Page 39 of Tempt

I nod slowly. “Sure.” I squeeze her hip, then step back, needing a bit of space. “It started in high school. It filled a hole. No, a lot of holes, not just one. My life was pretty empty. I didn’t have a girlfriend until I went to university, and God knows why Regan stayed with me.”

Something flashes across Hazel’s face, and she glances away.

Nervous guilt lances through me, but it doesn’t belong. “What is it?”

“I didn’t understand why she stayed with you either,” she mutters. Then she looks back at me, from beneath her lashes, dark and sooty. A confessional kind of look. “I never understood her attraction to you.”

Her lips twist, and the nervous feeling flutters away. Turns filthy instead.

“Never?”

She makes a rueful face. “Nope.”

“Wow.”

“But…” She trails off. Winks. “But deep down, I knew. Because I wanted that guy, too. Broken, off-limits Sam. Dangerously attractive to us all.”

Fuck. “That’s not who I am now.”

“I know.” She rubs my arm, and I cover her hand with mine. “I don’twantthat guy. I just—now—can admit that I was drawn to him against my better judgement. And I’m drawn toyouwith all of my heart.”

“I’m glad.” I stroke her cheek. “Can I confess something that doesn’t put me in the best of lights?”

“Always.”

“I never really trusted that relationship. Or any other, for a long time. There are a lot of labels I’ve learned since then to explain what I’d gotten wrapped up in. Grandiosity is the best one, because it captures the worst of it. The vanity. The rush of success. Victory. But it’s a lie, because nothing ever stuck. No high was big enough. And the crashes got worse, so the next bet had to be bigger. It was…intense.”

“I’m sorry,” she says softly, and I shake my head.

“No. Thank you, but no. I did it to myself. And then I got into the more complicated shit. Secrets and lies, trading on information I learned in card games. I could see the crash coming, and I didn’t care.” I exhaled hard.

She moves in front of me and wraps her arms around my waist.

A hug. No words, no apologies that aren’t hers to give, or mine to ever ask for. Just a warm, sweet embrace.

I kiss her temple and let her give me that.

I wakeup in the middle of the night and realize Hazel’s beside me, wide awake. I mumble her name as I reach for her. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Her voice is light, and when she turns her head in my direction, I can make out the gentle curve of a smile. “Sometimes I can’t sleep, that’s all. I was thinking.”

“About what?”

“Stories.” She curls into my side. “But you should go back to sleep.”

“I can’t do that now. I want to know about the story.”

“It’s filthy.”

“More poems inspired by Sam Preston?”

She laughs and shifts closer. “We should bottle and sell your ego. It’s quite the thing.”

I brush my lips against her neck. “Not lately.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“I don’t want to fool you about anything,” I whisper. She twists in my arms. I kiss her, hard, and she makes a sound that I like, so I do it again.

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