Seduce Me Tonight by Kristina Wright

Only I had more of a conscience than he did and I guess you did, too, or you would have come after me for more.’
    ‘He told me he was done,’ Jason said. ‘Every time I caught him talking up some chick in a bar or getting a phone number from some file clerk, he said that was the last one.’
    I nodded. ‘I know.’
    ‘And how was I supposed to come to you, after what I’d done, and tell you what he was doing?’
    ‘You should have.’
    He pushed back his chair, the legs scraping loudly on the tile floor. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you knew?’ he asked. ‘I felt like shit for not telling you, for taking advantage of you that night, for not being fully committed to my marriage because –’ He broke off there, shaking his head the whole time.
    ‘Because?’ I asked softly, knowing the answer to this question too. ‘Because you were in love with me, the way I was in love with you, the way we were both in love with Randy. And he could hurt me, and he could hurt you, but we couldn’t hurt him. So we pretended it never happened, but you could never fully commit to your marriage because you were in love with me and I could never leave Randy because I did love him despite his flaws, but also because the only man I truly wanted was married to someone else.’
    He stared at me. Just stared. ‘Yeah. That.’
    ‘I love you, Jason. I always have. I married the wrong man.’
    He’d already pushed his chair away from the table, so it was one quick move for him to stand and pull me from my chair. There was nothing awkward about the way I fitted into his arms this time, maybe because there was nothing between us now. Not regrets, not questions, not the past, not Randy. It was just us now. The way it always should have been.
    He kissed me hard this time, his lips angling across mine like they were meant to be there, nothing soft and tentative about him. He was the SEAL he was trained to be – no,
born
to be – and he knew all the intel about what I was offering and how to meet my needs.
    I kissed him back the way I’d been fantasising for the past fifteen years. Not the way I had that one fateful night when we’d gotten drunk on much cheaper wine and tumbled into his bed in a crappy little apartment in San Diego. Not tentative and nervous, not guilty or lonely. No, I kissed him back like a woman who has tasted the world and knows what she wants. This time I was going to get it, come high or hell water. I kissed him with years of pent-up passion and hundreds of unrealised sexual fantasies pent up in a body that had gotten softer with age, but not less passionate. I kissed him like a woman who was available, attainable and willing, because I was all of those things. For him and only him.
    We made out like teenagers in the middle of the kitchen floor. I braced my hand against his chest and pushed him back, giggling. ‘We need to take this elsewhere. My neighbours can see in my kitchen windows.’
    ‘So? They won’t be watching.’
    I thought about looking out that very same window just the night before and catching a glimpse of Rachel and Nathan going at it on the counter in their kitchen. The fact that they’re about ten years older than me wasn’t the shocking part – the shocking part was they had just gotten divorced and were in the process of moving out. Lust and love are a powerful thing when they collide – earth-shattering and all-encompassing. Unforgettable.
    ‘Let’s go to the bedroom anyway,’ I said, my cheeks flushing hotly at the idea of being watched by anyone. My passion was for Jason only.
    ‘Whatever the lady wants,’ he said as he started walking me backwards into the foyer and toward the stairs. ‘Bedroom upstairs?’ he mumbled against my lips.
    ‘Yes,’ I gasped back as his hands found my breasts and tweaked my nipples through my blouse. ‘Upstairs, end of the hall.’
    ‘This house is too damned big and I’ve waited too damned long,’ he said, pushing me up against the wall in the