Twist My Heart by Brooke Taylor (ebook audio reader .txt) 📕

bounded on as she struggled to free it from his pants, but his mind prevailed.

He wrapped her wrists in his grip. “Slow down, Tiggs.”

“Slow down?” Her eyes shot up to his, confusion and lust tinting them. Cuffing her hands didn’t stop her from using her feet to keep working her pants down. “But, Coop said…”

Snapping his focus from the sexy waggle of her hips, he tried to get her attention. “Hey…hey. I don’t give a crap what Coop said. We’ll take whatever time we want. Trust me, he knows if he breaches the doorway he’s a dead man in the most literal sense, doesn’t matter if it’s in two hours or two days.”

Her whiskey eyes went wide. “Two days?”

“Believe me, Tigger,” he assured, his words rough with desire. “I can find things to do to your body for two weeks straight without coming up for air, maybe two months.”

“So why are we talking?”

Good question. Unfortunately, it was a question he knew the answer to. “You don’t remember anything. You’ve never had sex.”

“I have a good idea of how it’s supposed to go,” she bit off defensively. Then, with a hint of shyness, “I Googled the rest.”

Nik blinked. He could only imagine what her search had come up with. “Okay. But I’m trying to explain how there might not be anything to remember.”

“Of course there’s nothing I remember…wait. What do you mean? You think…I never…like, truly ever?”

He shook his head. “No, I don’t.”

“I’m twenty-five. Aren’t I a little old to still be a virgin?”

“Not necessarily. The more I think about it, the more I think you purposefully chose not to have sex, not to be intimate.”

“You mean she chose not to?”

Nik closed his eyes. She.

“It doesn’t matter why she did anything,” Thea rushed to continue. “It’s my life now and I’m making the choices.”

Nik pushed out a breath. Thea didn’t know what she was saying. Getting into it all would be a real mood killer and they couldn’t take many more of those. But he needed to tell her. She had to make the decision to have sex with him knowing everything. He couldn’t live with himself otherwise.

Maybe he wasn’t such an emotional wasteland after all.

“Come here.” He gently scooped her into his arms, sliding her onto his lap as he settled back against the pillows in his bed. “You don’t seem to like the person you think you were before the tornado. I get it. You don’t really know her. But I do.”

Breaking free from his embrace, Thea scrambled in reverse. “You’ve been lying to me?” Her razor-sharp glare cut into him. “Please tell me you aren’t the person I’ve been running from.”

“Easy, tiger, it’s not like that at all. About a half hour or so before the tornado, I saw you at a gas station. I talked to you briefly. Well, you did most of the talking. I was trying to hit on you and you rebuffed me pretty quickly.”

Nik reached out to stroke her calf, thankful she didn’t pull away. From the confused look on her face, he could tell she still didn’t understand.

“Just because she wasn’t into you…?”

“Oh, she was into me. You…you were into me. There is no other she.” Nik squeezed his eyes shut. Focus, Steele. “I’m trying to explain—the night of the tornado was the first time we met, but it was before you lost your memory. You were sweet and smart and sassy and beautiful, exactly like you are now.”

Her leg jerked out of his caress. The look she speared at him, poisoned with betrayal. “I’m not the same girl you tried to pick up at a gas station.”

Nik groaned. It wasn’t like he was speaking fondly of another woman while trying to charm her.

His thoughts pinged back to Goodland, to the moment when Thea’s full attention had turned to him. To the surge of energy he’d felt before he’d ever even seen her eyes. No, all he’d seen in her mirrored sunglasses was his own stupid reflection. He’d looked every bit the on-edge player expecting a quick, easy score. That was who Nik had been then, but not now.

“I’m not the same guy who was trying to hit on you, either. He would’ve never brought you here, he wouldn’t have stopped you down in the gun room, and he sure as hell wouldn’t be having this conversation. These past few days have changed me. You’re making me feel things I haven’t felt in a long time. Things I’ve never felt and don’t know how to deal with very well. I can’t believe I ever looked at you and thought I’d be able to leave you behind.”

“You should’ve left me behind, Nik. I’m not the kind of girl you deserve to be with.”

He blew out a breath, trying to quell the frustration. He’d started this conversation out all wrong and needed to take another tack. Thea considered her old self an enemy, and he had plenty experience having one’s self as an enemy.

“Look, I get you’re learning things you don’t particularly like about your past. I’m not proud of who I used to be, either. I didn’t keep that photo face down on a shelf all these years because it hurt to see my family. I did it because it hurt to see the person I used to be. But it is still me in the photo, the cocky asshole who couldn’t wait to get as far away from his family as he could.”

“Nik.”

“You want to know what they were doing on the day of the wreck? They were mailing me a care package. Candy, clothes, video games… Trivial, immature shit I’d asked for because I’d been gone barely two months and was already homesick. My stupid desire to be independent cost them their lives. So I know all about regretting past choices. But don’t hate the person you used to be simply because you don’t agree with all of your past decisions. Your past is a part of you, like mine is