Read Anew: Book One: Awakened Online
Authors: Josie Litton
Anew: Book One: Awakened (31 page)
“The things I did to women.”
A tremor runs through him as
though the force of his own memories is threatening to tear him apart.
“The things I enjoyed.”
Softly, his anguish evident in
every word, he says, “I truly am my father’s son but I’ve fought against it
with all my strength. I thought I’d won.”
Thrust.
“Then you came along.”
Thrust.
“And blew every illusion I had
about myself to hell.”
Thrust.
“Damn you!”
Even as my mind reels from his
revelations, the pounding of his body into mine triggers an intense orgasm that
builds inexorably and explodes without warning. I don’t want it, not like this,
but I’m helpless to stop my own primal response to him.
I cry out as I shatter, my inner
muscles convulsing. He goes still inside me.
“Is that the man you want,
Amelia?” he demands, his voice dark and strained with anguish. “The man you
would accept without condition or judgment? The man you would never turn away
from?”
He doesn’t wait for my answer.
Instead, he withdraws still hard, zips up, and steps back.
Unable to stand unsupported, I
slide down onto the gallery floor. The smooth wooden planks are cool under my
heated cheek. I stare out through the wall of glass at an endless, empty sky.
Devastation overwhelms me.
Above me, Ian demands
remorselessly, “Am I that man, Amelia?”
The man he has fought so hard
not to be. His father’s son.
I bring out the worst in him.
As agonizing as it is for me to
acknowledge that brutal fact, I can’t hide from it. Everything he has struggled
against has returned to haunt him because of me.
I’ve cared so much about
myself--my will, my choice--that I haven’t thought about the consequences for
him of our being together.
But now I have to. I have no
other choice, not if, as I’ve claimed from the beginning, I am more than merely
a puppet dancing to the designs of a dead woman.
I have my own will and,
therefore, my own obligation to do what is right no matter how much I long to
shirk that responsibility.
I turn my head and look at him.
This man who will sacrifice everything to protect me.
How can I do any less for his
sake?
Slowly, past the clawing pain of
my regrets, I murmur, “I was wrong. About you, me, everything.”
For a moment, our eyes meet. His
are full of raw pain that I recognize all too well. I look away first.
My voice is low, strangled, but
I know that he hears me. “We’re not good for each other. I realize that now.”
On a breath of sound, all I can manage, I say, “You should go.”
For an instant, he stays frozen
in place, a cherished presence close behind me. Time seems to slow down as I
try desperately to capture the moment and hold onto it. I’m terrified of moving
beyond into what will come next but I have no choice.
I don’t listen as he walks away
but I feel the void that his absence creates. It closes in all around me, as
suffocating in its own way as the gestation chamber ever was.
But this time the trap I am in
is of my own making.
And I have no hope of escaping it.
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