The half-empty bottle of whisky feels like it’s made of lead as I lift it toward the nearby countertop without interrupting our kiss. My hand shakes with the effort. I should recognize the odd sensation in my fingers by now. In some dim, desire-choked corner of my mind, I feel the tremor.
At the same time, my grip on the bottle falters.
Fuck.
I grab Melanie and swing her out of the way about a second before it hits the floor.
Glass shatters around her bare feet, glittering shards and spilled whisky flying everywhere. She lets out a small yelp, but it’s barely audible next to my furious bellow.
“Don’t move,” I snap at her when she starts to step away from some of the mess I’ve made.
“It’s okay,” she says, her voice a soft rasp after I’ve plundered her mouth and body for the past five minutes. “Let me help you clean this up.”
Another snarl rips out of me. “Damn it, I said don’t move!”
She freezes, staring at me in confusion. That look of wariness is back again, along with something else, as she watches me hunker down and begin sweeping the largest of the shattered pieces away with my bare hands.
There’s no hiding the shakiness of my fingers, even if my explosive rage might mask the tremors as something other than evidence of the neurological flaw I know them to be.
I bite off another hard curse under my breath and tear my gaze away from hers.
I hear her shallow inhalation as she continues to watch me. “Jared . . .”
“We’re done here.” My reply is short, dismissive.
It has to be. Another moment of her tender scrutiny—of her undeserved kindness and concern—and I’m going to put my fucking fist through a wall.
“Today’s session is over,” I tell her gruffly, keeping my fury aimed at the floor. “Once I clean this shit up, I’ll arrange for your return to the city.”
16
MELANIE
Twenty-seven hours have passed since Jared Rush brought me over the edge of a shocking climax with his kisses and his wicked touch. Twenty-seven hours since that bone-melting moment abruptly ended when he exploded like a grenade over a broken whisky bottle and practically shoved me out of his beach house studio.
One full day and I’m just as blindsided and confused as I was when it happened.
After furiously cleaning up the shattered glass, he’d called for an Uber to take me all the way back to my house in Queens. The pleasant middle-aged woman behind the wheel filled the silence of the two-hour drive from Sagaponack with chatter about her kids and grandchildren, a welcome distraction, but one I’d barely registered.
While I had nodded and smiled when expected, my thoughts had stayed fixated on Jared, my emotions running the gamut from outrage to concern and everything in between. Not the least of them being the banked, but still burning, desire that kept its grip on me for the duration of the ride home.
I’m still not sure what triggered the change in him from the man I was only starting to get to know as I explored his studio and the growling beast who stormed out a moment later for another drink. Where he’d seemed open to talking about other aspects of his past, it was clear I’d ventured too far when I asked him about growing up in Kentucky. The loss of his family’s farm, and his father’s evident role in it, obviously carved a deep wound in Jared that still wasn’t fully healed.
Yet there was something more, something else that flipped the switch on his fury. When I caught up to him in the kitchen, his hands were visibly shaking with the force of his rage. And somehow, my noticing that seemed to set him off even more.
Why?
By the time the driver dropped me at my house I’d finally managed to convince myself that whatever Jared Rush’s problems are, whatever trauma may lurk in his past, for my own sanity—for my own self-preservation—I need to keep my distance from him.
I’d like to say I’m long over the effects of his kiss and his strong hands on my body, but my reaction to the carnal side of him has proven the hardest one to shake. His total domination of my senses was like getting swept into a hurricane. Powerful. Dangerous. Electric.
I can’t remember the last time I’d been kissed like that.
Never. That’s why I can’t remember it. Because the answer is never.
Jared kissed me as if he’d been wanting to do it forever and couldn’t get enough. He claimed my mouth as if I belonged to him, and nothing else mattered. Foolishly, I tumbled right under his spell. I would have fallen much further if reality hadn’t brought me crashing back to my wits.
I frown into my plate of grilled seafood, idly chasing a bite of mahi mahi around with my fork. When I glance up, I find my two best friends still gaping at me across our table for lunch at GC.
Evelyn’s pale green eyes are lit with shock against the buttery mocha glow of her beautiful face. “Let me get this straight. You posed nude for Jared Rush and this is the first we’re hearing about it?”
“Twice, technically,” Paige Johansson adds in a mock disgruntled tone. “Our girl Mel’s gotten nekkid for Hottie McDark-and-Deviant two times, Eve, and this is the first we’re hearing about it.”
A former model, like Evelyn, Paige is gorgeous, too. Now, she’s perpetually auditioning for film roles and commercials, so it’s no surprise to see her short black hair is growing out since I last saw her. The messy crown of choppy layers now falls around her impish face in inky waves as she reaches for a third slice of her flatbread pizza.
“You think he’s deviant?” The question leaps off my tongue, despite that I’m sure I don’t really want to know the answer. And if anyone would know these things, it’s Paige.
She munches on a bite of pizza, giving me a look that
