“If you had given me the slightest indication that you wanted to be found, I would never have stopped searching,” he continues. “But I didn’t have your name. Your number. And you never used mine; I didn’t even know if you’d ever found the card I left in your bag. I had nothing to go on, and I wanted to respect your wishes.No repeats. I was devastated that the first woman I’d felt something for in years didn’t want to see me again.”
My heart thrums at his confession, but guilt and the raw, aching pain of it engulfs the sensation like a destructive tidal wave. I press my hand against my chest like I can hold it back.
“But then you showed up here, in my home, and I started spending time withyou.” He paces a little away from me, then stops, his hand clasped to his forehead, his rolled-up shirt sleeve tight around his flexed bicep. “I stopped thinking about the woman from Delirium. Little by little, she faded, and you took her place.” He drops his hand, a grating frustration touching his words. “You were all I could think about. You invaded my mind. It was you…” His words fade, and he groans. “Fucking hell, this is a mess I didn’t ask for.”
He might not have said her name aloud, but I know he’s thinking of Lizzie. Of what this might do to her if she were tofind out. That’s the messiest part of all this, after all. A sound somewhere between a gasp and a sob tumbles out of my mouth. “I’m sorry.”
His eyes shutter, and gentle huff he releases sounds desperate. “I tried. I fucking tried. I went to Delirium to getyouout of my head. But she had your eyes, and your scent, and your hair. Your mouth. And all I could think of was you. I kissed her thinking of you. Fucked her thinking of you. I treated her so badly…”
I don’t know how it happened, but as he’s been talking, he’s been moving closer, and now he’s so near that his breath touches my face and his scent surrounds me. The crisp white cotton of his shirt is at my eye level, the hint of his pecs visible beneath it. Tension flexes in his forearms, muscles shifting between the veins.
His pulse beats in his neck, and the urge to press my tongue against it and taste his life force blindsides me.
This close to him, I have no chance of survival.
The look in his eyes softens, and he gently brushes a strand of my hair from my face, tucking it behind my ear. Every time he’s done this, I’ve wanted to lean my face into his palm.
“If I’d known it was you,” he whispers, “I’d never have treated you that way, and the only name on my tongue would have been yours.”
“It was mine.”
“Yes.” A beat of stillness. “I think it always will be.”
My breath hitches, and for seconds that feel like an eternity, neither of us speaks, and in the depths of his eyes, I read a million thoughts and thousands of words. More than we’d ever have time to communicate. A connection that speaks to my soul.
“You know what annoyed me the most when I found out?” he asks.
“What?”
His thumb grazes my upper lip, tracing it, flooding me with a prickling heat that pools between my legs. “Realising that if we ever had sex, it wouldn’t be the first time. That we’d already done it and I hadn’t even known. I could never haveyoufor the first time.” My breathing slows, but I can’t form a word as his thumb pulls down on my lower lip. “What do you have to say about that?”
I shake my head, but the movement is negligible because my lip is still pinned by his thumb.I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.
“Hmm.” He drags his thumb back and forth. “I should punish you. Bend you over my knee and spank you until you can’t walk.”
“I deserve it,” I say, words muffled because of how he’s still touching my lip.
He nods. “You do. How are you feeling about thatno repeatsrule right now?”
Tension swirls, tugging me towards him.
“It’s a terrible rule,” I mutter. “We should scrap it.”
“Agreed,” he says, and as I open my mouth to speak again, his thumb slips inside. I suck, curling my tongue around it, tasting the salt of his skin. “Because I can’t let you walk away again.”
I suck harder, and he groans, easing his thumb out of my mouth and fisting it inside curled fingers.
“How many men have you slept with, Diana?”
The question surprises me. I wipe my mouth on the back of my hand. “You can’t ask that.”
“Fine. But tell me, did it ever feel the way it felt with me?”
All the breath leaves my lungs. “No.” My nipples are hardened peaks beneath the cotton of my top, and all I want is for him to reach out and touch them. “Never.”
As he looks down at me, his pupils are so dilated that his eyes are almost black. “You wanted more, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” I say breathlessly.
