Afterburn

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