Read Crushing On The Billionaire (Part 3) for Free Online

bothering me. I was busy. His appearance at the threshold of my apartment did things to me I couldn’t quite explain. It enraged me, and it made me want to cry. It made me wistful for things that could’ve been. I wanted to shake him and demand an update on his health, on how Shawn was doing, but I didn’t know how to ask such things without coming off as desperate, and I didn’t want to look like I was desperate.
    That was just the thing though. I was desperate to hold that green gaze with my own, desperate to fall in his arms, desperate to kiss his lips, and desperate to relearn their touch on mine.
    But I was scared to death that, after I’d rejected him, after he’d accepted it without so much as a sigh of protest, he’d look away. I was afraid he’d let me fall instead of catching me. I was afraid he’d turn to the side instead of kissing me.
    “Well, now you see,” I said, turning around in a circle sarcastically. I had to be angry to hide that hunger. I didn’t want him to see how big of an effect he still had on me. I didn’t want to give him that power again. I was in charge here. I was the one who made the decision for us not to be together anymore.
    But what if it was the wrong decision? What if I’d thrown away the one and only chance I had at being happy?
    “I do see,” Patrick said, his voice soft but not really gentle. It was hard to describe, as if he were whispering so he didn’t snarl.
    “What are you doing here, Patrick?” I asked, putting my hands on my hips. “You agreed that we shouldn’t be together.” Why was he lingering at my door?
    “Tell me you’re not attracted to me.”
    My eyes widened at that. Of course I was attracted to him. His voice, his very presence was intoxicating. I’d missed him, missed our contact, our physicality. I hadn’t been intimate with anyone since, and I missed that addictive, healing release.
    “Loren, say it.”
    “I’m attracted to you.”
    “Then that’s why I’m here.”
    Our mouths were on each other, then, hot and sloppy and eager. I took him in my arms, and he kicked the door shut as an afterthought, fully focused on the present. We tore at each other’s clothes until they gave way, and we pressed together, bare flesh against bare flesh. I traced my hand over his chest, and paused. There was something new there.
    I pulled away for a moment to examine the unfamiliar terrain, then realized it was a fresh, livid-looking scar. The scar from when Shawn shot him. The terrible thing that I had caused.
    “It’s fine, Loren.” Patrick took me by the chin and made me look at him. “It’s fine. Good as new, practically. They tell me I can get plastic surgery to get the scarring reduced even more, but I don’t know. Seems like a silly thing to go under the knife for. I don’t mind it. It doesn’t hurt. And I don’t want you to worry about it.”
    That was a lot easier said than done. It was all I could think about even as we kissed, even as his hands explored places I was craving to be touched, even as we forgot about trying to pick our way to the bed and instead slowly settled together on the floor, like the first time we were together, in his house, Patrick reclined, me astride him.
    He moved inside me and I responded, tossing my head, murmuring, but I only had eyes for that scar I’d caused. Had the circumstances been different at all—the angle of the gun, the position of Patrick’s body, it was more than probable that he wouldn’t be panting beneath me right now, holding my waist with his hands, looking up at me like I was a delicacy he’d been too long without.
    I wanted to feel good. I wanted that release, and the relief that followed. But all I felt was guilt. How could he possibly want to be with me after how twisted Shawn had become over me?
    “Loren?”
    I didn’t realize I’d started crying until Patrick stopped thrusting and cupped my face in his hand. I sniffled at having been found out, at my emotional turmoil