Page 74 of Beneath the Quiet

No, not fragile: precious.

She opens her mouth again, but then closes it.

Something in my chest tightens, but I can’t put my finger on it. I don’t press, though. I know that some things aren’t mine to take yet.

“All right. We should probably talk about what just happened, but…”

“Not right now,” she agrees. “But please don’t make a fuss. I’m not going to change my mind about us. I needed a release from someone other than my own hand, and I got it. Thank you.”

My hands ache to grab her and kiss her, but I suppress the urge and push them into my back pockets.

“It was my pleasure. Truly.”

She glances down at my crotch, and her lips stretch in a wide smile. “Well, I can see that. Okay, I’m going now. Bye.”

She backs away from me, her eyes lingering on mine for a couple of steps. I raise my eyebrows at her, waiting for the question she seems to want to ask me, but instead, she turns around and sets off in a light jog, and before I know it, she’s left me alone.

I watch blindly, flashes of what we just did raging through me until I finally come unstuck from my spot. The last thing I need is for one of my employees to see me with sex hair and a big, sticky glob spattered on my jeans. I turn around, and without thinking too hard about what I just did, I head back into the main house.

But the taste of her skin stays in my mouth for the entire morning, and even though I shouldn’t, I keep trying to come up with an excuse to see her again.

I wasn’t lying when I told her I’m aching to taste her pussy, but now that I’ve gotten a glimpse into her fantasies about me, I’m yearning for more from her.

It’s not a matter of if it’ll happen anymore. It’s a matter of when.

Because there’s no way I’ve had my fill of Maeve yet.

It’s just sex, and now that she’s reassured me that her feelings about me haven’t changed, I’m determined to get her alone again. Sooner rather than later.

But later that night, when the house has settled and Katie has gone to bed, it’s not sex that’s on my mind. I stand at the kitchen sink longer than I need to, staring at nothing.

I was counting.

The words come back to me, soft and careful, as if she’d measured them before sharing them with me.

I dry my hands and put the mug away. Maeve had shared her anxiety with me as if it was ordinary, manageable, even, but it’s not really that that’s stuck with me like glue all day.

It’s that I’d found her in the middle of chasing an attack away, and the fact that the sound of my voice helped, even in a small way, is what shakes me.

She trusts me far more than I trust myself, and now that we’ve headed into deeper waters, all I can do is hope to pull myself out before we sink to the bottom.

Chapter Nineteen

Maeve

Imade a man come in his jeans.

Not by having to use my hands or my mouth on him.

Aidan came because I made him so turned on by grinding on his crotch that he couldn’t hold back.

I rode him to climax, and I’m not even a teeny, tiny bit embarrassed about it. Such a powerful feeling, and I haven’t felt that way before. I certainly never did with Colin.

Even now, days after I left Aidan that morning in his stables, I can’t stop thinking about how powerful he made me feel, but what’s more, he didn’t act strange afterwards.

He took care of me.

Even though he could have brushed me off right away, he didn’t, and that speaks volumes about his character.