The Millionaire's Club: Connor, Tom & Gavin. Michelle Celmer

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СКАЧАТЬ felt closer to him somehow, as if he’d exposed a part of himself no one else had ever seen. A part of her wanted to jump off the swing and do a happy dance, while another part warned her to back off. She didn’t want to care if he confided in her or not. She was getting too close.

      Even when she was angry and frustrated with him, she couldn’t be near Connor without experiencing a giddy, excited sensation in her tummy. A need to touch him. To be touched. It was as intriguing as it was frustrating.

      She didn’t know what it was about him that fascinated her so. She only knew that she wanted—no needed—to be near him. She wished he would just give in so their affair could run its course and she could stop feeling this way. She’d been so restless lately, so unfocussed and out of her element. It was as if her entire life was spinning out of control and he was the only thing keeping her rooted in reality. The only thing she could depend on, even if that meant depending on him to constantly avoid her advances.

      And she didn’t like it one bit.

      She shivered under her sweatshirt and Connor surprised her when he slipped his arm from the swing onto her shoulder.

      “Cold?”

      “A little. It’s chillier than I thought it would be.”

      Well, this was nice. Unexpected, but nice. She inched a little closer and rested her head on his shoulder. The stubble on his chin was rough against her forehead and, Lord, did he smell good. That masculine, woodsy smell that made her want to bury her nose against his neck and sniff. Of course, she knew she couldn’t get that close to his neck without taking a nibble or two.

      “I know what we could do to raise my body temperature,” she said, and heard him chuckle.

      “You don’t give up easily, do you?”

      “I’m not going to fall in love with you if that’s what you’re worried about. I know a lot of women say that but don’t really mean it. I’m too independent for that. I just want us to have some fun.”

      “It’s not that I don’t want to, Nita. It’s too risky.”

      Too risky? What was that supposed to mean? “Are you afraid I’m going to get pregnant or something? Do you think I have diseases?”

      “It has nothing to do with that.”

      “Is it my age? Do you think I’m too young? Too immature?”

      He turned his head, brushed his lips across her hair. “Nope, you’re just right.”

      She could feel how much he wanted her, could see it in his eyes every time he looked at her. Why wouldn’t he just give in to the inevitable? “Would you please explain to me exactly what the problem is? I’m getting a complex here.”

      He was quiet for several minutes and she could practically feel him working it out in his head, deciding what to tell her. Finally he said, “I have a temper, Nita.”

      She snorted. “Tell me something I didn’t already know. I have a temper, too. So what?”

      “Sometimes I don’t have a lot of control over it. And when I get really angry, bad things happen.”

      “What kinds of things?”

      “Things I don’t want to talk about.”

      She reached up, touched his cheek. “I’m not afraid of you, Connor.”

      “You should be.” He grabbed her hand and held it, gazed down at her. “All my life, the only way I’ve been able to control my temper is to keep a tight rein on my emotions. But when I’m with you, when you touch me, I feel like I have no control at all.”

      Instead of feeling fearful, a shiver of excitement raced through her. She wanted to make him lose control. Wanted to push him to feel everything he wouldn’t allow himself to feel. “It’s okay to lose control sometimes.”

      The arm around her tightened. “Not for me.”

      She could feel herself being pulled in emotionally, sinking too deeply into a relationship that should have been anything but. Yet she couldn’t stop it. She had to know.

      “Tell me,” she said, looking up at him, disturbed by the anguish in his eyes, by the raw hurt. “Tell me what happened to make you feel this way. Why you don’t trust yourself?”

      “Because I almost killed a man with my bare hands.”

      Chapter Nine

      “Who was it?” Nita asked.

      Connor didn’t want to do this. Didn’t want her to know who he really was, but there was no other way to make her understand. No other way for her to see the mistake she was making. “He was in my platoon. One of my men. A friend.”

      “What happened?”

      He leaned his head back against the swing and gazed up at the stars, at the same sky he’d gazed up at that night. It felt like yesterday, and it felt like a hundred years ago. “He used to be one of my best men, but he’d changed those last few months. The things we saw over there…” He shook his head. “He’d become reckless, self-destructive. I didn’t realize how bad it was and I kept cutting him slack. I thought that whatever was wrong with him, he would work through it. But that night he disobeyed a direct order. He disclosed our location and put us all in mortal danger.”

      “Is that when you were shot?”

      “Me and half a dozen other men were injured. Two almost fatally. I’ve always had a volatile temper, but that night, I lost it. It took four men to pull me off him.”

      “Everyone has a breaking point,” she told him. “He’d pushed you too far.”

      “And I should have taken formal action against him. Instead I flew into a rage. If they hadn’t pulled me off, I wouldn’t have stopped. I would have killed him.”

      “But you didn’t.”

      “But I would have, and the worst part, the thing that makes me sick to my stomach, is when I went back a few weeks ago they threw a damned party for me. This man who I nearly beat to death came up to me and apologized. Said he was sorry he let me down.”

      “He respects you,” she said.

      “I gave him no reason to.”

      Nita stroked his arm, and the simple gesture took away some of the pain. Soothed him in a way he’d never felt soothed before. He was so tired of feeling angry. So sick of the guilt. But it wouldn’t go away. It was as if it had become an extension of his personality. A part of his soul.

      “This is why you left the army, isn’t it?”

      “I had to. What if I lose it like that again? Next time, someone might not be there to stop me.”

      She was quiet for several minutes. He needed her to tell him that it was over, that she would stop pursuing him. He both anticipated and dreaded it.

      “Connor,” she finally said, turning to face him. СКАЧАТЬ