Destined for Love (Love in Bloom: The Bradens, Book 2) Contemporary Romance by Melissa Foster Page B

inside me? Or maybe when you were sucking the taste of me off of them?
    “It was a mistake,” he said, staring straight ahead at the darkened street.
    “A mistake?” she snapped. “This? This was a mistake? I was a mistake? Is that what you really mean?” She tugged her dress down. “Look at me,” she said, barely keeping the neediness and anger from her voice.
    Rex dropped his eyes.
    “Rex Braden, what is wrong with you? Are you trying to make me feel like a cheap whore? Was that your plan all along? Take me so no one else would, then toss me aside like I was a conquest?”
    Rex met her angry eyes with a sorrowful gaze. “Jade, if you were a conquest, then I didn’t do a very good job of conquering you, did I?”
    She felt the sadness in his voice like a slap to her angry face. “Why, then? Is it me? You don’t like who I am?” She looked out the window, stifling tears. “That makes no sense,” she said with a feigned laugh. “If that were the case, you wouldn’t have even helped me in the first place. “
    He pulled her to him, brushing her hair from her cheek. “It’s not you. It’s our families. This could never work. No matter how much we might want it to, it’s not like the Hatfields and McCoys of Weston are going to throw their arms up in the air after a forty-year battle and be done with it. It’s a fantasy. You’re forbidden fruit.”
    Our families. You know better than to do anything to embarrass this family, right?
    “That is ridiculous. We’re adults, for God’s sake. Why does it even matter what happened so long ago?” She pushed away from him and stewed. “Why can’t we just be like any other couple? Make out? Date? Tell them and make them deal with it? Be a man, stand up, and stake your claim.”
    “We don’t even know what this is,” he said testily. “And if you question my manhood one more time, Jade Johnson, I swear to you, I’ll…” He scrubbed his hand down his face and eased the tension from his tone. “Look, you’ve only been back a few weeks; my family is going through changes. This whole thing might be nothing more than a reaction to circumstance.”
    She spun in his direction and narrowed her eyes. “A reaction to circumstance? Is that what this was?”
    He shrugged.
    “Is that all you’ve got? A shrug? Really, Rex? You just told me that you’ve wanted me for years. I don’t call that a reaction to circumstance.”
    His silence was like a spear through her heart. She wasn’t going to sit there and try to convince him that whatever it was between them was worth exploring. She liked him—a lot—and every time she looked at him, she craved his touch. Having tasted him, and having felt him inside of her, she’d crave even more of him now. But she’d misjudged him. If she wasn’t worth standing up for, even in the discovery stage of whatever this was, then fuck him.
    She swung open the door, grabbed her purse, and jumped from the truck. “Thanks for the ride,” she said right before she slammed the truck door and stomped off toward the driveway.
     
    REX PUNCHED THE steering wheel with a grunt. Damn it. Damn it. Damn it . This was so fucked up. He finally felt something for a woman—really felt something—and he’d fucked it up. When he’d seen her with that guy, it had triggered a massive protective urge that until then he’d thought belonged only to his family. When he kissed her, when that sweet tongue was stealing his brain cells lick by delicious lick, everything became fragmented. He wanted to touch her, taste her, and consume her, protect her, love her, and heal her in equal measure. And as he watched her stomp down to the barn, with only the moonlight leading her way, all those feelings radiated within him like little pinpricks. The divine feeling of being with her coalesced with the guilt of having been with her and left him watching the one person he wanted spiraling away out of reach.

Chapter Ten
    STUPID DIDN’T EVEN come close to