“I don’t have the time or patience to pretend like we’re building something here when we’re not.” I fixed my ponytail, trying to focus on putting myself back together—at least on the outside.

His scowl depended. “Who’s pretending?”

I threw up my hands. “Why do you talk to me like you do? All that crap about unwrapping and missing me and...and all of it! Why can’t you just be real about what we have, what we’ve always had—nothing but great sex?”

“We’re not just fucking,” he growled, leaning forward. “You don’t fall in love over nothing but sex.”

“Do I have to be in love with you? Does it make it better for you if I am?” To my horror, I felt my eyes sting with tears. “You’ve already gotten into my pants. I don’t understand why you have to act like this is a romance. Don’t make something that should be simple so complicated for me!”

“Baby, we’ve never had simple.” He exhaled harshly and reached up to rub the back of his neck. “What do you want from me, Gia?”

“I think we need to focus on what you want from me, since what I want is irrelevant.”

He scowled. “That’s not true.”

My hands went to my hips. “I want a commitment, a chance, some effort made to see how far this thing between us could go. You’ve already shot that down. So what’s left is what you want.”

“I want you.”

“You want to fuck me,” I corrected. “Why can’t you just be matter-of-fact about it?”

“Gia.” He shook his head and sighed. “I’m an asshole to everyone else in my life. You’re the one thing I’ve cherished. Don’t make me stop.”

“See? Like that! Why do you have to say stuff like that? Why can’t you just say you like me or something—”

“Because I don’t just like you. You get under my skin. I think about you damn near all the time and I get hard. I see you and I forget who I am. You don’t know what you do to me.” Jax’s voice lowered dangerously. “You make me want to rut, Gia. I want to pull you beneath me, work my cock into you and ride until you’ve wrung me dry. You make me need—”

“Shut up!” God, I was quivering, my hunger stirring in response to the heated waves of desire sizzling off him.

“You know how it feels. You’re feeling it, too. Let me give it to you.”

“No!” The refusal cut deep, like restraining part of myself with barbed wire.

“Give me tonight.” He reached for my hand and squeezed too tightly. “One night.”

I laughed softly even as my sight blurred. “One night to screw me out of your system? That’s a cliché, Jax. It never works. Great sex doesn’t stop being great just because you gorge on it.”

“So we’ll have a night of great sex. We both want it. Need it.”

“I don’t need this.” I tried to reclaim my hand, but he wouldn’t let go.

“The hell you don’t.”

Nothing but the truth would work with Jax. He read me too easily, was too adept at homing in on a challenger’s weakness and exploiting it.

“I can’t do this,” I said again, holding his gaze. “I’m not like the women you’re used to sleeping with. I can’t do it for fun or to scratch an itch. Not with you. I fell for you the last time. I can’t do it again.”

“You’re still in love with me,” he retorted bluntly. “Give me a chance to make that something you stop regretting.”

I turned away from him, my gaze sweeping over a living room that was bigger than my bedroom back home. “I want you to take me back to Rossi’s.”

“That’s a problem.” He came up behind me, his arms wrapping around me. With his lips to my throat, he whispered, “I want to take you to bed. If you don’t want me to talk, I won’t say a word.”

I closed my eyes, absorbing the feel of him behind me. The warmth of his body, the scent of his skin now musky with sweat and sex, the soft caress of his breath.

“You left the shower on,” I said, latching on to something inane and far less personal.

“I’d turn it off if I wasn’t afraid you’d bail while I wasn’t looking.”

“You can’t keep me prisoner here.”

“I don’t want to. I want you willing. I want the Gia who demanded I bring her here and give her whatever she wanted.”

I glanced over my shoulder at him, finding his eyes glittering at me from the shadows that caressed his beautiful face. I felt the pull inside me, that inexorable tugging between us. I didn’t know how to turn it off or ignore it. Some sick cosmic joke had made me hardwired to crave him with every fiber of my being.

Did I have what it took to convince him to stay? I had what it took to get him to want more; that was a start.

“Tonight’s not enough,” I said quietly.

“Thank God. I just threw that out there to buy some time to convince you otherwise.”

“You can’t just walk away without a goodbye like last time.” I turned in his arms. “I want you to look me in the eye and say you’re through when you decide you’ve had enough.”

His lips thinned, but he nodded.

“I want monogamy.”

“Damn straight. I’m not sharing you.”

“I’m taking about you being monogamous,” I said drily.

“That’s a given.” He cupped my face. “What else?”

“My hours are erratic. My job comes first.”

“I fit into your life before—I can do it again.”

I gripped his wrists. I could go on with the list of my wants, but what I needed at that moment was distance and some perspective. I needed some time to back up, catch my breath and my bearings, then I might be able to figure out the next best move to make. “I want you to turn off the damn shower and take me to dinner. I’m hungry.”

He laughed, but it sounded strained. “You always did get hungry after sex. Can we actually take the shower first?”

“No.” I leaned forward. “I want you to smell me on your skin for the next couple hours.”

Jax groaned. “You want to punish me.”

“Yep,” I agreed. “That, too.”

* * *

NICO SHOT ME a knowing look when Jax and I returned to Rossi’s. I stuck my tongue out at him.

We grabbed a table and ordered shiraz. I went with lasagna, Jax went with pollo alla cacciatora. While we waited for our food, I studied him, admiring the way the small candle on the table between us gilded him. He looked softer, more relaxed, his face impossibly more handsome.

He had the look of a well-fucked man, one who was sated and yet anticipating further pleasures ahead. I loved that I put that look on him, but I hated it, too. Because I wasn’t in danger just from the things he said; it was everything about him that made me vulnerable. The effect he had on me was in large part due to the effect I had on him.

I made him happy. Content. And it was difficult not to feel as if that made me special, even though I knew better.

“So Regina is your stepmom, right?” I asked, giving my mind something else to think about.

“Yeah.” He looked into his wineglass.

“How did that happen?” Would he mention Ian and open that door...?

“My mom died ten years ago.”

“Oh.” Seeing how he closed up alerted me—I’d touched on a painful subject. “I’m sorry to hear that, Jax.”

“Not as sorry as I was,” he muttered before gulping down his near-full glass in three swallows. He refilled, then looked at me. “Your mom looks great.”

I nodded. “She’s happy. Her kids are doing all right, business is good and she’s about to be a grandmother.”

“How’s Angelo dealing with impending fatherhood?”

“Good. It threw off his plans to open another Rossi’s, but that’s probably for the best. Denise—his wife—has a new business of her own, so I think it would’ve been a strain for them if they’d tried juggling two startups and a new marriage.”

“Do you like her?” he asked, his fingertips stroking up and down the stem of his glass.

“A lot. She’s great.” I looked at the party next to us, a family of four enthusiastically discussing how good their food was. “I thought I saw Allison at the fund-raiser last night. How are she and Ted doing?”