Page 42 of For Her Own Good

I shove my hands into my pockets because there is no peace of mind in this situation. I suspect I will always feel uneasy on some level and wonder if I’m taking advantage of her, speculate about whether we would’ve ever gotten together if Starla had never been my patient. I’d like to think so, but how would I ever know for sure?

Starla’s got this theory about why Padme married Anakin, even though he’s, and I quote, “a whiny-ass, insecure, volatile, abusive man-child.” It’s because Anakin is inadvertently exerting mind control on her. I’m noStar Warsexpert like she is, so I can’t say whether this theory holds water, but what I do know is if something similar is going on here—if I’m using my knowledge of Starla’s psyche to manipulate her—I would feel like the lowest creature that ever walked the earth.

Much as I want her, much as I want to believe I could make her happy and take good care of her, I can’t take just any opportunity to have her. If there’s anything I can do to reassure myself that she is reasonably, rationally, choosing me of her own free will and not because I’m performing some kind of Jedi-psychiatrist mind trick nonsense on her, then I’m going to do it.

Part of that means I can’t have her under the influence of anything when she says…

My heart constricts, squeezes tight, and I lose my breath when I remember her palms on my chest, her nails scratching at my pecs as she looked up at me and confessed that she likes me, as a man, and that she’d like to be kissed. By me.

I shake my head to clear it, but there’s no getting Starla out of my head. It was unfair for me to send her off and put the burden of vulnerability on her again.Be a man, Lowry. You want this woman, and the least you can do is tell her the feeling is mutual. If she wants you back, all she has to do is call and you’ll come running. Hell, she can tell you to go away and you’d still come running, because you’re a bloody fool.

“I…I’m here to tell you that I like you. Very much. Not just as someone to have dinner with, not only as someone to fetch hot cocoa for after I’ve forced you to muddle about on ice skates. I like you, Starla Patrick. As a woman. A woman I would like to date because you are intelligent and beautiful. You are captivating, funny, sexy, and stubborn. I’d like to believe that you feel anywhere near the same way about me, but given how our relationship started, I want to be very careful. Make sure you don’t—that we’re actually—that I’m not…”

Her door swings open, and I nearly take a header into her but catch myself on the doorframe. She might not be sick, but she’s no longer dressed for work or wearing the pretty clothes she usually sports for our dinners. No, she’s got on some socks that go above her knees and tie with ribbons—pink goddamn ribbons, in the name of everything holy—some black ruffled shorts, a Hello Kitty sweatshirt that’s falling off one shoulder, and her hair’s up in what my admins would call a messy bun.

With her pink cheeks and wide eyes, the most hopeful expression on her face, she’s never looked lovelier to me.

“Anakin to my Padme?”

“Aye, that’s the right of it. I’d even been thinking that. Should’ve put it that way in the first place, but sometimes I talk too much, and how could I do that if I used an apt allusion you’d latch onto straight away?”

She nods, her mouth pinched in a way that makes me feel as though she’s trying not to laugh at me. I ought to say something else, but for the life of me, I can’t think of what else to say. So I stand there, like some sort of numpty.

“Lowry?”

Thank God she’s not speechless. “Yes?”

Instead of saying anything else, she takes a couple of steps toward me, closes the gap between us. I try to suck in a breath as she crosses the threshold. She’s knocked the wind out of me, and my whole body is straining, alight, primed, and ready.Touch me please, Starla. I wasn’t prepared last night but I am now and I swear I won’t let you down again.

Her hands come up, and she hesitates oh-so-slightly before she gingerly lays them on my chest again, same as she had before.

Something crackles between us, and I nearly swallow my tongue as she slowly slides her palms up to my shoulders, curls her fingers around my neck, and finally slips them into my hair. It’s enough to make a man short-circuit, and every part of me seems to be on the fritz. Breath coming quick and shallow, heart beating wildly against my ribs, muscles in my stomach and my hands contracting, and hell, I’m blinking too much. I need a damn reset button, perhaps a rewind that would let me try this over again because I must look rather daft.

But Starla seems to either be oblivious or not mind. She comes up on her tiptoes, using her hold on me for balance, and tips her head, studying my face as though she’s never seen me before. Perhaps she never has, not like this. With the confirmation that my interest in her is not platonic, nor is it in the least professional, but is in fact, deep, romantic, sexual, and more abiding than I hope she’ll ever know.

Her lashes flutter as she leans closer and I have to swallow. Speech is out of the question but I could at least breathe well enough to not pass out. When she’s so close our lips nearly brush together, so close that I can feel her breath on my mouth, she says, “I’ve dreamed of this.”

And then she kisses me.

Chapter 15

Starla

At first Ithink I’ve made a terrible mistake. His mouth said one thing, and now his…yeah, still his mouth, is saying something else. Yes and then no.

In all the times I imagined kissing Lowry and how it might be, never did I imagine he’d be so…stiff. Except in the appropriate area, of course. That, I had pictured being long and thick and so hard it was nearly bursting with his desire for me. But the marble-statue thing hadn’t ever appeared in my fantasies, not even during myTwilightphase. Lowry was always warm and passionate, and he’d always touch me. He’s not touching me, nor is he moving at all.

He regrets this already, his attachment to being righteous and honorable and professional overtaking the confession he just made, and the thought has me pulling away from him, parting my lips from his. Yeah, no, this was not how I’d pictured things at all and mortification is starting to twine around me.

His hair is softer than I thought it would be, and the stubble on his face scratchier, but the feel of his shoulders and traps as I skimmed my hands over them were precisely as I thought they’d be. Now I know that for sure. And if I can ever bring myself to rub one out while I think of him after this—the hurt and humiliation will take a while to burn off—then I’ll know how it feels.

I start to stagger back, holding up my hands and shaking my head, issuing apologies for I’m not quite sure what, but this has gone very badly and somehow it’s my fault, probably. But as I’m wiping our kiss off my mouth with the back of my wrist and about to shut the door to my apartment, he’s there.

Covering the distance my dozen stumbling steps put between us with two of his own quick strides, Lowry takes my face in his hands with a sound that can only be called a growl.

“Not on your life. I’ve fucked up enough things with you, and not on your life am I going to be that big of an arse again.”

And then, then—

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