Lost In Me (Here and Now) (6 page)

After I wash my hair, dry off, and put on my pajamas, I lock the door and pad to bed with my phone in my hand. When I climb in, I pull up the text messages on my phone and enter Max’s name.

Hanna:
I hate that you had to leave when you did.

Max:
You and me both. Are you okay?

Hanna:
I am now. Took a bath and imagined how things could have gone if my mom hadn’t shown up.

Max:
Want to tell me about it?

Hanna:
The bath? It was what you’d expect. Hot. Wet.

Max:
You’re killing me.

Hanna:
That’ll teach you to choose walking my mom to her car over finishing things with me.

Max:
Lesson learned.

I wake up to someone climbing into bed next to me, hot, hard muscle cozying up behind me.

I blink away sleep. Max is in my bed and I want to enjoy it, enjoy him, but sleep has such a tight hold on me I can hardly keep my eyes open. I snuggle as close to him as I can get, but sleep is already tugging me back down.

“Couldn’t stay away?” I murmur in the darkness.

“You know I can’t,” he whispers against my ear. His voice is different somehow. Deeper? Maybe sleepy? I don’t have time to think about it because I’m wrapped up in his heat, his bare chest against my back, one of his hands right between my breasts, and I can’t fight it when my dreams suck me back in. But somehow, with his heat against me and his arms around me, my fitful dreams fade away and I don’t just sleep. I rest.

When I wake again, the room is still dark, but Max’s mouth is doing delicious things to the side of my neck. I arch against him and am greeted by the hard length of his erection against my ass. I have to bite my lip at the thrill that rushes through me. Not only can I do that to him, but he wanted me enough that he had to come back tonight.

Under my shirt, his fingertips skim the underside of my breasts, and a soft moan slips from my lips. He cups my breast in his hot hand and grazes his callused palm against my nipple, toys and teases until it’s hard and tight under his hand and I am rocking back into him instinctively.

“Jesus, I missed you so much.” His voice sounds funny, but I hardly have time for the thought to register before he’s squeezing my nipples, sending electric jolts of pleasure from my breasts and right up through my center. His touch is harder than it was earlier. Rougher. But I like it. He’s so good at this. He knows exactly how to touch me, exactly how much pressure I like. I wouldn’t want him to ever stop touching my breasts if it weren’t for this nearly painful ache that’s been pulsing between my legs since we were interrupted in my living room—the ache my own touch couldn’t quite ease.

I circle my hips and rub my backside against his erection. Thick and wild arousal buzzes through me, electric and sharp with its intensity. He wants me as much as I want him.

“Touch me,” I whisper into the darkness. “I need you to touch me.”

He groans against my neck and then his fingers are dipping into the waistband of my sleep pants.

I turn in his arms just as his hand meets the hot and needy place between my thighs. Our mouths touch in the darkness, and something niggles at the back of my mind. Something’s changed between last night and now. Does he smell different or—

The thought disintegrates as he slides a finger inside me. I can’t believe how slick and wet I am. Except that this is Max and I need his touch.

I rock against him, letting him touch me the way I touched myself in the bath. Only this is hotter. Sweeter. More intense. Not just because it’s him. It’s almost as if he knows what I like better than I do. His finger moves inside me and his teeth nip at my neck almost painfully. But I like it. I want more of this unbridled lust, more of his expert touch.

He withdraws his finger and replaces it with two, stretching me in a way that has my body pulsing around him in response.

“Yes,” I whisper. I want this. Need it.

His thumb finds my clit and his fingers curl.

“Oh God…” Am I a screamer? I bite my lip, but holy shit, I can’t—

“Let me hear you scream,” he growls in my ear, his stubble scraping at the tender skin of my neck. “Let me feel you pulse around my fingers as you come.”

I curl my nails into his forearm, not to stop him, but because this pleasure inside me is so intense I have to do something, put this energy somewhere.

His other hand slides up my side and squeezes right at the bruise on my ribs. Pain vibrates through me, and I cry out.

“Hanna?” He pulls away and clicks on the light.

I’m still wincing at the pain from my manhandled bruise when I look at him through squinted eyes.

And then I scream.

I shove the man off me as hard as I can. My mind gropes for the lessons I learned in the personal defense class I took in college. I bring up my knee, aiming for his balls.

He lets out an airy
oomph,
and I flail, backing as far away from him as I can get. I fall off the bed, and the impact of my already-battered body slamming into the floor has me crying out.

“Jesus, Hanna!” the man—who is definitely not Max—says from the bed. “What the fuck was that for?”

Oh God. He knows my name.

I’m trembling.

My phone is on the bedside table, and I scramble to get to it before he can take it away.

“I’ll call the police!” I warn, holding the phone up like it’s a weapon.

The man on the bed is white-faced and stricken and looking at me like I’ve lost my mind.

“You can’t just come into a woman’s house and get into her bed.” Shit. Now I’m trying to reason with a sex offender. Jesus. But he’s just sitting there. Is that
normal
?

His expression goes from confused to desolate as he skims his eyes over my bruised face. “Damn. What happened to you, angel?”

I fumble with my phone, pressing the button on the side and trying to get it to light up. Nothing. It’s dead. Why didn’t I charge it before I fell asleep last night?

He pushes off the bed, and I back into a corner, arms wrapped around myself. “Leave. Please.”

He holds up his hands and takes a step toward me. “Hanna, baby. Tell me what happened. Tell me—”

I press my body as close to the wall as I can. I should have locked myself in the bathroom or something. I am one of those too-dumb-to-live heroines you see in horror movies. Especially since the thing keeping me here—keeping me from running to
safety
—is the hurt on his face. I’ve always been the kind of person who tries to make people happy, but this is ridiculous.

Think, Hanna
. Okay, I’ll need a description for the cops. Tall—taller than Max, maybe—messy dark hair, an Incredible Hulk tattoo on his right shoulder, some numbers tattooed above his left pec. God, is he an ex-con? Don’t convicts get numbers tattooed on themselves?

He steps closer, and a shudder runs through me.

“Please don’t hurt me.” I sink to the floor and cross my arms in front of my face.

His gaze catches on my left hand, and his jaw goes hard. “I see.” He backs off and grabs something off the floor. Then he’s tugging a shirt over his head. It falls into place and covers that amazing body.

Amazing body?
What the eff is wrong with me?

As stupid as it is, I don’t believe this man is here to hurt me. There’s nothing intimidating about his body language, and even though his face has gone hard and angry, there’s no violence in his eyes.

He grabs his jeans. “You could have told me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” My voice cracks.

Jeans unbuttoned and half up his hips, he’s heading toward the door. Stupidly, I follow him. My hands are shaking, my head spinning.

He grabs the doorknob and goes still, but he doesn’t look at me. “When I was touching you just now”—he swallows—“you thought I was…”

“I thought you were my fiancé.” The whisper seems to swell in the small space and vibrate off the walls.

He punches the wall beside the door. “You and Max have a nice life.” Then he’s leaving, slamming the door behind him and making the whole room rattle. And me right along with it.

“S
O DID
Max stay over last night?” Lizzy sets a steaming mug of black coffee in front of me and stirs cream into her own, all the while avoiding my gaze.

“Can I have some of that?”

“Cream? As in, empty calories? For healthier-than-thou Hanna?”

I’ve been drinking coffee since I was sixteen, and I’ve been taking cream in it for just as long. I try a sip without and shake my head. My memory loss apparently includes how to enjoy black coffee. “Yes, please.” I snag the cream before she can make any more comments.

We’re at a table in the front of my bakery, the OPEN sign glowing into the darkness of Main Street.

I convinced myself not to call her last night. I’d wanted to. I’d been confused and scared, and the most natural instinct had been to call Liz. After the man left my apartment, I ran to find my phone charger and plug in my phone. I stared at the screen as it came to life, but I kept thinking of the way the man’s face had changed when his gaze landed on my ring. My mind kept repeating the deep rumble of his voice as he’d said,
“You and Max have a nice life.”

It wasn’t confusion or fear that made me decide not to call her. As I sank to the edge of my bed and settled my head in my hands, adrenaline still hummed through my veins, but the frantic, clawing fear was gone. In its place boiled red-hot
shame
.

“So, Max?” Lizzy asks. She holds up her hands. “Not that it’s my business.”

There’s something different in our relationship. We could always say anything to each other, though we often didn’t have to. An exchanged glance was usually enough to let her know how I was feeling. But there’s a rift between us now. I can sense it even if I can’t explain it. I noticed first at the hospital—not so much by the way she acted when she was around, but more because of how often she
wasn’t
around. I kept expecting her to be the one coming into my room to keep me company, but nine times out of ten, it was someone else.

All my life, people have asked me what it’s like to be a twin. They want me to explain our connection. Trying to explain to someone what it’s like to have a twin sister is like trying to explain what it’s like to have a pulse. I don’t know any other way. All I know is that her smile is attached to my heart. I float when she’s happy, and when she’s sad, my world is a puzzle with a missing piece.

But right now that connection is gone. I want to blame the amnesia, but I’m pretty sure that’s just the optimism thinking.

“Max didn’t stay,” I say cautiously.

She rolls her eyes and mutters something I can’t quite make out. “
Goody two-shoes
,” maybe? She wouldn’t call me that if she knew I woke up to another man in my bed. “Any progress with your memory?”

I shake my head. “Not yet. Patience, right?” Patience. I’m engaged to marry the man of my dreams, who I might or might not have been cheating on. Waiting for my memories to return should be a piece of cake.

“Well, patience isn’t going to run this bakery,” Liz mutters. “In the meantime, I’d better bring you up to speed.”

She gives me a tour of my bakery. The front area is small but serviceable. It has four tables and a bar along the wall with outlets. “So people who are working on their laptops don’t hog the tables,” Lizzy explains. The glass cases in the front feature everything from freshly baked Italian bread and croissants to cupcakes and fresh pastries.