Page 21 of Strict Confidence (Rochester Trilogy 2)
My cock hardens. The sweet sleepy scent of her, the warm softness—all of it makes hunger tighten in my body. I want to kiss every dark thought. I want to fuck away her nightmares. I settle for pulling back with a businesslike nod. “You were having a bad dream.”
She reaches for me. Her hand pauses in the air, halted by every barrier between us. She’s so much younger than me. Far too innocent for the images flashing through my mind. She wants comfort, not sex, but she’s too naive to know the difference.
Maybe I’m naive, too.
A heavy beat runs through my veins. Take her. Mark her. Make her mine. I’ve walked away from million dollar deals, but it feels impossible to walk away from her. She’s a siren. I’ll throw myself against the jagged cliffs, turning the ocean pink with my blood.
Her hand hovers in the air. Indecision. Uncertainty.
I’m holding my breath. Holding it as she reaches for me. Her knuckles brush my cheek. There’s a faint rasp against the bristles. “I know you don’t want to have sex,” she says.
And I have to hold back the laugh. The hysterical laugh. The howl of denial. I don’t want to have sex with her? It’s the only thing I can think about. I need it more than I need air.
A breath whooshes out of her. “Can you hold me?”
Can I hold her without fucking her? I’m not sure. It’s a request of purity, but there’s nothing pure about my thoughts. Walk away while you still can. Too late for that. I press my face into her hand, breathing in the salt scent of her skin, pressing a kiss to the fluttery pulse at her wrist. How can I turn away from her when she needs something, anything?
This has nothing to do with Beau Rochester. That’s what I tell myself. I’m a warm body. A temporary cure for the loneliness and the fear. So I slide beneath the floral coverlet. Her body curls into my arms as if she was made to be held by me.
I rest my chin on the top of her head, my eyes wide open in the dark. How the hell am I going to walk away? How can I live without holding her every second of every goddamn day?
“I’ll hold you until you fall asleep,” I mutter, knowing that I’ll have to leave.
“Thank you,” she whispers, her breath hot against my chest.
Dread unfurls in my stomach. This was how the fire started. I lost myself in her and let my guard down. If I gave in and touched her, or worse, slept the night with her in my arms, we’d be in danger again. Maybe not tonight or tomorrow night, but it would only be a matter of time.
When did I learn that love meant danger?
Before the fire. Before Paige’s parents drowned. No, I learned it as a child, when I was getting my ass kicked behind the elementary school. When I coughed up my own tooth, when I fought so hard even Joe Causey, the bully two years older and a good fifty pounds heavier, backed down, my brother watching in dark fascination.
Jane moves in my arms, restless. She’s seeking something. Comfort? Safety? My primitive brain thinks she’s seeking pleasure, and I’m damned well ready to give it to her.
“What was your nightmare about?” I ask. It’s a cruel question. A trick question, because there’s nothing guaranteed to splash cold water on my lust more than hearing her fear.
“You,” she whispers, and I go still in shock.
There’s true tragedy in her past. Abuse and hardship. We barely made it out of a goddamn inferno, but it’s not those things she dreams about. “Me?”
“You were angry at me.”
Angry because she almost died in the fire. Angry because I couldn’t save her. There’s no air in my lungs. It feels like I’ve been punched in the stomach. It hurts worse than anything Joe Causey could ever do to me. “Sweetheart.”
“I couldn’t leave you.”
A shudder runs through my body. “God, sweetheart. Of course you couldn’t. It was too much to ask of you, living with that knowledge. And it was too much to ask of me, watching you burn. It was a goddamned unholy night, both of us ruined. Forgive me, forgive me.”
“Yes,” she says in a broken whisper. “Yes. Yes. Yes.” She should be terrified of my guilt-drenched ramblings, but she seems to understand. She moves as if to get closer, though it hardly feels possible. She’ll climb inside me. She’ll burrow under my skin.
I hold her as tight as I did in the fire, my fingers probably leaving bruises. There are no flames. No falling ash. Only the bone-deep certainty that if I don’t hold on, I’ll lose her. “Let me,” I tell her, running a hand over her hip and between her thighs. I’m breaking my own damn rule, but I don’t care. “Let me make it better. I’ll touch you until you cream on my palm, until you’re slick and messy. I’ll touch you until you forget all about the nightmare.”
