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“Great.She started studying sex.Right after she met a sex god.”The bitter acid in her gut rose higher.
“Bethany.”His voice was a low warning.
She took a sip of wine and tried to keep from choking on her feelings.
He slid a hand around her nape and began massaging her knotted muscles.“Are you going to be okay with this?”he demanded.
Hell no.“Yes,” she muttered.
His eyes told her he wasn’t sure about her answer, but his hard kiss heated her from the inside, sparking an immediate yearning that had her clutching him when he pulled away.
“Let’s get this over with.Then you can have your way with me.Yes?”
The heat cooled.“Did it occur to you that I may not want to after you tell me how you once felt about another woman?”
“You’ll want to.”
She rolled her eyes at his sheer arrogance but decided not to challenge him.Challenging Zach always got her in trouble.The kind that usually included getting fucked to within an inch of her life.“So, she embraced her inner wild child.Then what?”
He closed his eyes, and his chest expanded on a ragged inhale.“Then she found drugs.”
Her breath caught.
“It was soft stuff at first.I didn’t think anything of it because I… I was using too.”His hand tightened on her nape, and his eyes searched hers frantically.Understanding.He wanted understanding.
Her hand slid around his waist.When she nodded, he exhaled.
“Even after she started the hardcore stuff, I never thought twice about it.I was already making serious money from my business ventures.I was young, a bit of an arrogant dick and independently wealthy enough to have a fucking posse.They kept me supplied with enough drugs to keep everyone happy, but right from the start, it was very much recreational for me.I could stop whenever I wanted, so I foolishly believed she could too.”
“But she couldn’t?”
He shook his head.“Her parents began to get suspicious when she stopped calling and refused to return home between semesters.When they threatened to cut her off and sent her brother after her—he’s everything you can possibly imagine: a tyrannical asshole of an older brother—she panicked, and for a while she stopped using.I checked her in to rehab to get her clean properly.She even went home for a couple of weeks.But within a week of returning for our last semester, she was using again.”He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the sofa.“I tried to get her clean again.”
“Because you felt responsible.”
Stormy grey eyes met her, and her heart squeezed at the raging torment in the bottomless depths.
“Iwasresponsible.I introduced her to that world, to that life.Hell, I rolled up and put her first joint in her hand!”
21
A shudder of revulsion scoured his insides, and Zach felt her hand tighten around his waist.When the shaking didn’t stop, he drained his wine and willed his unraveling control back into his body.
“Zach, there was no possible way you could know that things would end up that way.Thousands of people experiment one way or the other when they’re young.Not everyone turns into a raging addict.”
He winced and saw contrition cloud her eyes.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean it that harshly.”
He shook his head.Only Bethany would state the blatant truth then apologize for the delivery.“Did you?”he asked.
“Did I what?”
“Did you experiment?”
Her gaze slid away, and she shook her head.When he winced again, those blue eyes slammed back into his.“Not because I was some goody two shoes.The only reason I didn’t try anything was because one whiff gave me a violent headache.”She gave a mocking laugh and shrugged.“My body was warning me not to mess with it.And I was too chicken to disobey it.”
“You weren’t chicken.You were being sensible.”He gazed into her stunning face, amazed all over again by how gorgeous she was, inside and out.How incredibly lucky he was to be sitting there with her.To shamelessly let her sooth away the sharp knife of memory that threatened to slash his insides to shreds.