“What do you want?” she asked.
He stared at her a moment longer, his gaze stroking over her as surely as if he caressed her with his hand. “You, Ren. I want you.”
Her eyes widened in surprise. If she weren’t so flabbergasted, she’d laugh. Lucas. Cole. Herself. All apparently blunt people who didn’t play coy games and pretend they were unaffected.
So many things were on the tip of her tongue, but in the end, none of them mattered and all were better left unsaid. They solved nothing. So instead, she spoke a simple truth.
“Even if I wanted such a thing, I belong to another man. I don’t just belong in the symbolic sense of having a relationship. He owns me. I am his possession.”
She watched to see if he so much as blinked. He didn’t. But then perhaps he too had followed the path they’d struck out on together all those years ago. He was after all in a private club for just such practices.
“You said ‘even if I wanted.’ Do you want it, Ren?”
She frowned. Again, she hadn’t expected that approach.
“No,” she replied honestly. “We’re two very different people now, Cole. We can’t just pick up because we once shared something special. You can’t just walk back into my life after ten years and expect me to open my arms.”
Cole’s eyes glittered and his jaw tightened at her response. “Tell me this: If there was no Lucas, if you didn’t belong to another man, would you be holding me at arms’ length right now or would you be willing to see if there was still a spark between us?”
She’d already been honest. There was no point in fudging the truth now. She closed her eyes, breathed out and then reopened them again, hoping she sounded steady and calm. “Maybe? I can’t really answer that. My loyalty lies elsewhere. The point is there is a Lucas. I’m not free. This conversation is pointless.”
“What about your heart?” he asked in a quiet voice. “Where does that lie, Ren?”
She held up her hands. “Enough, Cole. Nothing good can come of this. It was nice to see you. The years have been good to you. I would never be disloyal to Lucas. He owns me. I’m happy to be his. I’m his by choice. My choice. There is no other place I want to be more.”
“I’m glad to hear that what belongs to me can’t be swayed by the pretty words of others,” Lucas drawled.
Ren jumped, took a step back and stared over Cole’s shoulder to see Lucas leaning against the opposite wall. How long had he been there? And why did she feel so damn guilty?
She rubbed her hands down her jeans, dismayed at how this evening had turned out. She simply hadn’t been prepared to see Cole again after so long and definitely not to be bombarded by memories of them together and his bluntness about wanting …What did he want? It all sounded so crazy. They see each other again, in some sex club, and he wants her back just like that?
She pushed forward and frowned as she automatically went to Lucas’s side. He slid an arm around her but it was a gesture of support, not a movement meant to signal his possession to another man. She appreciated that. At the moment she didn’t feel like being in the middle of some pissing match. She needed comfort and Lucas had sensed it.
As she stared back at Cole, he looked …tortured. Again, why? None of this made sense. Unless…?
“You knew I’d be here tonight, didn’t you? Did you plan this? How did you know? You weren’t surprised to see me. This didn’t come out of the blue at all.”
Lucas’s hand tightened on her upper arm and he pulled her in closer, as if to tell her not to worry. But he too waited for Cole’s response, his dark eyes staring intently at the man who’d boldly encroached on his territory.
Maybe he was curious. Ren wasn’t entirely certain why Lucas was allowing this to go further. At times he was absolutely unreadable. This was one of those times. She didn’t sense that he was angry. She didn’t want him angry.
Cole’s lips drew into a firm line. His jaw grew tight, which only accentuated the strong lines of his face. Gone were the traces of youth. He was a formidable man. One that she’d absolutely be drawn to. That promise of dominance. The quiet strength in those intense eyes.
She’d had a taste. Just a taste. Mixed with youthful innocence. It had been bittersweet. She’d loved him so much, but they’d been too young to know what they were getting into.
“I asked Damon to invite you,” he said by way of admission. “I saw you the other night when I was eating with Damon and Serena. I knew I had to see you again. I couldn’t walk away…”
Like he had before.
The words lay unspoken and heavy between them. The air was electric, the silence unnerving. She swallowed but couldn’t rid herself of the sudden knot that was closing her throat.
“And yet you knew she belonged to me,” Lucas said mildly.
“She was mine first.”
Lucas nodded. “That may be so, but you’re her past. I’m her future.”
Ren glanced up in surprise but Lucas admonished her with a quick squeeze of her arm. It was the first time he issued any sort of order since they’d arrived. He wanted her silence.
She lowered her gaze and his grip slowly loosened.
Cole’s eyes glittered in challenge. “So you say. But I’ve not heard Ren say the same.”
Lucas studied him a moment, his expression odd. “Interesting that you’d make such a distinction. As the one who owns her, body and soul, the two are the same. What I say is what she says. Clearly you are a man of similar tastes and yet you’d expect her to refute my word. Would you tolerate the same if she were yours?”
“I would want her to be happy,” Cole said from behind tightly clenched teeth. “Even if it wasn’t with me.”
“In that we are agreed,” Lucas said. “Ren’s happiness is of utmost importance to me.”
“Then allow her to make the choice.”
Lucas smiled. “She already has.”
Cole stared at Lucas, the man who owned Ren. It wasn’t an alien concept. It could be argued that Damon owned Serena, although she owned his heart, body and soul as well. He was hers every bit as much as she was his.
He’d never given the idea of ownership much thought. It was something that over the years he’d contemplated. He’d seen. He’d experienced. Though he’d never owned a woman. He’d never been close enough to one to feel proprietary over. He’d only ever wanted to possess one woman.