COME WHEN CALLED #7, The Sunrise (Billionaire & Biker MMF Menage Romance Serial) Read Free Page B

buy it.” She let her voice harden. “I’ve known you for a while and I’ve never seen you as happy as you are now with Charley and me. You need this—you need people around you. Why do you do this to yourself? What’s so wrong with you that no one can love you?”
    He raised his voice in response to her heated words. “You don’t understand. You didn’t grow up like I did. People being paid to love you, to care for you. Everyone knowing before you walked into a room who you are and that you are to be coddled and sucked-up to. It makes a person feel inhuman.”
    He pulled himself tall again, turning around now to face her, leaning his towel-covered ass against the polished marble counter. “The ironic part is that people act like that because they think you’re special, or they’re told to treat you like you are, but it doesn’t make you feel special in the long run. It only ever made me feel worthless.”
    His shoulders seemed to hunch at his admission and his voice lost its edge. “After years of that it made me feel like I wasn’t worth honest emotions, real reactions, true judgments. And then I guess no one seemed real anymore.”
    She crossed her arms, mirroring his hostile posture. “No, you’re right.” She pressed her lips together and nodded sharply. “I don’t know what it’s like to have everyone fall all over themselves to take care of me and make me happy. In fact I’m not sure I’ve ever had one person want to do that for me in my entire life. Ever. So you’re right. I don’t understand.”
    He closed his eyes, his voice pained. “I’m sorry, Evie. I wish things had been different for you.” He shook his head, looking away, silent for a moment. “Our lives have been so different and yet, in a vital way, so similar. We’ve both felt so alone.”
    “I did feel alone.” She paused. “Until…” She trailed off, unsure if she should finish the thought.
    But he’d caught it. “Until what?”
    She shrugged, but his voice took on the tone. “Until what, Evangeline?” He was suddenly angry, his face reddening. “Until what? And don’t lie to me.” The volume of his words had risen again, and now his crossed arms rose and fell as his chest heaved. “You can’t mean until me. You can’t mean until I paid you to have sex with me and then hurt you, because that’s bullshit.”
    She closed her eyes before speaking, reluctant to let him in on her special, private memory. “Until you took my hand in the library,” she whispered finally.
    He blinked and his body stilled. He looked at her blankly.
    “When John called and was berating me. When he said he was going to come to the library, and I was scared. You know how I hate to be scared now, but you didn’t then. And yet you took my hand. You put your arm around me. You somehow knew I needed something, and you were there for me. You took up for me. Protected me.”
    She sighed. She was in this far…may as well finish her confession. “And then later when you spoke to me like you owned me. Like I was yours. And you trusted me enough to share your most private sexual desires.” She softened her expression, knowing he’d have a hard time accepting what she was saying. “Those memories. Those are when I didn’t feel alone anymore.”
    She watched him for the rebuke she was sure she’d get for being too familiar, too attached to him. For layering feelings that he didn’t have for her over his actions. But he just sighed heavily, dropping his crossed arms to fist his hands together in front of him, staring grimly at his fingers.
    “I don’t know what I’m doing anymore,” he said, looking away as if he was talking out loud to himself. “I had a plan, but I don’t recognize what this has become.” He pulled his hands apart and cupped his elbows, his forearms crossing protectively over his bare midsection. He looked suddenly vulnerable, and he raised his eyes back to hers as if seeking for her to make everything make sense