But here he was, drowning in it. In her.
A missing piece. To his life.
To his heart.
His vision began to blur, his body shaking, wracked with the need for release as Faith used her hands and her mouth on him. As she tempted him far beyond what he could handle.
He looked down at her, and their eyes met. He saw desire. Need.
And trust.
She trusted him. This beautiful angel trusted him like no one ever had.
And it pushed him right over the edge.
He didn’t pull away from her, and she didn’t stop, swallowing down his release before moving up to his mouth again, scattering kisses over his abs and his chest as she went. He claimed her lips, pressing his hands between her thighs, smoothing his fingers over her clit and pushing two deep inside her as he brought her to her own climax.
She clung to him, looking dazed, filled with wonder.
Yet again, because of him. She was a gift. Possibly the only gift he’d ever been given in all his life.
But Faith should have been a gift for another man. A man who knew how to treasure her.
Levi didn’t know how to do that.
But he knew how to hold on.
She clung to him, breathing hard, her fingernails digging into his shoulders. “I don’t want to go home,” she said softly.
“Then stay with me.”
She looked up at him, her face questioning.
“Yes,” he confirmed. “Stay with me.”
Thirteen
It was easy to let time slowly slip by, spending it in a bubble with Levi. It was a lot less easy for Faith to hide where she was spending all her nights and, frankly, half her days. If her brothers weren’t suspicious of her behavior, Poppy certainly was.
There was no way she could get her unusual comings and goings past the eagle eye of her sister-in-law, and Poppy was starting to give Faith some serious side eye whenever Faith came into the office late, or left a little early.
Faith knew the reckoning was coming. She was going to have to deal with whatever was between her and Levi, and soon. Because the fact of the matter was, whatever they had agreed on in the beginning, she no longer wanted this relationship to be temporary.
The two of them had lapsed into a perfect routine over the past few weeks. When she wasn’t at work, she was at his house, and often sketching.
Working sometimes late into the night while she watched him sleep, more and more ideas flowing through her mind.
She had begun to think of his new house like a bird’s nest.
To go with the bird that he’d tattooed on his body. A place for that soaring creature to call home. A home that rested effortlessly in the natural environment around it, and seemed to be made from the materials of the earth.
Of course, maybe she was pondering all of that to the detriment of her other work. And that was a problem. She felt...so removed from her life right now. From everything she was supposed to care about.
She cared about Levi.
About what lay on the other side of all of this. About the changes taking place inside of her.
She should care more about her upcoming interview withArchitectural Digest. She should care more about a television spot she was soon going to be filming in the office. One that was intended as a way to boost the participation of young girls in male-dominated fields, like architecture.
