I lost my life that day. Lost the woman I’d loved since she was merely a girl. Lost the euphoric feeling I had felt only briefly when I saw the results on that plastic little stick. And, lost the belief that true love existed. No such thing.

From then on I’d made sure not to lose myself in the lie that is love ever again. Oh, I believe in lust, hell, I believe in infatuation, but I sure as shit don’t believe in love. Casual sex, good times, and one-night stands were my way of life since packing up my things in garbage bags and cardboard boxes that day. Six weeks after our divorce was final, Rachel married the baby’s father, a finance major she’d been secretly dating for months and months before our wedding.

That’s love? Bullshit. No such thing. Exhibit A just walked in my door and is looking at me right now. Her body is like a beacon to my own. I feel her before I even see her. Proof? Why had I looked before the bell on the door even sounded? I felt her coming. Oh, I’ve felt her coming all right.

“Becky, anyone calls, just take a message.” I say as I hit the front desk with my knuckles as I walk by, knowing without looking that Skye is behind me. I learned rather quickly that my Skye likes me to lead. After she fights with me and tosses around that attitude for a while.

Opening the door to my office, I watch each sway of her ass as she walks past me, her shoulder just barely sweeping my chest. Just that small touch, the teeniest connection has me getting hard.

“Ditch the pants, Skye.”

Her dark eyes flash to mine, and she sucks in a breath. Swallowing before she speaks, I stare at her neck and tell myself I want to taste her there again; I like how she tasted there. I’d tasted her plenty the night I’d fucked her in the garage against my Mercedes. When I’d come inside of her, it was like I was claiming her, even if I was only telling her that she was mine. Fuck. I hadn’t come inside of anyone but Rachel and even that had been rare. Feeling my come inside of Skye was one of the hottest things ever. So hot, I think an encore is in order.

Seeing Skye with her back against the wall, as far from me as she could possibly get, I repeat my command. “Pants, off now.” Fumbling with the string on my waistband, it was like I was in a race to free my dick from its—

“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! I came here to tell you once and for all we’re done.”

“Done?” Pulling my sweats all the way back up, I make sure not to snag a piercing; that fuckin’ sucks. “Done with what exactly?” She’s had my dick in her mouth, been filled with my baby batter, yet Skye blushes when witnessing the tent I’m sporting in my pants.

“Us,” her hands motion wildly between us. “This entire fucked up situation we had going on.”

“Had?”

“Here’s the deal, Jaden. I used you—”

I interrupt her. “You used me?” I laugh.

She nods. “Rhett was becoming too much too fast and it scared the hell outta me. I needed to keep him at a distance—”

I point at myself and ask, “That’s where I come in?”

“That’s where you come in.”

I’m not liking the feeling I’m getting in my chest. “And now?”“Now,” she exhales loudly. “Now, I’m ready to let him in.”

“Sweetheart, I was there you let him in all right, you let me in too, hell, he let me in you.”

She doesn’t even bat an eye, her lips don’t even twitch, and I’d never been more hopeful for a smile that just wasn’t coming. Shadows danced across her face from the light shining through the blinds and a slight breeze blew a few strands of her dark hair across her face. Without thinking, I walked around the desk and went to her.

Pushing the hair aside and tucking it behind her ear, once again, I saw the truth in her expression. She wasn’t playing. This wasn’t her giving me shit just so I could force my hand and she could pretend to not want what she really wanted. Skye was serious, and suddenly, the burning in my chest intensified.

“This makes no sense.”

I say at the same time she says, “It’s done.”

Then I kiss her.

When my lips press against hers, I felt the softness tighten almost instantly and she shoves me away. Hard.

“No more,” she whispers. “No more.”

This time, I kiss her with the hunger I felt, the need to have her again. With my hands framing her face, I held her as she struggled to break our mouths apart. “Goddammit, Skye! Kiss me back!”

Then the tear slid over my thumb and I’d known…it really was over, really done.

“Don’t do this.” Looking down, I see her hands are flat against my chest, pushing me away. Every time we’d come together before, her words might have been telling me to go to hell, but her fingers had always been pulling me closer. I doubt she’d even known she was doing it, but I was well aware.

I step back, and watch as she wraps her arms around herself, closing her body off from mine. I’ve really lost you.

“I love him,” Skye says and the burn in my chest increases. “I don’t know if he’ll take me back or not, but I have to try.”

“You haven’t asked—”

She shakes her head. “I haven’t really talked to him since that night.”

That night. The night I’d wished I’d been Rhett. I’d been the one with her body pressed tightly against mine. The night she’d been so lost with him that she hadn’t even noticed when I left. That’s what I did, you know…I watched as Rhett ran his hands over her body. Like some voyeur, I’d watched as he’d commanded her to look at him, demanded she say his name when she orgasmed. When she did? I left. Her words so faint I almost didn’t hear them with the rain still hitting the windows. They’d hit me hard. There may have been a storm raging outside, but it was nothing compared to the cyclone known as Skye that had me running for cover with my tail between my legs.

“Love isn’t real,” I say out of the blue. “It’s all bullshit.”

“I used to think that too—”

“But?”

She peered out the window between the slats of the blinds as if her words would be out there. “But now I think it was just me. “ She looks at me. “I pretended it wasn’t real because I was scared of being left again.” She sighs. “Love always left me, left me alone and feeling abandoned.”

“It always ends, because the facade is too much work to keep up.”

“You really believe that, Jaden?”

I nod.

“I did, too.”

My pulse picks up as she turns and walks back toward the door.

“What changed your mind?” My voice came out low and the need to clear my throat was strong.

When she so carelessly took hold of the doorknob, like my heart wasn’t about to pound out of my own fucking ribcage, I fought not to go to her and beg her not to leave.

And there was the smile I needed so desperately. Beautiful. Had I ever told her she was beautiful? Yeah, I had, when my dick was buried inside of her, and I’m not sure that counts.

“Someone told me that I was easy to love,” she says shaking her head. “I’d always thought the opposite.”

And…she walked out of the same door she’d used to walk into my life, leaving me more confused than I’d ever felt. My attraction for her confused the hell outta me. The off the fucking charts sex confused the hell outta me. And the thought that I regretted having said it was only sex between us, and it could never be anything more, truly confused the fuck outta me.

The urge to go after her was so strong that my quads began to cramp. Okay, it could’ve been the leg day yesterday making itself known, but I don’t think so. I felt like going to her and telling her…like telling her…she was easy to love. That thought? It was the reason I didn’t leave the safety of my office walls. Skye was too easy to love.