As I looked around the expensive, professional kitchen, opening any of the cabinets to find tea suddenly felt like an invasion into the chef’s personal domain. Instead, I resorted to looking in one of the two huge refrigerators for a glass of milk. I’d barely tugged it open when the door was slammed shut from behind me.
“What the hell are you doing?” a deep voice demanded.
I gasped, twisting to stare up into Dawson’s face. Dark. Upset. Angry.
“Jesus,” I replied. “Getting a drink. Don’t act like I’m stealing the Crown Jewels or anything.” I leaned my back against the cool metal. A chill went through me, tightening my nipples, and making me suddenly aware of how little I had on.
“You’re running around the house…in…God.” He looked down, saw my taut breasts, groaned, and looked away. His hands went to either side of me, caging me much as he had two nights ago in his room. The same overwhelming feeling of longing welled through me.
Just like that night, he was bare-chested. It made me think of the gun he’d had then, and when I glanced down, I saw the dark metal shoved in the waistband of his sweats, but it was the other bulge thrusting against the material that caught my eye and held it.
I swallowed hard.
By the time my look made it back up to his face, it had darkened even more. Anger and lust. God, it really was lust. Dawson Langley was lusting after me. That thought was enough to end with me in a powdery pile. A byproduct of a burn that had gone too long. A leftover residual of long chains of chemicals that fueled desire and attraction.
I wanted to demand he tell me why he felt the need to carry a gun. I wanted to demand he tell me why he hadn’t defended Jada. I wanted to demand he reassure me he wasn’t messed up with drugs like Silas had insisted, because today’s events had left me wondering if he’d been right. But over and above all of that, I simply wanted to demand he kiss me.
“Go to bed, Violet,” he said. It was a plea again. Tortured but still commanding.
“I’m not sixteen, Dawson. I don’t need anyone telling me it’s bedtime.” I lifted my chin, glaring at him.
“I swear to God, you make me want to?” He stopped himself.
“Make you want to what? Just finish it.”
His eyes strolled down my face to my lips, and another groan escaped him.
“Strangle you,” he said. But we both knew it wasn’t what he’d been about to say.
“Coward,” I taunted. It had to be him. He had to kiss me first. If I kissed him, I’d only end up feeling like the teenage girl I’d once been, tagging after him, begging for attention.
His hand slid from the refrigerator door to my face, where his calloused finger ran along my skin. Palms rough from the work he did on the boats. The raised skin of the scar that traveled from his knuckle down onto his palm from when he’d saved me from a sinking car was equally coarse. He moved to my neck before gliding along my collarbone. Anticipation and need coursed through me.
Our eyes bored holes into each other. My pale ones awash in the warmth of his brown ones. Our hearts pounded furiously. I could feel the force of his even though his body wasn’t touching mine. The thunder of it thrummed through me as if it were my own.
His hand barely grazed the tip of my breast. It was so light it could almost not have happened, but my body felt it, sending signals directly from my breast all the way down to my core. One more touch and I would explode. Cesium exposed to water. An exothermic reaction ready to ignite until there was nothing left of me.
Then, he was moving away, pulling himself back from the edge, crossing his arms over his bare chest. I wanted to scream. I wanted to throw a tantrum so large I would be exactly the child he insisted on treating me as even after all these years. Even after I’d done a whole host of things in the time we’d been apart so this moment, this very second with him, would prove to him I was the exact opposite of the child he thought I was.
Six months ago, starting my relationship with Silas, I’d told myself I’d finally put Dawson behind me. That I no longer ached so badly for him it literally tore my soul away from my body. But standing in the kitchen with him this close to me, I knew it was all a lie.
A lie I’d told myself to survive.
I wasn’t sure I’d survive it this time. I wanted him so much it physically hurt.
Maybe it was better he hadn’t kissed me.
Because, as Jada had said about her and Dax, I wasn’t sure I could have stopped with a simple kiss. And what would become of me then? What would it do to our family? To Jersey and Truck and the makeshift people we’d assembled in our lives?
In a couple of days, Dawson would be flying across the Atlantic at speeds no one had ever seen before. When it was done, he’d move on to the next big adventure. The next big race. I’d be left in New London. We were worlds that would never fully collide.
I closed my eyes, willing myself to move, to walk away, and was surprised when my body obeyed. Surprised when I heard his guttural call of my name as I left, the timbre of it deep and painful as if I’d stabbed him in the stomach when it was really the other way around.
Had always been.
Would always be.
The boy I couldn’t have had turned into a man who was even more off-limits.
