“We’d have one night.”
“But it wouldn’t be enough. Not nearly.” One night had been the end of everything before it. “I want to love you for a long, long time, Cinta. First, second, always, any way you’ll let me.”
She stood in front of him, so close he could see the fine movement of the breeze through her hair. So close he could see the tremble in her eyelashes. But too far away to claim without permission.
“Is there room for a man who still loves you, above all else, in this new life of yours?”
She opened her eyes and the memory of the two of them on fire for each other shone there. “It’s a monumentally stupid idea. You have a business to run.”
He remembered Don and his unending love for Buster. “The most wretched thing a man can do is be without the woman he loves. I can live without Ipseity, but I can’t live without you.”
She shook her head, but her eyes glistened. “You have no sense of self-preservation.”
He dipped his head so it was closer to hers. “Apparently not.” In the space between them he could feel her tension, smell her indecision until it broke like the weather.
“Oh God, Mace, I was afraid of needing you, of taking you away from your dream. Of compromising on my own life. I never stopped wanting you.”
“You have me.” He let his hand stray towards her and she lifted hers so their flat palms met.
“You can’t quit. It’s the only way I’ll let you love me.”
He shook his head, watched their hands. If she tried to pull away now he would grip her tight and hold her captive. “You’d be agreeing to come second and you deserve better. Because you were right about me having a mistress so I had to give her up.”
She separated her fingers to let him fold his over her hand. “There would need to be rules.” She lifted her other hand palm flat. “I’ll wait for you and you won’t make me wait too long.” He raised his hand to hers and they clasped. “I can work anywhere in the world and you’ll run the damn air-conditioning too high in summer and you’ll come to bed no matter how late every single night and hold me.”
“That’s not—”
She shook their joined hands. “Do you really think Dillon will let you walk away? Do you really think I will?”
He gripped her hands and pulled and she stepped towards his body, taking the spin from his head, finally easing the roar. He wasn’t going to risk her again, it was already done. “I chose you over Ipseity, over Dillon.”
“And I choose you, the same as I chose a life I was once too conditioned against, too scared to risk security on. But I want my business and my art and I want you to have Ipseity.” She took another step, broke their hands apart. “So you’d better get it back.”
He stared at her, while the gears in his head ground too slowly. She wanted him back, but with the circumstances she’d once rejected. “I don’t understand.”
Her hand on the side of his face was a gesture that might have pushed him over. She brushed her finger over his eyebrow and he held still for fear any movement might shake her off.
“I want to capture you like this, Mace. Paint how beautiful you are, straining with your own greatness, honourable, awkward and shy, but so intense and unsure. I want to show you what that looks like to me, to the world.”
“I don’t—”
She pressed her hand over his mouth. “But I do. You’re so much more capable than you think. And so am I. It took losing everything I thought was important to teach me that. I have a life I like now, not one I thought I should have to prove a point. I have the chance to be an artist and if I fail, I’ll have risked and learned and grown because of that. But though I tried, oh Mace, I tried so hard, I can’t fill the space that is you and I can’t have you without what makes you great, what makes you, you.”
She stepped away suddenly. He chased her with an outstretched arm. She took another step back. “Call him.”
“Now?” His head was thick with the sense of her, the depth of what she’d said.
“If there’s an asteroid coming, and we only have one night, and you want to get lucky...” She flashed a sudden grin that fried his resistance. “Your decision.”
He was all out of understanding this, but he was good for following a prompt. He turned his phone on and dialled Dillon, waiting for him to answer with a bad taste in his mouth. He’d fucked Dillon over and he deserved whatever came next.
Dillon answered with a yawn. “You’d better have straightened your head out.” There was no fury in his tone, only the gravel of weariness.
He said, “Working on it,” while he marvelled at Dillon’s equanimity, and watched Cinta, holding herself out of reach, holding out the promise of more happiness then he thought possible.
“There’s a hole in the wall in the conference room.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m docking your pay to get it fixed.”
Dillon could have restraining orders and all manner of legal hell ready to rain down on him by now. “That assumes I’m still on the payroll.”
Another yawn. “If I could work out how to run this place without you, you’d be dead meat. Next time you flame out I’m not pulling the punch.”
Mace worked his tongue over his teeth, the taste of forgiveness sudden and clean, filling him with gratitude. “Don’t think I’m going to need a next time.”
Dillon laughed. “There’s always the possibility of a next time with you, dude. That’s why you need me.”
He said, “Remind me why that is,” while he reached for Cinta.
Another yawn then, “Because I don’t take your crap. Because Buster would turn angel, swoop down from heaven and fuck me up if I did.” Cinta came into his arms and he bent to kiss her forehead, in time to hear Dillon say, “Tell Jacinta I miss her. There’s a seat next to yours on a private jet leaving tomorrow morning if she wants it. If you’d checked your messages you’d know that, you dickhead.”
No way to tell the guy what he was feeling. “Dillon. I—”
“I know, dude. Work it out with her and come back.” Dillon yawned again and disconnected.
Cinta had a fistful of his shirt. “Looks like you got your job back.”
“Looks like I got lucky.” But he’d done with lucky. He’d got lucky when he’d found Dillon, another oddball loner like him, lucky to have Buster as long as he did, lucky when Cinta hit on him and a one night stand became a life. But you couldn’t bank on lucky, make plans on it and hold them to be true. So he was over lucky. It was every which way deliberate from here on in. He’d swap out luck for certainty, insecure for protected, that’s what he had in her.
He kissed her then, firmly, deeply; holding her so no part of her was outside his reach. Telling her what he needed, what he’d give her in return, with his lips and his hands, and the shelter of his body. Showing her what she meant to him, and how he’d never make her choose, never let them drift, never love her without fighting for her too.
When he knew he’d pushed it too far, made it too graphic for a public street, he raised his head. He didn’t want to leave, but he wasn’t sure if this was too soon for her, they had rules to discuss, plans to settle, a full-on acquisition and merger to stage.
He watched her face looking for instructions. He found realised dreams and hot fantasies dancing in her eyes.
“I. Want. You. Mace.”
He was such a sure bet. From day one.
She caught his hand. “Now,” and pulled to drag him in the direction of the loft.
“Wait.” He reeled her back. “I want a package deal.”
She laughed. “Negotiating on a one night stand.” She ran both hands up his chest to clasp around his neck. “Impressive. Name your terms.”
Too easy, they tripped off his tongue. “You in my life every day, in my arms every night, till I no longer have the strength to hold you.”
Her breath caught.
“Know it won’t be easy.” He ran his finger over the helix of her ear, cupped her
head in his hand. “Fuck easy.”
Her eyes filled with tears. He’d stunned her speechless, that was a first. So he’d make it simple for her, for all the times she’d done that for him, let his actions stand in for words he found hard to say. “Jacinta, yes or no?”
He got his answer from her fractured sniffle, from her fingers pressed to his face and the shudder that ran through her.
And the touch of her lips to his was the loudest shouted yes, the boldest screamed promise, and the only commitment he’d ever needed to hear.
Thanks for reading Insecure I hope you enjoyed it.
If you’d like to know more about me, my books, or to connect with me online, you can visit my webpage www.ainsliepaton.com.au follow me on twitter @AinsliePaton or like my Facebook page facebook.com/pages/Ainslie-Paton/414235425292333
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If you liked this book, you might like my other books: Floored, Detained or Hooked on a Feeling. Please turn the page for more info.
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ISBN: 9780857992321
Title: Insecure
Copyright © 2015 by Ainslie Paton
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises (Australia) Limited, Level 4/132 Arthur Street, North Sydney, NSW, Australia, 2060.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
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Insecure Page 33