90 Days With the Man I Can't Have

The air in my loft was thick with the scent of turpentine and the electric, heavy ionized smell of the thunderstorm rattling the window-panes. I stood there, frozen, the flickering streetlights from the Newark alleyway casting long, skeletal shadows across the floorboards. I didn't breathe. I didn't move. I just stood there like a fool, like a girl who had finally stepped off a cliff and was waiting for the ground to shatter her bones.

​Because that is exactly what Josh looked like. He looked like the end of the world.

​He stood in the center of my studio, his massive frame dwarfing the half-finished canvases and the chaotic stacks of sketches. He was big and hard and scarred and mean. Muscles were everywhere, thick arms that looked like they could snap a man in half, broad shoulders that blocked out the light, and abs that looked like bricks stacked under skin.

Those dark, lethal veins ran down into the sharp V at his hips, leading lower to where the trousers barely held on.

​He just stared at me. His eyes cut through the dim light like a knife, sharp and cold and utterly uncompromising. That stare made my knees shake. It made my skin prickle and my thighs go sticky because it wasn't just the kind of stare two best friends give each other. It wasn't the look we had shared over takeout pizza or when he was helping me hang a heavy frame. This was the kind of stare a wolf gives his prey right before he takes a bite.

​My throat locked up. I was staring too hard, biting my lip until I tasted copper, feeling far too much for a man who didn't belong to me.

​With trembling fingers, I reached for the hem of my shirt. I pulled it over my head, letting it fall into a heap of discarded fabric on the dusty floor. I followed with my jeans until I was standing there in nothing but my black lace lingerie. I felt exposed, raw, and desperate. I crawled onto the edge of my bed, the silk sheets cool against my heated skin, before I stood back up and walked toward him. I leaned in, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird, and whispered in his ear. I told him to do all the things I knew he would never admit he thought about during our quiet moments. My lips parted. My breath came in short, shameful pants.

​His gaze dropped. He looked at the lace barely covering me, at the droplets of sweat clinging to my collarbone, at the shape of my breasts pushing up against the wire.

​And he smiled.

​It wasn't a nice smile. It wasn't a friendly one. It was cruel. Knowing. Dangerous. A smile that made me want to scream and run and stay all at the same time. I didn't move. I couldn't. My thighs trembled as the heat rolled off my skin like I