Free Strung Out by Kaitlin Maitland

toes.
    “I could spend a lifetime making love to you and never get enough.” Erik pulled back to see her expression.
    She didn’t respond, pulling his face back toward hers. Kissing was better than talking, better than the truth.
    * * *
    Hours passed and melted inky darkness into the pale light of dawn. Talia didn’t sleep. She was afraid to close her eyes, afraid to let go of the moment and the man who didn’t belong to her and never would.
    His body was long and lean and warm beside hers, his breathing steady and deep. Talia watched him—the elegant arch of his brows, the aristocratic line of his nose, his mouth losing the cynical half smile in the relaxation of sleep. She wondered idly if he ever completely dropped his guard when awake and suspected he did not. Erik Aasen couldn’t afford vulnerability. Not in the boardroom and not in his personal life. He was a man who would do the right thing for all the wrong reasons and the wrong thing for all the right ones. An enigma, a puzzle—Erik was a walking contradiction.
    He stirred, stretching his long legs and reaching out for Talia. She lifted her hand, their fingers lacing smoothly together as if they woke up in the same bed every morning.
    “Did you sleep?” he murmured.
    “No.”
    Talia watched the pale light reveal Erik’s strong features as he came awake.
    “Did I keep you up?”
    “No.”
    He rolled to his side, propping himself up on one elbow and lifting one dark brow in question. “Don’t you have anything else to say this morning?”
    “If your job is boring, why do you do it?”
    Both brows lifted in surprise. Talia watched the expressions flit over his features as he tried to decide what to say in response to such an odd question.
    “It’s my job, Talia. It’s what I do.”
    She considered his answer. There was some truth to it, of course. A job was just that. It was a place you went and a thing you did in order to finance the things in life that meant something.
    Weak rays of sunlight peeked around the edges of Talia’s blinds, illuminating Erik’s troubled expression. Though they lay only inches away from each other, the distance seemed a vast chasm given their circumstances.
    “It might be what you do, Erik, but if you marry Courteney, you’re letting it become who you are.”
    Anger gathered like storm clouds on his face. His green eyes snapped with electricity. “I have a responsibility to see this merger through to the end.”
    “To whom?” Talia challenged. “Your shareholders? Your employees? Or how about to Courteney? Would she really want this relationship if she knew how you felt about it? How is this fair to her, let alone yourself?”
    Erik remembered Courteney’s ruthless determination to become an Aasen. She hardly deserved Talia’s consideration. “It’s not for you to say. This is my life, my decision, and my choice.”
    His voice was loud in the small studio apartment. Talia rose abruptly before the paper-thin walls had absorbed the sound. Grabbing a quilt from the foot of the bed, she pulled it around her naked body.
    It was cool in front of the windows. A shiver danced down her spine, and she drew the worn quilt closer. The ancient bedsprings groaned behind her. She braced for the sound of Erik’s bare feet on the floor. No doubt he’d pull on his clothes and leave. After all, he was right. It was his choice to make.
    Talia was nothing but a one-night stand who had overstayed her welcome in his life.
    “I don’t want to fight.”
    The murmured words drifted over her right shoulder. An odd sense of relief settled in when she realized he had no intention of leaving. She should’ve wanted him to go. But a part of her was determined to make him see the wrongness in pursuing the ridiculous merger marriage. And so far that meant showing him what would be missing in a life spent with the wrong woman.
    She turned, drinking in his intoxicating scent. “Aren’t you cold?”
    “Some parts of me more than