Page 39 of Shadow Lies

Until now he’d managed to focus on prayer and practice. Focus enough to keep sex out of the forefront of his mind, except for a few embarrassing dreams when he’d first arrived.

Sex was certainly up front and center in his mind now. Right there with the realization that Alexis was Brittany’s little sister. Though no longer little.

But that wasn’t the true reason he was fighting the attraction—denying it existed since the first day she set foot in the monastery.

He grabbed her hands in his. “I’m too broken for this. For you.”

“Maybe I can help—”

“No. You can’t fix me. Only I can do that.”

“Let me help you.”

He shook his head. “Your computers won’t solve what’s inside me.”

“I think you’re wrong. We can prove you were innocent. We can save a man’s life. We can expose who’s behind the horrors in Xinxiang to the world and get all those people held there released. That won’t heal you?”

“We can’t do all that.”

“We can try,” she said with wide-eyed sincerity.

Damn her and her hope. It shredded him. Half of him wanted to haul her against him and absorb her light. The other half wanted to take out his frustration on a wall and then run back to the monks to hide.

As she gazed up at him with desire filling her already-irresistible eyes, the first half won.

He grasped her arms and yanked her close. Their bodies pressed together from chest to thighs. It wasn’t enough. He dipped his head and caught her lips with his.

Alexis sucked in a sharp breath and then leaned into the kiss. She wrapped her arms around him.

She held him close and he couldn’t deny how good it felt.

Not just her soft body against his hard one. But the way her embrace enveloped his very soul. Eased his mind. Calmed his spirit.

No amount of meditation had affected him the way this small amount of contact did.

The kiss got hot and heavy fast until it was on its way to become a full blow make-out session. Not a surprise for a man who’d been living as a monk for a year, he supposed. But it was also not fair to Alexis.

He couldn’t be the man she deserved. That thought nagged at him as he hoisted her up onto the table and stepped between her thighs.

That put them face-to-face. Close enough he could feel her quick breaths tickle his skin.

“Lexi.” He didn’t know if he uttered her name to beg her to give him permission or plead with her to tell him to stop.

It didn’t matter what he wanted because it seemed she had an agenda of her own. She leaned closer, running her fingers along the neckline of the course fabric of his tunic.

Her gaze followed her fingers before she raised it to meet his eyes.

“Kane.” She didn’t speak more than his name.

No words were needed to tell him what she wanted. It was clear in her heavily lidded gaze.

Her face went out of focus and she leaned closer to touch her lips to his.

His relief at the feel of her mouth against his was tempered by his doubt.

Doubt that she truly understood there could be no relationship for them. No future. Just this. Raw animal need. A need he shouldn’t give in to but was going to anyway.

His concerns soon fled as her soft, chaste kiss turned hot when she kissed him more deeply.

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