“You can,” I hissed, eeking out the last of her climax with a relentlessness that edged just shy of painful.
I could tell she enjoyed my ruthlessness by the weak moan that trembled through her throat under my grip.
When she lay panting and boneless, I carefully slid our wet hands from her pussy and used the edge of her towel to clean them before gently dabbing the terry cloth over her cum-slick thighs. I wanted to get on my knees and clean her up properly with my tongue, or better yet, have Sebastian here to do it for me, but years of control kept me from caving in.
She was utterly still as I tended to her but for her heaving chest and the hand she kept loosely circled around my wrist as if she was afraid I would let her go.
Tenderness filled me to the brim, threatening to split the seams of my skin.
More than making her come like that, so hard she was almost afraid of it, I loved that she trusted me to take care of her. It was a vulnerability I found difficult to admit to myself, so it meant all the more to have someone gift it to me.
I stroked her neck with the fingertips of my clean hand and traced up to the shell over her ear and the curve of her cheek. Her eyes fluttered open, slumberous and dark as Italian plums as she regarded me from under her lashes.
“What do I have to say so that we can do that every single day?” she murmured in a ravaged voice.
My own chuckle startled me, and another fierce tide of something warm and bright, like love, surged through. On its heels, fear swiftly followed.
Nothing good had ever come from me falling in love.
Why would it be different now, falling in love with a woman who was contractually obligated to be mine?
It occurred to me with a suddenness that felt like a ham-fist to the chin that I didn’t want to marry Linnea Kai because I had to.
I wanted her to be Linnea Meyers because she wanted to bear my name and make it mean something pure and honest again. Because she wanted to be my partner and advocate in this life and the next. Because she adored me, the too old for her curmudgeon with a closet full of skeletons and fears almost as big as the love in his heart.
I wanted her towantto take me on, not because she needed money for Miranda’s care, not because she wanted a career in Hollywood, not because she was a bleeding heart who—God forbid—felt badly for me.
If I were the moon, as Sebastian had so often inferred, I wanted her to be the sun reflecting light and warmth into my cold, dark life. I wanted her to give me the strength to pursue joy again, even if it came with consequences.
Just as I had feared she would from the moment I saw her, Linnea Kai had brought me back to life, and Christ, it was painful, but it was also bloody exhilarating.
Because I had found the will to desire things again.
I had remembered how to dream.
With her, even Sebastian’s impossible universe didn’t seem so out of sight.
I was standing before I realized it, stepping away from her as if backing away from a predator.
“Adam?” she said softly, totally unselfconscious, sprawled naked and cum-soaked on the chaise. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
I swallowed thickly and heard myself speak as if from underwater. “Like what?”
“Like I scare you,” she said softly as she sat up.
Even though she did not reach for me, I could sense she wanted to.
And if she touched me now, when everything I felt was seconds from bursting out beneath my stretched-tight, fragile skin, I didn’t think I would ever be the same again.
I took another step away, cleared my throat, and shoved my hands in the pockets of my linen pants.
“Wanting what you cannot have is terrifying,” I admitted with a smile that felt flat on my face. “Sometimes dreaming hurts.”
“It doesn’t have to,” she insisted, leaning forward earnestly. “If you’re brave enough to believe in them, they can come true. Miranda told me all my life I wasn’t good enough to act, and today, the Oscar-winning director Georges Gallegos called me to offer me a part in his next project. For years, I’ve fantasized about being bent into shape with rough hands and cool words by a man powerful enough to take care of my needs in the bedroom and the real world. When I needed your help with Miranda, you called in the cavalry and rode in like a white knight. Today, when I needed to be broken apart by pleasure to get out of my own head, you dismantled every thought until all I could hear was your voice and all I could see was you.”
She sucked in a deep breath. “Wanting something so badly it hurts doesn’t mean it will end in more pain. Especially when what you want—who you want—feels the very same way about you.”
“We’ve known each other for six weeks,” I countered. “You do not know me well enough to say that.”
