Her breathing quickly grew labored as he lavished her throat with attention, kissing up the column of her neck and over her chin until their mouths met again. She slid her hands up into his hair and curled them into fists. He rewarded her with a throaty moan against her mouth, and then his hands were clutching the backs of her thighs as he spun abruptly and began stumbling through his apartment.

She continued to kiss him, panting and sighing into his mouth as his fingertips dug into the flesh of her thighs. Her shoulder hit something and it crashed to the floor, but he kept his pace, staggering blindly through the living room until finally they turned into his bedroom.

Leah assumed he was taking them to the bed until her back hit the wall with a thud, and all at once she could feel how hard he was—the incredible, firm pressure between her legs.

She ripped her mouth from his and gasped, and he groaned deep in his throat.

“We have to stop,” he said, kissing down the side of her neck and over her collarbone, interspersing his kisses with little nips that lit her skin on fire and set off a steady throbbing low in her belly. Her hips moved of their own volition, rolling against his, seeking friction.

“Leah, we have to stop,” he panted, but he pressed his hips back into hers, eliciting a low moan from her lips.

“Oh God,” she breathed, tightening her legs around his hips before bringing her mouth back to his.

He kissed her hard, gripping her waist before lifting her slightly, and Leah unwrapped her legs from his body before sliding down the wall. Danny kept his hands firmly on her sides as she slipped down the front of his body, causing her shirt to lift slightly. He seemed to hesitate for just a second before she felt his fingers curl under the hem, and in one swift movement, he pulled it up and over her head.

“Goddamn it,” he said hoarsely as he brought his hands back to her body, cupping her breasts as he leaned down and kissed along the lacy edge of her bra, and Leah slipped her hands up under his shirt, lightly raking her nails down his stomach. He hissed in pleasure before claiming her mouth again, his kisses shifting from passionate to desperate.

Leah reached forward, hooking her fingers in the front of his jeans and giving him a firm tug, bringing his hips flush with hers again. She could feel how badly he wanted her, and the knowledge alone made her entire body ache.

“We can’t,” he murmured against her mouth, placing his hand on her bare stomach and pushing her back slightly, and Leah gripped his wrist and slid his hand down the flat plane of her abdomen until his fingertips dipped under the waist of her jeans.

“Shit,” he breathed, and she felt the muscles in his forearm flex in protest for just a moment before he plunged his hand down, sliding beneath her panties. He touched her gently, and that single cautious stroke sent bolts of electricity rocketing up through her body. She sucked in a sharp breath as she threw her head back, slamming it against the wall. Under any other circumstance, she knew it would have hurt, but the only thing she could feel was the pressure of his touch right where she needed it, slowly working her into a frenzy.

She moaned softly, writhing against his hand, and he dropped his head to her shoulder. “Jesus Christ,” he rasped out. “Leah, please.”

He began to remove his hand from her pants, and she grabbed the sides of his face, pulling his mouth back to hers and kissing him with every ounce of want he had awakened and revived and kindled inside of her. Never before had she been so aware of the thin line between pleasure and pain. Every touch, every kiss, felt so incredibly good, and yet her desire for him was agonizing.

“Danny,” she breathed against his mouth. “We don’t have to stop. I want you.”

She felt his body tense, and then he pulled away from her abruptly, taking two quick steps backward before he sat on the edge of his bed and ran both hands down his face. “I can’t, Leah.”

“Please,” she said, her chest heaving with her labored breath. She realized she should have been embarrassed at her behavior, at the fact that she was begging, but she was too wild with desire to care. She wanted him. She wanted to touch every inch of him. She wanted to hear his sighs and his moans and her name on his lips. She wanted to make him feel that good.

He dropped his hands from his face, gripping the edge of the bed on either side of him, but he wouldn’t look at her. She took the tiniest step toward him, and a muscle in the side of his jaw flexed before he said, “I think you should go.”

She froze, unsure if she had heard him correctly. Several seconds passed, but he still wouldn’t look at her. He sat there with his eyes trained on the floor and that muscle in the side of his jaw flexing over and over.

“You want me to leave?” she asked, her breath still unsteady, and he closed his eyes.

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

Leah continued to stare at him, and as the intensity of the moment dissipated and her desire slowly ebbed, she realized how exposed she was—physically and emotionally. She crossed her arms over her uncovered breasts, turning to scan the floor for her shirt, and as soon as she found it, she bent and scooped it up, holding it over her chest as she walked swiftly from the room.

Once outside, she pulled her shirt over her head as she passed through the dining room, grabbing her purse from the floor and her cell phone from the table. Just as she walked out the front door, she heard a sharp bang that sounded like Danny had hit something.

Leah bypassed the elevator and went directly to the stairwell, refusing to chance the possibility that he would come out while she was still waiting for it to arrive.

Her body was responding to what he had asked, carrying her down the steps, bringing her out to her car, starting it up and putting it in drive; she was going through the physical motions of leaving, but her mind felt like it was on a time delay. It was such an abrupt and jarring shift to go from swimming in desire that potent to drowning in rejection, and her thoughts were still scrambling to catch up. And she knew that when it happened, when she finally began to process what had just transpired between them, she would want to be as far away from this place as possible.

Leah cranked the radio, trying to put some noise in her head. She just wanted a little more time before she was forced to think. With the unnecessarily loud music eradicating any possibility of it, she focused only on the curve of the road, the white and yellow lines rushing toward her windshield, the taillights of other cars, and she sank into the comforting numbness of it all.

When she pulled into her parking space and cut the engine, somehow the sudden silence seemed even louder than the music it had replaced, and she sat there staring out of the windshield, trying for a few more minutes to keep her thoughts at bay.

The double beep of her phone snapped her out of her daze, and she reached into her purse apathetically, pulling it out and glancing at the screen.

One new message from Danny.

I’m so sorry Leah. That wasn’t about u, it was about me.

A breathy laugh fell from her lips as she tossed the phone back into her purse. He’d had almost an hour, and the best he could come up with was the “it’s not you, it’s me” routine?

She shook her head as she exited the car, and a rush of cold air hit her in the face, pulling her from her fog and forcing her to feel. And then it all hit her at once.

Confusion. Rejection. Embarrassment. Resignation.

As she entered her apartment and walked straight back to her bedroom, she was certain of two things: she had feelings for Danny, and his issues went far deeper than she initially thought.

In another time, in another life, she may have been able to tough this out with him, to ride out the storm and let him figure himself out while she sat on the sidelines, rolling with the punches and taking a few hits every now and then. But Leah knew she didn’t have it in her to do that now. She promised herself that she would never let a guy screw her around again, and while she knew Danny and Scott weren’t even close to being cut from the same cloth, the bottom line was, he obviously wasn’t ready for what she wanted.