Wild Temptation (33 page)

Whoopsie. I think?

The elevator doors open and Tyler steps out. Actually, runs out would be a more accurate description. He runs from the elevator, pushes my back into his door, and presses his lips against mine. His hands come up to frame my face and sink back into my hair, tilting my face up to his.

I fist his shirt, completely taken off guard by him. Well, that, I didn’t expect.

“You realize we were set up,” is the first thing I say when he releases me.

Way to go, Liv. Not, “Hi. Wow.” Or, “I’m sorry I was a pushy bitch.” Or, “I’m glad to see you.”

“We were?” He raises his eyebrows and reaches around me to open his front door.

I nod and follow him in, explaining. He cuts me off three quarters of the way through with another kiss and drags me toward the sofa.

“Sit,” he orders, tugging me down with him.

Since I don’t have a choice, I cross my legs beneath me in the middle of the sofa, facing him. Tyler settles his own on either side of me and wraps them around my waist, holding me still. I open my mouth, but he presses two fingers to my lips.

“No. Let me talk.”

I nod, and he drops his fingers.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have spoken to you the way I did. I should have just told you I didn’t want to talk about it and that was it, but I just got really, really pissed off.”

“No kidding,” I mutter.

“Shh,” he scolds, flicking my bottom lip with his thumb. “It frustrates me because I wish you’d recognize what we could have… What we already do have. I wish you’d stop fighting me at every turn. I want more with you, Liv. I want more than just sex, okay? I want you, and I want you and me together.”

I push my hair from my face and look down. “I know. And I know we kind of have more than sex anyway, but I don’t want to accept it yet. And that isn’t fair to you, Ty. You shouldn’t be forced to be in a relationship I refuse to think of as a relationship.”

“Are you breaking up with me but not really breaking up with me?”

“It’s not fair to you,” I whisper. “I can’t expect you to go along with what I want or think of us the way I do when I can’t think of us the way you want. When I can’t accept us the way you want.”

“Wow. This is awkward.”

“I’m sorry.” My chest constricts. “I should probably go.”

“Oh, wow. Now it’s awkward.” He laughs. He reaches out and wraps his arms around me, tugging me into him. “I didn’t mean awkward that way. I meant this is awkward because I have no intention of letting you go.”

I breathe him in. He smells like English tea and sweat—not the hottest combination, but it’s something real and natural. And Tyler.

“But I can’t stay,” I mumble into his chest, resisting the urge to hold him.

“No, you can. Don’t you get it, Liv? I understand everything, okay? I don’t know what’s happened in your past, but I know it’s obviously something really important. Something that has a huge impact on the way you are right now. On why you fight something that’s come together so naturally.”

“I don’t understand.”

He rests two fingers beneath my chin and tilts my head back. His eyes meet mine. His eyes, dark and honest and captivating. “What I’m saying is that I know you’re not fighting me because you want to. You’re doing it because you have to. I also know that, one day, you’ll stop fighting because you’ll see how absolutely futile it is. And when that day comes, I’m gonna be right here waiting for you to see sense.”

“I still don’t understand.” Frustrated tears burn my eyes. Why won’t he let me go? It would be easier if he would. I never came here to stay. I never came to take this anywhere other than the end, but he’s making it impossible.

He’s making me need to stay.

“I’ve never met anyone else so perfect for me—inside and outside of the bedroom—and I’m not letting you go. I’m gonna take you any way I can get you, baby girl. Any way at all. Even if that means it’s on your terms.”

“You’re crazy,” I whisper, a tear falling down my cheek. “You don’t get what my addiction is, do you? You don’t get how I could destroy you, me, and everyone around us. I could hurt us all without batting an eyelid because that’s what my addiction is. It’s just too tempting to fight.”

“You’re the biggest temptation I’ve ever been faced with. I’m not going to let you hurt us. Do you see that?”

“No, because you don’t know.”

“So tell me.”

I shake my head and drop it to his chest. I finally give in to the restlessness of my arms and wrap them around his waist. I draw in a deep, shuddery breath against him. “I can’t. I’m just…not ready. I’m not ready for a lot of things. I don’t think I’m ready for us.”

“I wasn’t ready for you when you walked into that fucking shoot, but here we are. Truth is, I’m not just a sex addict anymore. I like to think of myself as a sex-with-Liv addict these days.”

A laugh leaves me. “I’m not surprised. We do it enough.”

He smiles against my neck. “Come on. You trust me. I trust you. If we’re fuck buddies with a little undefined extra for now, then that’s what we are.”

“I don’t have a choice, do I?”

“No, you do. Until tomorrow when my plan B is to barge into your bedroom and make you come so hard you forget why you should say no.”

I sit up straight and look him dead on. “Do I get to choose plan B?”

“If you really want to.” He smirks.

“In that case… Oh, crap. No. I’m not here tomorrow.”

Tyler runs his thumbs under my eyes. “You’re not? Where are you?”

“California. For the Balfour shoot. Again.”

A slow, easy grin spreads across his face. His dimple appears and his eyes light up. It’s the most spellbinding smile I’ve ever seen on him. “You got called back? That’s amazing!”

“Yeah, I only—”

He pulls me against him gently. His lips brush across mine in a succession of soft kisses. I run my hand up his chest and sink my fingers into his hair at the same time that he cups my ass and lifts me onto my knees. He lies back on the sofa, taking me with him, and wraps his arms around my body while keeping the same easy rhythm of our mouths.

Nothing is rushed about these simple, easy kisses. It’s the purest connection we’ve ever had, and I’m thrilled and I’m scared at the same time. As he holds me tighter, I realize that I’m more thrilled than I am scared.

“Mmm,” I hum when he kisses the corner of my mouth.

“When do you go?”

“Hm? Go where?”

Tyler laughs, bringing me out of my slightly dizzy haze. “To California.”

“Oh. I fly at, like, ten tomorrow morning.”

He runs his hands down my back to my butt and taps it lightly. “Come on. I’ll help you pack.”

“You’re not going to drag me into your room and strip me naked?”

“Liv, if I wanted to strip you naked, I wouldn’t have to do it in my bedroom.” He sits us up with a grin. “And as much as I’d love to, you need to pack.”

“I’ll be fine. It won’t take long for a few days.”

He clasps my hands with his and pulls me off the sofa, leading me to the door. “I’m going to make sure you have everything you need. I know you’ll forget something important.”

I step into the elevator after him. “No, I won’t. I need makeup, clothes, a phone charger, shoes, a hairbrush, and a toothbrush.”

He smirks, wrapping his arms around my waist from behind me. His hands trail lazily across my stomach, and he presses a firm kiss to my skin where my neck meets my shoulder.

“And your vibrator.”

My skin hums after his words. “Why do I need my vibrator?”

“So you can use it and think of me.”

“And if I get searched at security?”

“Then we’re all gonna have a bloody good giggle at your expense. It’s going in the suitcase, and you’re going to use it, and you’re going to think of me.” He nips my neck. “Got it?”

“Got it.”

C
alifornia is hot. Really, really hot. Compared to Seattle, it’s another world.

And standing here below the burning sun, pretending I’m not covered in sweat so thick it could be another layer of skin, is next to impossible. Thankfully, the photographer calls a break and one of the girls runs over and hands me a water bottle. No one else is suffering the way I am.

But hey. That’s what you get when you put a northern girl in a southern climate when the North is pretty much still in winter.

After ten minutes, a wipe-down, and a reapplication of my makeup, I head out to the waterline. The photographer is a nice, friendly, thirty-something woman who’s famed for her beach shots. It’s evident to see—the positions she asks me to contort my body into is practically fucking yoga. I’m half tempted to ask if she’d like to shoot me in the downward dog position.

Of course, she’ll likely give the other girls, who are holed up in different hotels, the same instructions. I just have to hope none of them can do yoga, because then I’ll be pissed off. Right now, my fitness regimen is all that’s keeping me balanced. If I hadn’t been doing basic to medium yoga for three years, I’d be flat on my ass.

After an hour, we call time on the shoot and I head back to the hotel. I wrap a towel around my shoulders, more to keep the sun off me than anything, and head up to my room. It’s not the best hotel in the state, but it has amazing views of Santa Barbara and its pier. Heading down there is on my plan for tonight.

Go to the pier, grab a glass of wine somewhere, then back to my room. Maybe for my vibrator.

Knowing I’m hours away from my family, my friends, Tyler—it’s surreal. This is only the second location shoot I’ve been on that’s taken me this far away from my home.

Before, it didn’t matter. Before, there was nothing tying me down to my home city. Now, though, it’s different. So different.

Now, there’s something—some
body
—anchoring me to Seattle. He makes me want to go home right now. To go to the airport and hop on the next flight out of California. Two nights without him seems crazy although it’s nothing new.

Perhaps the difference is in knowing that, back in Seattle, he’s within walking distance. I can walk, run, or drive for only a few minutes and I’ll be at his door.

Here, though… Here, we’re nowhere near each other.

Two days ago, faced with the prospect of walking away from him, I thought I missed him.

I was wrong.

Missing someone isn’t the idea of leaving them. Missing them is knowing you’re so close yet so far away.

Seattle to Santa Barbara isn’t the hugest distance in history. For example: he could be back in London. That would be a distance—a whole country and an ocean would separate us.

I guess… I guess I’m in a constant state of missing Tyler. We’re so close physically. I know what makes him tick. I know he likes it when I suck lightly on the pulse point at his neck, how I run my nails down his back…. He knows where and how I like to be kissed, how to restrain me, what to say to me to get me wet…

But emotionally, we’re worlds apart. In theory? In theory, we might as well be London and Seattle. I’m the plane in Seattle, stuck on the runway, hesitating at takeoff. He’s the driver at Heathrow airport, waiting for the client who may never show.

We’re so close yet so far apart.

I wish—with everything I have, everything I am—that I could push past the heaviness of my past and leap recklessly into his arms. I wish it didn’t have a hold on me.

All I have is the knowledge that I’m not broken. I don’t have nightmares. I don’t have flashbacks. I don’t suffer because of it—I’m not depressed or anxious.

I’m perfectly normal if you don’t count my affliction for addiction to a single person.

I’m whole. I’m just a person with a demon from her past that causes her to fear. Find me someone who doesn’t have that, whether it be a nightmare or a broken heart from a high school boyfriend, and I’ll applaud your ass as you run out into the sunset.

I change from the bikini, stuff it into a bag to send back down, and slide into a pair of shorts and a shirt with spaghetti straps. I pour a glass of wine and step onto the balcony. It leads straight from my “front room,” and the view covers the whole beach. I can see the pier, the stores on the street beside it, the people streaming through the streets.