Page 56 of Nauti Siren (Nauti 7)

“Because I don’t want any secrets at all between us any longer,” he stated. “Not secrets like this. ” Flipping his hand toward the screen, he moved to the dresser and pulled his clothes from the chair next to the bed as she watched, then began dressing angrily.

“I don’t want to take your fucking freedom,” he growled at her as he shoved the white-and-gray-striped shirt into the waistband of his jeans and quickly buckled his belt. “I don’t want to control what you think or feel or what you do. ” Glaring at her, he sat down in the chair next to the bed and pulled on dark leather boots. “I just want you. ”

He just wanted her?

“And now you’ve had me,” she said, feeling kind of hollow inside. “Did you change your mind about wanting to control me and my life?”

Had she made a mistake? The one mistake she had sworn she would never make—had she fallen in love with a man unable to resist the urge to completely take her life over?

The look he shot her was one of such scorn that anger immediately flared inside her.

What the hell did he expect her to think?

Stomping to the end of the bed, where he’d laid the clothes he’d collected from her room earlier, Piper pulled on her own jeans, soft cotton tank camisole, socks, and sneakers.

“Maybe I should just return to my room. ” She felt a bit hollow inside now, as though some part of her had just been cruelly ripped from her chest.

He wasn’t saying he loved her. He wasn’t mentioning caring for her. There was no hint of commitment or anything other than the fact that he had been watching her and she had driven him crazy.

“What the hell do you want from me?” she asked as she finished dressing and turned back to him, aching inside with the knowledge that she could be losing what she hadn’t even known she’d so desperately needed.

“I want you to stop being frightened of me, to start with,” he demanded.

“Then don’t pull this crap on me. ” Turning on him fully, her arms propped on her hips, Piper confronted him as she had never confronted her brother. “For God’s sake, Jed, I never knew what the hell you’ve wanted from me. You flirted, you smiled, yet you never asked me out or gave me so much as a hint that you wanted more than a one-night stand. Or is that all you wanted?”

Heated anger was brewing inside her, rising to the surface and threatening to break free of the shield she normally kept surrounding it.

“What do you think I wanted?” Dark emotion filled his expression and his eyes, warning her of the thin ice she might be stepping onto.

She’d never heeded the warnings from Jed, though, so why start now?

Why should she even attempt to make excuses to herself, let alone to him, Dawg, or anyone else? she thought furiously as she watched him hit the remote, turning the television off before throwing the remote to the bed.

“You think I’ve driven myself insane trying to hold back, trying to ensure you have the space you need to deal with your brother and decide what you want with me, just to stop with a fucking one-night stand?” Jed growled.

He moved so fast there was no avoiding him.

His hands were on her shoulders first, jerking her to him before one arm wrapped around her waist to hold her against his hard body while his free hand slid into her hair, clenched, and pulled her head back.

“You make me feel like a fucking caveman,” he rasped. Power, hunger, and something much deeper echoed in his voice and gleamed in his eyes. “Son of a bitch, Piper, you make me feel things I’ve never felt before, and I have no idea how to fucking deal with them. ”

Her eyes widened.

“What do I make you feel, Jed?”

His lips parted, but what he would have said, she didn’t know.

“How very sweet. ”

That voice.

Grating. Harsh.

She knew it. It echoed in her head and slammed through her memories with the force of a sledgehammer.

Jed’s eyes narrowed as he released her, turning as he used one arm to keep her behind him.

It was the nightmare she’d had nightly since the attack in New York. The face she could never remember. The vision of horror and pain she hadn’t been able to escape.

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