuck me in front of my ex, I don’t think it would’ve taken much convincing.
The sheer rage in Preston’s eyes would’ve been worth it.
Still, I can’t deny the fact that Jonas is the first man I’ve let touch me since before I went to Vermont.
The first one whose fingers on my skin don’t fill me with a profound sense of horror, spurred on by memories.
His comment about us not being strangers resurfaces in my mind, and I glance over at him as he pulls in front of the beach house, studying his stoic profile. The muscles in his jaw seem tight, and as his tongue presses into the bottom of his cheek, warmth floods my core, crawling up my stomach and spreading over my neck.
Slowly, deliberately, his eyes swing to mine.
My breathing stalls, and I feel like a star on the verge of collapse.
“Stop looking at me like that.”
The rough, gravelly tone of his voice cinches my chest tight. My heart ricochets around my rib cage, excitement thrumming under my fingertips.
“Or what?” My tongue peeks out of my mouth, wetting my bottom lip.
Jonas sits forward, balancing his elbow on the console. He pinches my chin between his thumb and forefinger, violet flashing in his gaze as it grows heavy.
Heady.
Hungry.
Moisture pools between my thighs, leaving me sticky where they meet under my dress. I shift, and he tracks the movement, scraping over the seam of my mouth.
“Or,” he murmurs. “I might be tempted to finish what we started earlier.”
Desire slinks through my nerves, a thick sludge I’m starting to drown in. Maybe it’s odd to go from what happened with Preston and his friends to this—a quiet sort of desperation for my fake fiancé—but at the moment, I can’t find it in me to care.
All I know is that I want more.
“What if I want you to?” I challenge, capturing the tip of his digit with my lips as he swipes in the opposite direction, smearing my nude gloss.
Liquid heat flares in his irises, and he looks down at my mouth. Pushes more of his thumb inside, pressing the flat of it against my tongue.
“I’m very different without an audience,” he says. “You’d take a lot more than just a couple of my fingers, love.”
Reflexively, my thighs clench together.
One side of his mouth lifts. “You like the sound of that?”
I nod.
Just once. Just barely.
But it shifts something between us. Knocks a tectonic plate out of place, sending hot arousal rippling through the air.
“Tell me something, first.”
Pulling back, I let him remove himself from my mouth. “Okay.”
“What’s the deal with you and Preston Covington?”
The blood in my veins turns to poison, and I seize up at the question, sitting back in my seat. “What do you mean? He’s my ex-boyfriend.”
Jonas drops his hand. “Right. And yet the animosity he demonstrated today indicates there’s something you’re not telling me.”
I stare out the windshield of the Range Rover, my eyes fixed on the beach behind the house but unfocused. Blue and white swim in my vision, trying to blot out my thoughts.
Hooking my pinkie in the hem of my dress, I shrug. “I don’t know what to tell you. That’s just how he is. Borderline psychotic and spoiled.”