Unbuttoned by Maisey Yates Page A

want this, Carly? We had sex all night. I had you begging for me to take you. Over and over again. How the hell can you stand there and tell me you don’t want this?”
    “I don’t.”
    “You’re a liar.”
    “Wanting sex and wanting this,” she said, waving her hand around, “are two very different things. And I don’t want this kind of drama, which means I can learn to live without the sex.”
    “Because that’s all it was to you?”
    “It’s all it was to you.”
    “And you know that because you know I had some casual sex more than half a decade ago. You honestly think I would sleep with you just for kicks, use you, like Mac said, is that it?”
    “What else could it be, Lucas?”
    “Did it ever occur to you that I might care for you?”
    She shook her head. “No. When was I supposed to pick up on that? In between our constant bickering?”
    “That was you, sugar, that wasn’t me.”
    “You were always putting the bait out.”
    “To see you get riled up. Because I love the way your cheeks flush when you’re angry. Because I love to spar with you. Because I live for that next witty one-liner I know will come out of your mouth. And because I love the moment when I’ve gotten you so good you don’t have one, and you’re just speechless. That’s only happened once or twice. And now that things have changed between us, I love the way you look when you’re just about to come, I love the sound of my name on your lips. Most of all, I discovered that I love you.”
    She took a step back, like he’d landed a physical blow. She shook her head, her mouth hanging open. “No.”
    The look on her face, the horror, should have been enough to get him to stop talking. But it wasn’t. Now that he knew it, he had to say it, no matter the cost. “I love you, Carly.”
    “You don’t. You’re just saying that.”
    “I’m not. Why in the world would I just say that? Why the hell would I tear myself open for you if I didn’t mean it? I’ve never said that to anyone in my life, and that includes family. I’ve never felt it before.”
    Tears pooled in Carly’s blue eyes and she blinked hard, looking away from him. “So then . . . how do you know what it is?”
    “I knew what it wasn’t. It wasn’t my mom walking out on me, or my dad drowning his own sorrows, too wrapped up in his own crap to care about me. It wasn’t that woman you saw me with six years ago. And this . . . this is different from any of that. I feel it. I feel it here,” he said, pressing his hand to his chest. “It hurts like hell but I like it.”
    She shook her head slowly, backing away from him. Withdrawing. And he felt her withdraw emotionally too. Felt her cutting the connection between them. “I can’t do this.”
    “You can’t do what?” he asked, his voice hoarse.
    “I don’t want this,” she said. “I don’t want to spend my life wondering when the other shoe is going to drop, Lucas. I can’t do it. I can’t wonder when you’re going to start looking at other women. When you’re going to start sleeping with other women.”
    “There’s this thing called marriage vows, Carly, and there’s a line in there about that kind of thing. If I made vows I would damn well keep them.”
    “But people don’t. You and I both know that, they just don’t keep them. And I’m sure that both of our parents made vows imagining they would keep them, that love or whatever they thought they had would be enough. But I’ve never seen it be enough.”
    “You really think that of me? That I would do that to you? To anyone?” He made a move toward her, and she took another step away. Expanding the distance in every way.
    She wiped a tear away from her cheek, and all he could think of was that he should be the one to erase her tears. But she wouldn’t let him.
    “I would make an idiot out of myself over you,” she whispered. “I can’t let myself do that.” She turned and started walking up the stairs, and his heart