Taboo by Mallory Rush Page A

up. If you love me the way you say you do, how can you expect me to go through that again?"
    "How? I'll tell you how. While you've been coping with torture, I've been living in agony. What do you think it's done to me? Watching other men touch you in a way I never could, seeing an engagement ring on your finger while I had to cough up a hearty 'congratulations,' when it was all I could do not to puke it made me so sick. Can you imagine what that was like?"
    "No." Unwillingly, her heart hurt for him while the bitterness in his voice flailed her. "No, I never knew. You never let it show."
    "Well, now you know. You lost your family, and those are wounds that can never heal. But my wounds go deep, too, Cammie. While you were getting on with your life, I had to watch from the sidelines without a snowball's chance in hell of competing. It was killing me by inches. The success, the women, the man who had it all... God, what a joke." He laughed harshly. "I couldn't have the only thing I really wanted. Without you, all I had meant nothing."
    The enormity of his emotional need stunned her, and also stoked a yearning in her to appease the hunger she had created. His honesty had unshrouded the deepest place in her heart. The place she had buried along with her loved ones, that was so empty and aching she couldn't bear to take it out, examine it, and brave the chance of ever losing the emotional distance that kept her safe— and forever alone.
    His eyes burned into hers without apology, with a stark rawness that could only be satisfied with a melding of their souls. With total possession of each other's hearts. With a physical mating of primal intensity.
    His need was absolute. It frightened her. And she hated her cowardice.
    Take the chance, came the whisper from the depths of unearthed need. If you take it, it's all or nothing and you've got no guarantees, countered the voice of reason . The echo of fear mocked her without pity: If it doesn't work, you could lose more than family, more than your heart. To give him what he wants means reopening the scab. It's a wound you're so afraid to coonfront, it keeps on running ... just the same as you.
    The past gaped open like a yawning abyss. She felt herself teetering, the sensation akin to vertigo. It was too much like hearing a scratch coming from the inside of a coffin. Creeping closer to it, compelled to know what lay within, and yet terrified to discover what might reach out from the other side of darkness. Life? Or something ominous, a nightmare waiting to justify her fear?
    "What you want is more than I can give, Grant." Her heart sank at the sound of her own words.
    "No." He stood and reached for her. She couldn't stop her trembling as he pulled her to her feet, and he made it worse by running his hands over her arms, twining his fingers through her hair, then locking her body against his. "It's not that you can't. Because you will. It's only a matter of time."
    "How can you be so sure?"
    "Because I know you better than anyone else. Sometimes, I think, better than you know yourself. And because when I hold you, your body gives me the very promises you're fighting so hard to deny."
    It was true, and she knew it. She was losing the battle. It was only a matter of time before she could no longer hide—from him, or herself. Grant had opened a door long shut. She had dared to peek, and had quickly retreated.
    But now it would haunt her, the ghosts she'd glimpsed and the knowledge of what could be, if only she was strong and courageous enough to take the risk.
    She looked into his face, a face of honesty, of depth, and character. She looked into the face of a man she was falling in love with, a man she was only now coming to know.
    "Kiss me, Grant." The words came naturally, with a rightness that surprised her. Just to make sure, she gathered her courage and said again, "Kiss me now... hard and long and deep."

 
     
     
    Chapter 8

     
    "Thank you for joining us. We hope to see you again