Maybe more.

I’d never wanted to get to know every inch of a woman’s body as much as I wanted to know Lilly’s. She’d never know, but she’d kept me alive over there. Her silly letters about her favorite TV shows and her social outings…they kept me sane. Other guys, their minds became their worst enemies, filled to the brim with endless danger and death, but I had that piece of normal to hold on to, like a life preserver. It was her letters that kept me out of the dark hole that PTSD could be. Now, in her arms, I had a feeling she could do it again. Heal me. Save my soul.

Or break me completely.

That was a hell of a lot of power to give to someone else. It went against the way I’d lived my life since I was a child. It broke every rule I’d ever set for myself.

And yet…I kept kissing her.

Her nails dug into my biceps, and she pumped her hips harder, arching her back. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear no one had ever touched her like this before. That no other man had taken her since I last kissed her by the pool. But there was no way she was untouched. She had a fiancé waiting in the wings, even if she didn’t want one. A man doesn’t have someone as hot as Lilly by his side and not strive to make her come apart in his bed. It was the perfect way to show her why they should marry.

Preppy Prick would have to be a fool not to use it.

I pinched her nipples with the perfect amount of pressure, twisting slightly, and rolled my hips into her again, rubbing my hard, aching cock against her hot pussy. She screamed into my mouth, tensed, and came. I pulled back, and the look on her face captivated me. It was hot and delicious and pure.

Like she’d never felt this before.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that I might have given her a first, after all. The Preppy Prick and whoever came before him, they were obviously doing something wrong. The look of surprise on her face as she came announced as much. I wanted to get her there again, immediately, just so I could get lost in her.

And that terrifying thought brought me back to reality.

“Shit.” I couldn’t do this. Couldn’t touch her. Couldn’t ruin her. “I’m sorry.”

I pushed off her, breathing heavily, and dragged my hands down my face. She lay on the pink carpet, chest heaving, and her shirt up around her breasts. I could see now that she wore a sheer pink bra—apparently, her love affair with pink had never truly died—with a bow on it. It was like something a schoolgirl would wear, and I’d just made her come so fast it had given me whiplash.

And I wanted to do it again.

She blinked at me, looking as if she still hadn’t come down from her orgasm. “Oh. Oh.”

She struggled to her feet, and it took all my control not to help her.

If I touched her again…

Yeah, we all knew what would happen.

“I can move out.” I dropped my hands to my sides, fisting them. “I should move out.”

“No. Please, don’t.” She frowned, stepping back and hugging herself. “That whole thing…that was on me. It won’t happen again.”

I should have gone. But the fact that I’d messed up even more made me want to stay. To prove I could do this. Be the man I was supposed to be, for her, without fucking it up.

In a way, I had to prove it to myself, too.

So I wasn’t going anywhere.

“You’re damn right it won’t happen again,” I said quietly, shame churning in my stomach. The shame at my behavior, and the fact that I hadn’t even lasted one damn night before messing up, made me short with her. “This isn’t happening. I’m not repeating history. You and me? We don’t work. We both know it.”

She frowned. “Jackson—”

“No,” I said a little too loudly, rage at myself and my lack of discipline when it came to her blinding me and pumping through my veins, echoing in my head. But I couldn’t take it out on her. She didn’t deserve it. “I’m not doing this to you again. I came here to make amends, not fuck everything up. Just…go.” I locked eyes with her. “Please.”

She swallowed hard, nodded, and walked out, closing the bedroom door behind her with a soft click. I sagged against the wall. I did it. I touched her, and I screwed everything up. And even worse?

I didn’t even regret it.

It shouldn’t have happened. She was all but promised to another man. She might not want to admit it, but I knew Walt well enough to know that he’d get his way in the end. Lilly would marry Derek, whether she wanted it or not. But damn it all to hell, for that short time I held her in my arms, kissing her, I felt as though I belonged somewhere. Ever since I’d been reassigned to a desk job in the army, I’d been lost.

In her arms, I found myself again.

It had been heaven.

My throbbing cock demanded reprieve, so I stalked into the bathroom, closed the door behind me, and turned the shower on. The second I was naked under the hot stream of water, I closed my fist over my cock, squeezing and pulling. Closing out the real world, I rested my forearm on the tile wall and pretended it was Lilly touching me. Pretended it was her fingers running over my hardness, not my own.

I replayed the way her hard nipples had felt under my thumbs, and the way her hot, wet pussy had called to me. Groaning, I tugged harder, my balls tightening to my body, and I let out a soft curse as I came. And when I did, nothing stopped me from groaning out, “Lilly.”

Afterward, I let the water wash over me. I had no idea how long I stood there, staring at the pink-tiled wall, but when I got out and wrapped a pink towel around my waist, I knew one thing. I wasn’t clean.

And I might never be again.

Chapter 8

Lilly

The next evening, I walked out of the corporate Hastings building and shoved my dark shades into place with a less-than-steady hand. It wasn’t even sunny out, but I had to do something to hide the dark circles under my eyes. Sleep had been impossible last night after…well, after. And today all I could think about was Jackson, and that…kiss. Despite being fully dressed, with a few touches and the press of his hips, Jackson managed to give me the best—and apparently first—orgasm in my life.

I thought I knew what it felt like to come. Thought I knew what an orgasm was. Turned out, all I’d felt before was the pleasure. The buildup.

The real thing was so much more.

If I learned nothing else last night, I could take away one thing from that moment when he told me to leave. He might not want to want me, but he did. And that meant I stood a chance, a real chance, at getting through to him. Of making him mine.

I knew Jackson wasn’t the type to commit, or do long-term, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t give in to the passion that had been burning between us for seven years. That we couldn’t finish what we’d started by that pool. I wanted him. He wanted me.

It should have been so easy.

But since he was Jackson, and I was me, it wasn’t.

I felt no shame over my desire for Jackson. No agony or pain over the fact that I shouldn’t want him, but did. Probably because I never really thought of him as my stepbrother. Like, ever. If anything, the desire I felt was empowering. Freeing. Freaking awesome. What happened yesterday showed me that I could do something strictly for me, despite all the reasons I shouldn’t.

And it made me even more determined to find a way out of my pending marriage.