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“Maybe.” His elbow was still on my knee, and his fingers tapped my leg absentmindedly. “But it was his fault she ran away. He was a cheater. That’s why I’m not big on relationships. I don’t want to cheat and don’t want to be cheated on.”
His words singed a path into my heart. His reasons for never wanting to settle down were all serious, thought through, and meticulous. That was enough to warn me against developing any kind of feelings for him. He wasn’t going to change his mind.
But the need to make him feel better took over every cell in my body. I couldn’t bear the idea that he was unhappy. I rolled onto my side. My bare knees hit the gravel and dust on the floor. I pushed my palms against the ground and crawled into his lap.
“Riggs,” I whispered. He didn’t answer, his eyes closed. The heat of his body rolled off his skin. Hesitantly, I pressed my hand to his stubbled cheek. It felt like the roles were reversed. A girl warrior saving a sleeping beauty of a prince.
“Riggs.” I let my fingers skim over his face, run over the sharp angles of his cheekbones, trace the shape of his lips. “I know you’re awake.”
“Stop touching me,” he answered gruffly.
Instead of feeling hurt and disappointed, I smiled. “Why?”
“Because you’re making me want to bump uglies again, and apparently yesterday was a one-off.”
I was glad his eyes were still closed. It spared me the embarrassment of being seen as red as a beet.
“It doesn’t have to be a one-off.” I could barely hear my own voice.
He popped his eyes open. He had that sultry James Dean look, a moment before he crushed your heart into fine sand.
“I’m the same,” I admitted quietly. “Well ... not the same. I do have a family. I’m very lucky and grateful for that. But my issues stem from the same dark place yours do. My biological father left us when Kieran and I were three. Just buggered off to an unspecified place in the world with his new girlfriend. One day, he just wasn’t there anymore. Cell phone changed, no trace. Mind you, he was still married to Mum, which made her getting a divorce quite a pricey and long process. I don’t know what would have happened if she hadn’t met Tim. We wouldn’t have survived.” I pursed my lips, realizing I hadn’t admitted this to anyone before, not even to BJ. Not evenKieran. “In the years before Tim, we couldn’t afford electricity. We could barely afford bread. Kieran and I would sleep huddled together long after it was appropriate just to keep each other warm during the winters. People at school would throw sandwiches at me because I didn’t bring a lunch box. Sometimes I was desperate enough to go back and pick some of them up, and eat them in secret, in the loo. I always blamed him, though. My dad.”
I inhaled deeply, trying to stop myself from shaking. “When Tim entered the picture, things began to change. We’re doing a lot better now. But I think ... I think the damage has been done. I have daddy issues. Maybe that’s why I accept BJ. I think deep down I’ve come to the realization that if I cannot have the security of being loved unconditionally by a man, at least I should marry one who’d make sure I’d never be like my mum. Merely scraping by, counting the pennies every week before she went to the shops.”
Riggs stared at me, looking both sexy and contemplative. After a long silence, he reached to tuck a flyaway behind my ear.
“Thank you for sharing this with me.” His voice was rough with emotions.
I smiled. “I’m better now. Even though I’m a gold digger.”
“I’m better too,” he assured me. “Even though I’ll never fall in love, have children, do the whole mundane-life shit.”
“What are you thinking about?” I let my fingers travel down his chest.
“I’m thinking ...” He bit his inner cheek, his eyes becoming smoldering in a nanosecond. “Why is the objective of golf playing the least amount of golf? Doesn’t it defeat the purpose of golfing?”
“Wh-what?” My fingers stopped moving across his chest, and I blinked in confusion. To my expression, he threw his head back and laughed. I started laughing too.
“You’re such an eejit,” I murmured.
“To answer your question.” He rearranged himself while I was still atop him. “I’m wondering what you taste like.”
“You already know what I taste like, silly.”
“No.” His gaze traveled down between my thighs. “Not in the way I want to.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Two O’s.” He winked, then took my hand and put it on his hard-on through his pants. “Guaranteed.”
He crashed his mouth against mine, thrusting his tongue between my lips. He knocked the oxygen out of me, and I had no choice but to surrender, my toes curling in my sandals as he deepened the kiss, conquering every part of my mouth while flipping our positions, with him towering over me again and me pinned on the ground beneath him.
There was something almost punishing about the intensity of that kiss, of his weight pressing against mine. Like I’d pried his secret out of him—and now I needed to pay.
Reaching down, he grabbed my arse cheeks and pressed my core against his erection, releasing a feral growl. This was divine torture.
“Riggs—” I was about to give him the okay to ravish me to a point of extinction when he dragged his hard-on against me, making my entire body clench in anticipation. My clit throbbed. I didn’t understand it. We’d touched for an entirety of eighty seconds, and I was already so close to the edge.
