Chapter 140

“I understand you’re underwhelmed, Lexi,” he murmured. “But any reasonable person would have to describe your particular behavior just now as a bit giddy, don’t you think?”

He was already hard again, because this was Lexi and he had years to make up for. He watched her as she pulled her clothes back on, then did nothing more with her hair than run a hand through it. And like that, she was once again the very picture of casual elegance.

“I’ll concede what happened was indeed a fucking,” she said, as if they were back in Oxford, studying something boring. She even managed to look prim, as if he hadn’t just been inside her. “But whether or not it was proper, I couldn’t say. I don’t have any context, do I?”

“I think your whole life until now would qualify as context,” he said dryly.

“You’ve taught me the difference between a shag and a fuck.” She sketched a little curtsy that was so cute he thought his chest might crack open. “But now I think we need to turn our attention to what makes for a proper fucking, which as you may recall was what the doctor ordered.”

He was leaning back against the counter, near her but not touching her. Because if he touched her again, he would repeat what had just happened. And as tempting as that was, he had a powerful need to put this woman in his bed, at last. Then take his sweet time. Over and over again, until he lost track. And before she woke in the bright light of a new day and thought better of all of this.

“Your wish is my command, as always,” he told her.

She laughed at that, as if it wasn’t the humbling truth of his entire adult life. His guiding star, even. His true north had always been Lexi, and he suspected it always would be, whether she was married or not. But that was one more thing he kept to himself.

He threw open the door, watching Lexi turn red as she noticed that he hadn’t bothered to lock it. And he liked the way she blushed so much that he decided not to tell her that there was no need to lock the door when the staff was perfectly well trained to take care of any possible interlopers. Why ruin her fantasy that she could have been walked in on at any time?

Tyler led her out a different door than the one they’d come in, this one higher up the hill, where a car waited for them. Because he didn’t feel like driving them home tonight, as that might require he take his hands off her. And he might only have this one night. He couldn’t let himself forget that for a second. He had to make the most of it.

But when Tyler settled in the backseat beside her, he wasn’t prepared for the way Lexi melted into his side. She snuggled into him, then dropped her head to his shoulder. As if they’d done this a thousand times before and she knew she would fit next to him so well. As if it was normal for them to cuddle up in the backseat of a car, or anywhere else.

And what killed him was that it felt perfectly normal. It felt right.

Everything with Lexi always did and always had. That was just one of the many ways she’d ruined him from the start. Because there was no having her. There was only losing her. He’d made a decision a long time ago to make himself over into whoever and whatever she needed, even if that meant not getting what he wanted.

That meant he got a hell of a lot more than any of those idiots who’d tried to be her boyfriend. Tonight he’d crossed every last line he’d ever drawn. He could boss everything around as he pleased, and did, but he had no control over his own damned heart.

And he had to sit with that, staring out the window as the lights of Olkfield blurred together in front of him. Lexi was a soft weight against him, her breath slow and even and her face buried against his shoulder. For once in his life, he had everything he’d ever wanted. And more than he’d imagined was possible.

Enjoy it, mate, he told himself darkly.

Because it wouldn’t last. It couldn’t last.

Her hand was on his leg, and the light spilled in from the streets outside.

It made her look even prettier, which shouldn’t have been possible. It also illuminated that great bloody boulder she wore on her hand. The ring that reminded him that she wasn’t his. That this was an interlude from her real life. That she’d come here because she knew exactly what she was getting herself into with this marriage her father wanted, and this was her last chance to taste how the other half lived before she surrendered to it.

He knew her too well. She might come to the other side of the globe to experiment, but she was going to go straight back. Lexi was going to lock herself away in her lonely little life, by choice. She was going to stay there, getting more brittle and far away by the year. He could see it all spin out in front of him.

She was never going to give him what he wanted from her. Everything had changed and nothing had changed. And at least Tyler could say he’d chosen his own ruin. At least he had that.

That was what he told himself when they arrived at his house. She was still so sleepy that he had to lift her into his arms, then carry her inside, the way he’d longed to do a million times before. He didn’t take her into the guest room. He headed up the stairs to the master bedroom instead, because he could feel time slipping away from them. And he didn’t want to waste any of it. He lay her out on his big wide bed and helped her off with her clothes. He expected her to wake up, but she didn’t. She murmured something when she was naked, then curled up on her side, burying her face in his pillow.