She stiffened defensively. There was nothing improper between her and Simon. “Why what?”
“Why you trust him,” Iestyn said simply, disarming her.
She turned her head. He sprawled beside her, lanky and golden and stil half-erect, his skin smooth satin over muscle.
For one moment, she al owed herself to yearn. To hope.
Maybe she hadn’t ruined everything. Maybe he could accept her past—accept her—and move on.
“You know, I have had sex since then,” she said, trying to sound matter-of-fact, like she’d had half a dozen sexual partners instead of only one.
“With the ponytail guy.”
“Who?”
“Blond guy in the car. Your boyfriend.”
“Gideon? He’s not my boyfriend.”
“So this other guy . . .”
Jacob.
She almost smiled, remembering. Jacob had been . . .
Not perfect. But earnest and convenient and too wrapped up in his own reactions to worry much about Lara’s.
“He’d be the one who convinced you sex was no big deal.”
Heat crawled up her face. “Wel , it wasn’t. He didn’t . . .
And I couldn’t . . .”
She’d wanted to feel whole. Jacob had wanted to get 14 0
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laid. Achieving their goals had proven more awkward than painful. After the first few times, they’d improved beyond cautious acceptance on her side and a fumbling rush on his, but the sex was never great enough to inspire either of them to keep trying.
Jacob had been honest breaking up with her.
“He said I had too much baggage,” she told Iestyn.
“Fuck,” Iestyn said. The laughter that usual y lurked at the back of his eyes and the corners of his mouth was gone.
“I’m sorry.”
She couldn’t tel if he was expressing sympathy over Jacob’s rejection or apologizing because he basical y agreed with him.
He got up—
Regret stung her eyes. “Me, too.”
Sorry she had wimped out earlier and missed her chance with him. Sorry . . . Not that she had told him, but that it so obviously made a difference.
“Are you going to be al right?” he asked quietly.
Lara sagged. Skies, she was tired. Down-to-the-bones exhausted and sick almost to death of being defined by something that had been done to her thirteen years ago.
She would not be a victim. She didn’t want him to see her as that scared, damaged child in need of comfort.
So she straightened her spine and lifted her chin. “I’m fine,”
she said, because it was important he believed that.
That she believe it.
*
*
*
Iestyn lay on his back in the ratty motel room, contemplating the stains on the ceiling tiles and listening to the soft F o r g o t t e n s e a 141 sounds of Lara in the other bed. The creak of the mattress.
The rustle of sheets. The catch of her breath.
She had to be exhausted, but she was stil sleepless, stil restless, stil making him crazy.
So they wouldn’t.
But, God, he wished he could touch her.
Not for sex. Okay, yeah, partly for sex. Tough to pretend he didn’t want sex with his hard-on tenting the covers.
He’d never been big on cuddling. Foreplay, fine. Nonsexual contact, not so much. He had a feeling, dimmer than memory, deeper than instinct, that his ingrained dislike of casual touch was part of who he was. What he was. But he would have liked to comfort Lara. To hold her in his arms, rub her back, stroke her hair, and tel her how amazing she was.
Except she didn’t want that.
Given time and opportunity, he could probably change her mind. But putting the moves on her now, when she’d asked him to stop, when she was alone and vulnerable . . .
He couldn’t do it.
She was only with him because she wanted to help.
She’d stood up for him against Axton. Axton, who had saved her, who had done what Iestyn couldn’t do, destroyed the sick son of a bitch who’d hurt her. Yet Lara had turned her back on her hero, on her people, her family, because she thought it was the right thing to do. She believed in Iestyn even before he believed in himself.
The least he could do was try not to screw her over.
He glanced toward the other bed. She lay on her side, one 14 2
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