And if that meant letting her go, he would do it...because he’d gone and done the once unimaginable.
He’d fallen head over heels in love.
With a woman he couldn’t keep.
Emotions now in overdrive, he went from teasing her slick flesh to plunging his fingers into her core, torturing himself with the memory of how hard she’d come against his mouth last night, knowing that he’d never get the chance to taste her again.
Not after this.
When he felt the telltale pulsing of her inner walls, he pulled her hair back and clamped his mouth over the soft skin of her throat, marking her intentionally, wanting to have some small claim on her for however brief a time period. Something to stamp her as his.
Before he had to let her go.
* * * * *
ABBY WAS HORRIFIED at how her body was letting, begging Connor to keep going.
Keep telling her goodbye.
Keep punishing himself for having to do it.
Untamed and ruthless, his hands seemed to be everywhere all at once, using the secrets he’d learned about all her pleasures against her. For her. To drive her higher and higher…
His lips found hers just in time.
Saved the world from knowing that she was screaming her release in the middle of a crowded club parking lot.
Afterward, after she felt him cradling her to him gently, she drifted for a while. In and out on that lusty, floating bubble between repletion and awareness…until the boisterous laughter of a bunch of college kids walking past their car brought her crashing down to reality.
“I want to go home,” she whispered, unable to meet his eyes as she scrambled back inside the car. She shut herself off from him before he could say another word.
When he climbed into the driver’s seat and turned her way, she stared out the window, silently begging him all over again. For a different kind of release. Please, please. Just drive. Give me that much, Connor.
Finally, he did.
She closed her eyes to keep him from talking to her, to keep the tears from flowing. Because she knew what that was back there. That was Connor preparing to close the door on one of his one-month flings.
Preparing to close the door on her.
Turning away from him completely, she pretended to lean against her hand so she could wipe the tears away without him seeing.
“Abby, don’t cry. Please, sweetheart. I’m so sorry. What I did just now was unforgiveable. I don’t know what came over me. It’s just... You were being so different, doing exactly the kind of thing Gabriella used to do. And I hated seeing you do that, be that. For me.”
He gripped the steering wheel, pain streaking all through his voice. “But that’s no excuse. I should’ve stopped. You confided in me about your need for control and I all but stripped that from you back there.” He sounded so appalled, so disgusted with himself, that her heart went out to him.
What was left of it at least.
All at once, it became too much.
As they rolled to a stop outside of his house, she shoved open the door and just started running, fumbling for her keys as she raced for her car, the sound of his thudding footsteps following not far behind her.
His hand came slamming down on the door, preventing her quick getaway.
“Let me go, Connor. Please. I can’t do this. Don’t make me go through this.”
He tipped her chin up, forcing her to look up at him, to see his tortured expression, to see his blue eyes as gray as they’ve ever been. “I never wanted to hurt you, Abby.”
“Then let me go. Because staying here for any more of your goodbyes is going to hurt me.” She dropped her head to his chest. “You were right. Are you happy? It is more humane to walk out like a thief in the night without saying goodbye. Because there is no way that could hurt any more than what I’m feeling right now.”
Hands fisting against his shirt, she whispered in anguish, “It didn’t have to be like this. You didn’t have to start pushing me away. We could have had our one last beautiful night together and gone our separate ways. Didn’t you believe I could do it?”
“You weren’t the one I was worried about, sweetheart,” he said quietly. His arms wrapped around her and pulled her in close. “Even knowing that tomorrow is going to be the hardest thing I’ll ever have to do, even knowing that I was a total ass who doesn’t deserve to spend another minute with you, even knowing that you make me want to be the man that’ll do what’s right and just let you go…I can’t. Not yet. If all I get are these last few hours with you, I still want them. God help me but I do.”
She couldn’t keep hearing him torture himself like this, denying them both the fantasy of a painless goodbye.
“I want those last few hours with you too, Connor.”
* * * * *
AS HE KNOCKED on the door to his childhood home, it occurred to Connor that he didn’t have the vaguest idea if he still had his old key to the house.
There was a good chance he hadn’t even taken it with him when he’d moved away to college. An even better chance that he had taken it, and then thrown it out with the trash one day.
“Connor? To what do I owe pleasure this early in the morning?” A surprised Helen Sullivan pulled her front door open wide and flashed the bright, formal smile she reserved for only her welcome guests. Oh, and her sons.
Connor grimaced. “Can’t you just say hi to me like a normal mother for a change?”
She flinched.
Scrubbing a tired hand over his face, he tilted his head in apology. “I’m sorry mother, I’m just—”
“Can I help you with something?”
Her now utterly detached tone almost stopped him. But for some reason, he still managed to force out a quiet, “Actually…yes.”
That brought her gaze swinging back. “Really?” She looked so surprised that Connor racked his brain to try and recall the last time he’d asked her for something. Not a single memory came to mind.
“I want to know why you’re getting a divorce.”
Her face became a cold mask. “You’re the last person I thought would wonder over that. You know as well as I do that your father is a cheating bastard. A heartless bastard even without the cheating part.”
He studied the first signs of life he’d seen in his mother in a long while. “How long have you known?”
“Since the beginning.” She shook her head bitterly. “Your father made certain that I knew from day one. He wanted me to know exactly who and what he was, who and what I had contracted my life to.”
For the first time ever, Connor felt something other than pity for his mother.
He felt empathy.
For a woman who hadn’t felt strong enough to leave a marriage that was anything but, despite every cruelty her husband threw her way.
“Did you know going in? He says you knew. That it was all a part of the agreement.”
She twisted her fingers around her now bare ring finger. When had she taken her wedding band off? How long ago did she file for divorce? What kind of son is callous enough not to know these answers?
“I knew it was all business for him, yes, but I never knew it would be a life sentence of pain for me. One filled with loneliness, humiliation. Apathy.”
“You didn’t have to be lonely,” he said quietly. “You had me; you had Brian.”
His mother reeled back as if he’d slapped her.
And in a way he had.
Because before this, they’d never spoken about her lack of a role in his and Brian’s lives.
“It wasn’t that easy!” she exclaimed, showing actual emotion for the first time in what felt like forever. “Yes, of course I wanted to be there for you and Brian, shower you both with the love your father never cared to give. You were both my perfect miracles, both so strong and good—everything I wasn’t. But living with your father, getting through each day in this sham of a life...I couldn’t survive it without turning off my emotions. All of them. Because I couldn’t just pick and choose certain parts of my heart to reserve for you and Brian, and not risk the rest of it to get slaughtered and stripped away by your father.”