Bachelor Unleashed - Brenda Jackson [30]
“And now I plan to convince you that decision was a mistake.”
She saw the determination in his gaze. “What if I said you can’t do that?”
A smile touched his lips. “Then I would say I intend to die trying. I want you back, Farrah.”
Farrah knew he was dead serious. She forced herself to breathe in before asking, “And you think wanting me back is simple?”
A smile touched the corners of his lips. “Yes, wanting you back is simple, but getting you back will be the hard part.” He paused and then said, “And speaking of hard…”
She held his gaze as the throb beneath her hand increased, and she could feel his erection grow and harden even more. “Yes, what about it?” she asked, not even trying to ignore the burning sensation in the pit of her stomach.
He placed his hand over hers. “For the past six months, I’ve been working hard, Farrah, harder than I wanted to. But I had to do it as a way to try to forget you. And I failed at doing that.”
She nibbled on her bottom lip, surprised that Xavier would admit something like that. It would have been just as easy, less messy and a whole lot simpler for her to think he had moved on without any passing thoughts of her and what they’d shared. But to know he had thought of her, had worked doubly hard to forget her, yet failed, made something inside her swell to gigantic proportions, and that wasn’t good.
“And can you honestly say you didn’t think of me, Farrah?” he then asked.
That question was a no-brainer. Of course she had thought about him. Constantly. Every day. In the middle of the night. When she woke up in the morning. And she’d definitely thought of him during those times her body went through a physical meltdown when it needed the kind of toss between the sheets only he could give her.
She could admit such a thing now, while sitting here with him alone, in the privacy of a car where they had a spacious backseat. She had no qualms saying it because regardless of all of that, she believed she had done the right thing in ending their affair.
And she would be doing the right thing in not letting him talk her into starting things back up again between them.
“Yes, I thought about you, Xavier, but I had to end things between us for all the right reasons,” she said quietly.
“And what are these right reasons?”
Now that would be a little harder to explain. How could she eloquently break it down so he would understand that she had to end things to keep her sanity? That with him, for the first time since breaking up with Dustin, she had begun to feel things, want things and need things that she knew could only cause her heartbreak.
How could she explain to him that every time he showed up at her place, looked at her, touched her, tasted her and made love to her until she screamed her throat raw, her heart swelled? That was the part she wouldn’t try explaining since there were some things about a woman’s emotions that a man didn’t need to know or understand.
She had gotten a lot smarter since her Dustin days, but because of Xavier, the part of her heart that had hardened had begun to soften each time she saw him, each time he held her in his arms and kissed her with that sinful tongue of his.
“Tell me, Farrah.”
Gathering her control, she removed her hand from his thigh and shifted in her seat, placing her hand into her own lap. For this she needed some semblance of detachment and distance…as much as she could get. But she was well aware that no matter how much space she put between them, she would still be able to feel his heat, the same heat that could succeed in melting the ice encasing her heart. But he needed to hear what she had to say.
“You know my history with Dustin.”
He nodded. “Yes.”
She drew in a deep breath. Discussing her ex-husband had never been on the agenda. But one night when Xavier had come over she’d been caught in one of her melancholy moods. She had run into Dustin earlier that day in a department store, and he’d tried of all things to flirt with her. The bastard who’d left her for another woman had actually tried coming on to her, tried to entice her to