Page 80 of Temptation
And he…dammit, he hoped. Maybe that was the most dangerous part of it all. The hope. The growing hope. I want more. I want to have more in this world. I’m tired of looking at everyone else, at seeing them happy. He wanted what Atlas Bennett had. A home. A family.
A wife who loved him.
“Preston?”
Right. She was talking about his bedroom. “I want you in my bed.” Hell. Wrong words. He should try to be less growly, too. Tone things down so he didn’t scare her. Considering their last twenty-four hours, though, Sloane had to be plenty terrified as it was. “My bedroom. It’s the biggest bedroom in the house. Thought it would make you feel less…” He trailed away. She’d just reached out and touched him. Put her hand on his chest.
“Less trapped?”
“Yeah.” He wasn’t wearing a shirt. Just boxers. His dick was saluting hard in those boxers. Talk about being a jackass. She’d come down probably because she was scared, but he’d taken one look at her and his dick had been all…Want her. Need her.
He backed away from Sloane.
Her hand fell. And when her hand fell…her eyes darted down, too.
Great. Yep. That’s my giant dick shoving toward you, angel.
Her gaze had locked on his dick as he tented the boxer shorts. She bit her lower lip. Tilted her head.
He waited for her to run back up the stairs. She didn’t.
I practically confessed to murder in the back of the Range Rover. Now she can see all I want to do is to fuck her.
And yet, she stayed.
“I can’t sleep up there.” A husky confession from Sloane. “The covers feel too tight. The dark too intense. I keep turning on the lights, but it didn’t help.” A soft sigh. “I went looking for you because when I was held in your arms before, I felt safe.”
He wasn’t safety. If she was looking for that, she’d come to the wrong man.
“I went to the room next door. I knocked. You weren’t inside.” A slight wince as she admitted, “I peeked. When I didn’t see you in there, I figured that you’d come down here because maybe you felt trapped, too. You came down because you wanted to stare out of your big windows and feel free.” Her gaze shifted to peer beyond him. At the night. The storm. “What kept you up tonight? Did you feel trapped, too?”
It was nearing 2 a.m. Exhaustion should fill him. It didn’t. His body still churned with adrenaline even as the nightmare image of Sloane in that coffin played on repeat in his head.
Won’t happen. Won’t let it happen. I will find him. I will stop him.
“Preston?” She cleared her throat. Her attention had shifted back to his face. There weren’t a lot of lights on in the den. Just soft glows from a few lamps. Enough illumination that he could see her. “You are really not chatty tonight, are you?”
As a rule, he didn’t tend to be particularly chatty.
Sloane pushed a lock of hair behind her ear. “Bad dreams?” A pause. “Bad memories?”
“Both.” Yeah, that hadn’t counted as a chatty answer, but he didn’t exactly want to say, Angel, I dreamed you were dead. I dug you up, the dirt clumping beneath my hands, and when I got to you, you were cold and still. I was too late. And I knew then that the bastard had finally succeeded in breaking me because I could feel the darkness reaching out to swallow me whole.
“Want to talk to me about them?” Sloane asked softly. “The dreams?”
Fuck, no.
“Or the memories? It can help to talk to someone about them. Someone you trust.”
He rocked back on his bare heels. “Ah, saying that as a psychologist, are you? Offering me some talk therapy?”
“No, I’m not saying it as a psychologist. I’m saying it as your friend.”
Low laughter came from him. “I don’t think we are friends.”
“Careful,” she chided. “You’ll hurt my feelings.”
“We aren’t friends, Sloane.”
