I nodded. "Yeah, so?" I realized too late that by agreeing with her, she was going to use it to keep me away. "Maybe we've grown up a little bit, but the emotions are still there. You can deny them all you want, Kate, but I don't believe for a minute that you want me to fuck you just because you needed a good orgasm. You still feel something for me. "
"Yes!" Her hands fisted by her side. "I still feel hurt and betrayed by you."
I felt her words like a slap. A slap I deserved for having hurt her five years ago. I needed to change tactics. "I'll go get dressed, and then I'll take you out to breakfast. We can start over.”
She shook her head, looking both sad and annoyed. "I don't trust you."
"So I’ll earn your trust."
Her eyes were determined as she looked directly at me. "I don't want to trust you ever again."
“I asked you what I could do.”
“There isn’t anything.”
“Not even cover myself in honey and sit on a fire ant hill?” I tried for levity.
She didn’t find my words humorous. She just shook her head.
Maybe I was dense, but finally, it was sinking into my brain that my cause was hopeless. Just as I had thought before. A fool's journey, I had said to Max.
"So, what was last night all about? You can't ever trust me, but it's okay if we have sex?" It didn't make any sense. And I'd be a liar if I said it didn’t hurt like hell. I felt like she'd been toying with my emotions, making believe that we could recapture what we once had and then jerking it away from me. "Are you trying to punish me? Is that what last night was about?"
Her expression fell. She looked down. "No. Like I said, the physical attraction is still there, but the trust isn't.”
"And I can't earn that back?"
She shook her head, but there was something in her eyes that told me there was still something inside her that loved me, or at least was connected to me.
Maybe if I stopped asking for her heart and just agreed to give her what she was willing to take from me, even if it was only my body, I could build on that.
It wasn't about wearing her resistance down, though. I genuinely wanted her to fall in love with me again. She was right that we were different.
We couldn't go back and get what we had because I had blown it to smithereens. But maybe if I could prove to her that I wasn't the same man I'd been then, she would fall in love with the man I was now. We could have a whole new relationship. I just had to figure out a way to stay in her orbit long enough for her to trust me and fall for me again.
CHAPTERSIXTEEN
Kate
Sam wasn't making this easy. When I'd left his side last night, I had been determined that I wouldn't let myself fall for him again. I'd anticipated backlash this morning, and I even felt guilty because I knew that when I went to him and had sex with him, he'd read more into it.
To be honest, a part of me had been giving in to him. I wanted everything that we’d had before. But when the orgasms were over and reality returned, pushing through the fog of lust and desire, I was back to the fact that I had once loved this man with everything I had and he had walked away without looking back.
Oh, sure, he’d apparently come looking for me five years ago, but he’d given up easily. Between Sam’s abandonment and my grandfather’s disowning me, I'd become a new woman. A woman who wouldn’t be duped ever again.
“Like I said. I’m not the woman I used to be. I don’t need a man.”
“It didn’t seem that way last night when you rode me.”
He was angry, and he had a right to be. I shouldn’t have gone to him. I needed to work harder to keep my hormones under control.
“That was just sex.”
He flinched. "So is that how all the men in your life are to you? It's only about sex? You don't actually feel anything for any of them?"
"There are no men in my life, Sam, but even if there were, having a no strings attached sexual affair is common among men, isn't it? Why can't women have the same thing?"
His jaw tightened. "They can. But just like some women want more, some men do too."