She shuddered out his name as he started to move, slow and deep, and with each surge, the sensations unfurling beneath his skin and throughout his chest tautened and deepened. It felt like drowning, in the best way possible. Pleasure saturated him, and as she craned her mouth to reach his, the sweetness of her exploding on his tongue was an aphrodisiac unlike any other he’d ever known. His climax began to build, too soon but unstoppable. And as Serena hit her peak, her cry the most joyous, breathless sound he’d ever heard as he delivered her to a world that was uniquely theirs, Caleb’s climax ripped through him, his roar of release drowning out the sounds of her fulfilment before he collapsed on top of her like a ship wrecked on the shore.
CHAPTER NINE
Serena was thefirst thing Caleb saw when he opened his eyes the next morning. Her face soft and beautiful in sleep, her lips curved with contentment. He would have been content to lie and watch her a while longer, but the warmth filling his chest and the stirrings that had absolutely nothing to do with sex were making his mind uneasy, so he turned away and slipped out from beneath the covers, careful not to wake her.
He didn’t regret last night, not at all, but entertaining thoughts of lazing away the morning in bed with her was not OK. Giving into them even less so. Just because she was now his wife didn’t mean he could abandon all of his usual practices; in fact, it probably made them even more important, especially with the way Serena could so easily get under his skin. He couldn’t do anything that encouraged her to believe that their marriage was now, or ever could be,more.
He didn’t want to feel deeper yearnings within himself either, not when those kinds of feelings only caused emotional chaos, the kind that had reigned over his childhood. He’d never been able to forget the long days and longer nights of agony that came from being deserted by his mother and all but ignored by his father—a pain that had felt it would never end.
He’d found a way to live that was chaos-free and he wasn’t going to abandon that now, not when the stakes were higher than ever with a child of his own coming into the world. So, he took himself for a swim, cleansing himself of all yearnings in the clear, warm water before settling into his office and turning his focus to work, ignoring the uncomfortable thoughts of Serena waking up alone after such an incredible night together.
He didn’t know how long he’d been burying himself in work when there was a small knock on the door, and looking up, he found Serena standing in the doorway, her sleep-tousled hair tumbling around her shoulders. She was wearing only his shirt. His heart thudded. ‘Are you busy?’ she asked before he even found his voice, his eyes too busy lingering on the line where the hem of his shirt met her slender thighs, his eyes drifting down her endless legs.
‘Just sending emails.’
‘They must be very important to be sending out the morning after you get married.’ She strolled towards him. ‘Considering you’re the one concerned with our marriage appearing real, I would have thought you’d realise that looks a little suspect. Working is definitely not what a man besotted with his new wife would do’ She came around to lean against the desk, her legs directly in his eyeline, and he had the sense she knew exactly the temptation she was. ‘Unless you’re really in here hiding?’
‘Why would I be hiding?’
There was a flash of insecurity in her eyes that he knew had been put there by him. ‘Because you regret what happened between us last night?’
‘No. Last night was incredible,’ he assured her, wanting so badly to touch her, but knowing that one touch would lead to another and another…and then he’d never be able to stop, so he dug his hands into his pockets instead.
‘So, you left bed at the crack of dawn because…?’
He took a breath, the answer an easy one because it was the truth. ‘Because we agreed to this being a marriage in name only, and I don’t know that blurring those lines any more than we did last night is the best idea.’
She absorbed that with a steady expression. ‘Because you’re worried that I won’t be able to separate sex and emotion, and I’ll get the wrong idea and end up hurt the way Charlotte was?’ she questioned astutely. ‘Or because you’re worried thatyou’llend up hurting again?’
‘What do you mean?’ he demanded, startled that she’d come so close to the truth he’d never exposed.
‘You were hurt by what happened too,’ she said softly. ‘Not in the same way, but you’ve carried the guilt and pain of it for years. It’s understandable that you wouldn’t want to feel that way ever again.’
‘You’re right. I don’t,’ he admitted. He didn’t want to feel anything. That was preferable to the everything he’d felt as a boy, the constant agitation of his heart, the huge cavern in his chest and the endless yearning that had driven him crazy until he’d shut it down by cutting himself off and removing love from the equation. For good.
‘Then let me assure you that’s not going to happen.’ She met his eyes with firm insistence. ‘I’m not going to let it happen. My eyes are open to what this is, Caleb. What our marriage is. What last night was. And it’s enough for me. I don’t want anything more, anything real.’
‘You don’t?’ he asked, surprised, because he knew that at one point in time Serena had known such a happy life. He’d seen it when she talked about it, and in his mind, it was natural that she’d want to have that again. It was what most women wanted, wasn’t it?
‘Maybe at some point I did. I can see how tempting it would have been to recreate what I’d known when I was small and I had my parents. But a lot has happened since then,’ she said with a sad tilt of her lips, ‘and I know now that anything real comes with risk, and I don’t want that. I don’t want to lose anyone else. I can’t go through that again.’ He watched as she touched her hand to her stomach without realising it. As familiar as he was with loss, and as much empathy as he had for her, Caleb knew he really couldn’t comprehend how great her fear of loss must be, not after experiencing so much of it, but this was the first time he’d ever heard her allow it to define her. As pleased as he was to hear it, because it suited their arrangement—even meant he could bend the rules a little—it also made him sad. ‘Not after my parents and Lucas and the miscarriage. Those days worrying that I’d lost Kit and Alexis reminded me of how much I don’t want that risk in my life.’
‘Lucas?’ he questioned, the name having stood out to him. ‘Who… Was he…?’
‘The father of the baby I lost, yes. Also, my boyfriend.’
‘You didn’t mention him before,’ he said tightly, not liking the thought of the faceless stranger from her past.
‘For good reason.’ Serena sighed. ‘He took off after I told him I was pregnant, crushing my heart in the process. It was a week later that I miscarried.’ The anger that Caleb felt on her behalf was extreme and overrode all need for distance, and he reached out to her, sliding an arm around her waist. ‘I think that’s why I was so hard on you when you first showed up. I was projecting, expecting you to do the same. But I was wrong. You’re a thoroughly better man than he ever was.’ Her hands splayed against his chest; her amber eyes warm as they looked into his. ‘I know you’ve spent a long time not believing that, and I know that I don’t know who you were back then—maybe you were everything you say—but I know who you are now. Someone good and generous and protective. A man who does the right thing, who takes care of the people in his life.’
‘Always. I’m not going to walk away, Serena.’ He was vociferous. Wanting—needing—her to believe it, to never be plagued by that fear with him. ‘I want you to know that and trust it. We’ve both had to endure the pain of that and I’ll never do that to our child.’
Caleb’s words caused Serena’s heart to stutter. ‘Someone left you too.’ She saw his frustration that he’d spoken without thinking. His hand dropped from where it had settled and he retreated a step, but she wasn’t going to let him push her away. He’d tried that once already this morning, leaving her alone in bed, and for a moment it had worked, before her understanding of him had kicked in and she’d realised he was trying to reset after breaching his own lines. She knew how important boundaries were to Caleb.He told himself it was about keeping others safe, but she sensed it was as much about protecting himself. And maybe this was why. ‘Who?’
‘My mother. She walked out the door one day and never came back.’
Serena’s mouth dropped open. She knew his mother hadn’t been at the wedding. He hadn’t told her, but she’d realised it on the day, and whilst she had intended to ask, there’d been so many other things clamouring for attention.
‘How old were you?’
