Page 144 of Only Mine
“I’m not looking for that,” I say, tone flat.
“Aren’t you?” She presses closer, her body warm under my sweatshirt. “You used to be. Before her.”
My hands find her shoulders, creating distance between us. “Erin?—”
“I’ve heard the stories, Saint.” Her fingers trail down my chest, stopping at the hem of my chef’s jacket. “The chef who worked hard and played harder. The man who never spent two nights with the same woman.”
She flexes her hand, her fingers brushing against my cock.
When she goes under my shirt, palm flat against my clenched stomach, I let her.
“We could be good together,” she murmers, leaning in and tilting her head up until our mouths nearly touch. “No complications. No feelings. Just this.”
For a split second, I fall into the old version of myself, the one who would’ve taken this offer without hesitation and bent her over the counter and fucked away the emptiness while replacing it with fleeting pleasure.
But the image leaves me cold. And flaccid.
“Stop.”
I catch her wrist before she can go lower.
“You don’t mean that,” Erin says with a disbelieving smile.
I drop her wrist, but she doesn’t back away. Instead, she takes my rejection as a challenge, pressing forward until her body aligns with mine. The familiar weight of a woman against me triggers nothing—no heat, no desire, no distraction from the hollow ache in my chest.
“Ivy’s upstairs,” I remind her.
Not that it ever stopped me from taking my time with Wrenley and making her see stars.
“She’s sound asleep. I checked twice.” Erin slides her hands up my chest again, this time with more purpose.
Her lips brush against my jaw, and I feel ... nothing. Noteven a flicker of the old hunger that used to drive me from bed to bed, body to body.
She tilts her head, studying me with a calculating gaze. “Fuck me, Saint.”
I gently pry her off and step to the side, the kitchen feeling too small, too intimate.
Erin follows, undeterred.
“Saint.”
Erin’s voice drops to a silky purr. She plays with the hem of the sweatshirt, then, with calculated ease, she pulls it over her head, revealing her bare breasts, nipples hardening.
“No strings,” she says, reaching for my hand. “No complications. God, I’ve wanted you for so long.”
She guides my palm to her breast, warm and full.
My body should respond. It’s a familiar dance, the late-night encounter, the willing woman, the promise of forgetting everything in a haze of sweat and skin. I’ve choreographed this a hundred times before.
But my hand feels wrong and alien, like I’m watching someone else’s hand attached to someone else’s arm.
Erin reads the hesitation and leans in, pressing her lips against my mouth, arching into my hand and hoping for friction, reaction, anything.
I almost laugh. The irony is that with Wrenley, I never had to try. She was nervous and shy, but when I put my mouth on her, it was like I released a kraken. She couldn’t get enough of me, and I hunted and marked her despite the very real risk that she could rip my heart out of my chest and eat me alive.
With Erin, I wait for that spark, for the heat to simmer into an explosion, for some knee-jerk reaction of who I used to be.
Nothing.
