“You’re singing my song,” he said. “I would love to wake up tomorrow and just be done with it all.”
“Right?” she said heavily. “I think the thing I’m mad at Aiden about is that he gave me more to deal with. And I just find that inconsiderate.”
She smiled and then started laughing. Not so much out of good humor, but that kind of hysteria that you felt when things really were just ridiculous. He was familiar. He stood up, leaned in, and picked her up off the chair, bringing her down onto his lap back in his chair.
She stopped laughing. She looked down at him, cupped his face. “I can make you forget for a little while.”
He could make them both forget. If there was one thing he could do, it was promise her a little bit of oblivion. He didn’t know about healing. He had never seen it in action, not in his life. His father had died a bitter old narcissist, his mother had died broken over a man who would never love her back.
Healing… He didn’t know if it was possible. He might like to fantasize about it, but he was never going to bet the farm on it, so to speak.
But a little bit of a break? A little bit of happiness, a little bit of pleasure, he had found that with her.
He was hard, the lush press of her thighs against him getting him there at record speed.
But he didn’t want to rush it.
He remembered when they had kissed out back at the barn. The way that it had thrilled him, just to explore her mouth.
But then, there had been a chance of somebody interrupting them. Hell, every time they’d been together, it had been a little bit of a risky situation.
One of the cabins in the middle of the day that many members of staff could access if they wanted to. The back of the barn. His truck up on a ridge.
Tonight, they were alone. For the whole night. Tonight, they were behind a locked door, in her private residence, and no one was going to come barging in.
He wanted to satiate himself. Indulge himself completely in her.
He traced the edge of her cheekbone, down toward her jaw, her chin, her lips. Then he kissed her. Slow and deliberate.
Like he had nothing better to do, because he didn’t.
“I can help you forget all your problems,” he whispered against her mouth.
“Please,” she said.
“It’s never been like this for me,” he said. “I’ve always…” He didn’t even know how to say it. Because he didn’t want to compare her to the other woman he’d been with. There was no deficit in those women. It was just that… It had been different for him. Something was different now. He couldn’t define it. It was chemistry, maybe, something that transcended basic sexual attraction and became something entirely more combustible.
It was something he didn’t have the vocabulary for. Not that that surprised him. He didn’t have the vocabulary for a whole lot of basic shit that he felt like he ought to have, but he wanted her.
“It’s never been like this,” he said, because it was all he could say.
“Not for me either,” she said.
She shifted on his lap, straddling him, her dress riding up her thighs, and then she gripped the bottom of the dress and pulled it up over her head, his mouth going dry as he looked at the way she filled out her lacy bra, her lush breasts spilling over the top of it. She was glorious.
Her beautiful red hair, her perfect figure, at least, perfect to him. There wasn’t a single thing on her body he would want different. But he had the bone-deep sense that if time, childbirth, life, changed that body, he would find it perfect then too.
He had never felt anything like that. That deep certainty.
It made his jaw hurt. Made him feel like he wanted to punch a hole in the wall, climb a mountain, fight a bear.
For her.
Wanted to fly back to New York and beat the ever-loving shit out of Aiden.
But he didn’t say any of that. Because it felt like it was too closely related to promises he knew he couldn’t make to things he had said he didn’t want.
To things he had been sure he didn’t want until right this moment.
