Pursuing My Rejected Luna by Cara Anderson novel Chapter 148

Chapter 148

Skye

I used to think desire was something other people had.

Not that I lacked it entirely-I understood it in theory, had felt versions of it at various points. But the particular kind I’d read about in the novels I’d been consuming since I was a teenager, the kind that lives in the body and doesn’t require coaxing or telling yourself that this is fine, this is enough-

I had filed that away. Not with grief, exactly. More with the pragmatism of someone who’s learned to want what’s available.

I had not expected to ever feel the kind of desire you read about in romance novels. I had not expected Nicolai. Case in point: earlier today, in his office.

I’d gone in to ask him something-I can’t remember now what it was. Something mundane. And what happened instead was that I ended up with my back against the wall and then on his desk, and his voice in my ear was low and filthy in the specific way he is when he’s past controlling anything, and we were-

I lose the thread of what I was about to think, consumed by the thought that this is now my reality, my new normal.

Nicolai and I are incandescent together. I’m not embarrassed by this observation-I’m past embarrassment with him, which is its own kind of revelation. I’ve had sex before. I was married for three years, I understand physically what the activity involves.

This is categorically different.

He’s demanding in bed in a way I didn’t know I wanted until I had it. Possessive in the way that makes you understand the word was invented specifically for this feeling. The things he says while he’s-

I stop trying to finish that thought. My face heats.

Three months ago I was seven months pregnant and hadn’t done this with anyone for the better part of a year and I thought that was fine, that was manageable. I was past this particular need.

I was wrong.

More accurately: I didn’t know what true desire actually felt like, arousal to the point you ache with need for the other person. Not until Nicolai showed me he’s more than capable of meeting that need any hour of any day. I’d been comparing desire to something entirely different and concluding they were the same thing.

They are not the same thing.

Outside of bed-and in his office, apparently, and once in the library stacks, with other people innocently browsing just a few aisles over, which I’ve decided I won’t be examining too closely-he’s exactly the same person.

Attentive. Patient. The one who gets up at 3 AM and handles Benji without being asked, who appears at my elbow with food when I’ve forgotten to eat, who reads my face and knows the difference between I need to talk and I need to be left alone for an hour.

The two versions of him aren’t in conflict. They’re just both him. And I’m the lucky girl who gets all of it, which is not something I’ve adjusted to completely.

I know it isn’t fair to compare the two and the past is best left in the past, but I can’t help thinking about Jaxon

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sometimes. Not in the way that suggests unfinished business-more in the way you think about something when you finally understand what it should have been and can see clearly what it wasn’t.

Something I don’t think can ever be undone.

Cara Anderson

Author

Thank you for reading!

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