She rolled away, curled into a fetal position. Tremors still shook her body. “Don’t touch me.”
Brad’s stomach balled into a knot. There was more to that hoarse whisper than simple directive. Loathing spread over her words. She shuddered again, and he choked down the sudden, violent need to vomit. In his driving need to possess her, he’d taken things too far. Turned what was intended to be pleasurable punishment into borderline abuse. Worse, he’d betrayed her trust.
He bit down on the inside of his cheek to stop the bitter rise of bile and reached a hand out to her shoulder. He had to make this right somehow. But when his fingers grazed her skin, she twisted out of reach. Another shiver gripped her.
Fuck. “Cassie…”
“Don’t,” she whispered. “Just leave me alone.”
Chapter Twenty-three
Cassie huddled into the rumpled sheets, too exhausted to pull them over her body. Flashes of searing heat and spells of icy chills flowed over her skin. She couldn’t stop the resulting trembling no matter how she tried.
And she couldn’t say another word to Brad without the tears that scalded her eyes spilling over. Some time earlier she’d began to understand he was fighting something within himself. That punishment had slipped away and twisted into something else not entirely unpleasant. But…
The but lodged in her throat and made it impossible to fight her tears. One salty droplet rolled down her cheek. She couldn’t say she was angry—she was too numb to feel much of anything. Still, she needed time to herself, to pull her fragmented thoughts into place before she could consider discussing anything with him.
He’d used her body against her, for reasons she couldn’t comprehend, and she needed to come to terms with that before she could decide whether or not she wanted to let him make it right.
Behind her, the mattress creaked as he rose from the bed. She listened to the rustling as he slid into his trousers and stoked the fire. His usual movements seemed off, delayed and uncertain. A traitorous part of her brain hated the fact her distance affected him. He liked to talk things out, to reach common ground, and move forward. But damn it, she had every right to be furious. Every right to ask him to leave and never come back.
Besides, she refused to cry in front of him. She didn’t want to hear his lecture on how she couldn’t handle his desires. Right now, if he forced her to decide whether this was what she wanted or not, she’d let him walk out the door without argument.
She needed time.
The rustling stopped. Heavy silence enveloped the room. “Cassie?” he quietly called from the foot of the bed.
When she refused to answer, his sigh rose over the crackling fire. The door opened, clicked closed. His footsteps disappeared down the hall.
Cassie let out the strained breath she’d been holding and closed her eyes as another tear slipped free.
…
Brad wandered aimlessly through Cassie’s house, trying to stop the racket in his head. He deserved her condemnation. But her distance bothered him on a level he couldn’t comprehend. It pained him. No woman to ever cross his path had scraped their nails over anything more than his surface. Cassie, however, dug them in and left scars behind.
Why? Because she’d cooked him breakfast and treated him to a simple consideration? Because she gave him mind-boggling orgasms? Or because he sensed, on some level, she needed him, and in some dark corner of his subconscious he wanted to be needed?
He flipped on the light in the kitchen, pulled a glass out of the cabinet, and went to the fridge for orange juice. When he opened the door, however, his misery compounded. Staring him in the face was yet more evidence of the tender nature he’d misused. Two plates of spaghetti waited for the microwave. Neatly dished, covered with plastic, and stacked side by side.
Fucking brilliant, asshole.
He shut the fridge and glanced around, more than a little lost in the house he’d become so familiar with. It was time to confront what had driven him tonight. Time to refuse to accept her distance and spill his guts. Tell her what Miles and Randall said, tell her it bothered the shit out of him to have to walk away tomorrow.
He didn’t want to go.
No matter how he tried to prep himself with reminders of all the good things that waited in New York, the bottom line was, Brad wasn’t ready to leave Colorado. And yet, his decisions had been ripped from his hands. He didn’t have a choice, and he didn’t know how to tell her he wanted more time, without making promises he couldn’t keep. Instead, he’d behaved like a selfish bastard and tried to escape the unsettling pain behind his ribs by convincing himself he could leave if he knew she’d remember him. Now, she wouldn’t forget, but the memory would be a far cry from the one he’d intended.