“How do we not feel guilty when our best for someone wasn’t enough?” I asked because I didn’t have an answer. I still carried theweight of the man who’d died in my emergency room despite every attempt to save him.
Now it made sense why Rachel had never wanted to talk about him. Why she’d let me think Calder was the reason for how everything turned out ... or maybe why she was too hurt to correct my assumption.
“I wanted you then, too, Calder,” I confessed, needing him to know. “More than admiring your anatomy. My crush on you was like a contagion. Something that altered my DNA. A bar that was set by a man I couldn’t have.”
“When you kept your distance, I assumed Rachel told you everything, and you wanted nothing to do with me.”
How different things might’ve been if she had.
“Is that why you never said anything to me?” I asked, spreading my hands over his chest.
His gaze dimmed. “No.” His voice dipped lower. “I didn’t say anything because I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what I felt, but I was afraid—” He broke off and swallowed hard. “I was afraid whatever it was, could be what Mom and Cassius had. And even then, even five years later, he was hollow. Even now ...”
Right then, I knew the most traumatic thing about his mother’s murder hadn’t been finding her body or thinking he could’ve saved her, it was all of that in the context of watching Cassius’s grief consume him.
“I didn’t water what I felt because I was afraid of what would grow.”
My fingers curled over the thud of his pulse like I could hold his heart in my hand and take the pain away.
“And now?”
He let out a harsh breath. “Now I want you too much to be afraid of anything except not having you.” He slid his finger along my cheek. “And what about you? Do you feel guilty for wanting me now?”
“Maybe I take too much responsibility for my sister and for what’s happened to her, but I also take responsibility for my feelings. I’venever felt guilty for wanting you. Not then, in secret. And not now, out loud.”
His nose brushed mine, and a low sound rumbled from his chest. A weight relaxing. “How loud?”
The coarse texture of his voice coaxed a hot shiver up my spine. “Fuck me, Calder, and find out.”
Chapter 32
Calder
Rule #40: The person you love becomes a potential weapon against you in the wrong hands. Protect them by keeping some secrets, even from them.
Smoke and sweetness filled my nostrils. The last embers of the fire were out, but a whole different flame had ignited.
“Fuck me, Calder, and find out.”
Tipping her head, I kissed her the way I always had. I kissed her like a man who’d started dreaming of her a dozen years ago and never stopped.
Back then, the timing wasn’t right. Not with her sister. Not with my mom’s death. What I felt—what we felt—was nothing more than a seed that had been planted and gone into dormancy, waiting for the right time to bloom.
Now, it more than bloomed.
I groaned as Lara’s arms slid around my neck, pressing herself to me like the last thing separating us was finally gone.
Tonight, there was no storm but us. No rain except the drench of desire in our blood. No lightning but the white-hot heat of every touch. No thunder except the booming inside my chest.
The harder I kissed her, the louder she moaned. Wordless pleas escaped her throat as her hands started to roam over me. My shoulders. My sides. My waist.
“Fuck, Lara,” I hissed as her palm sank straight to the front of my pants, cupping the heavy weight of my cock through the fabric.
“I want to taste you,” she said, dragging her mouth along my neck until her lips landed on my jaw muscle. “I want to feel you go wild in my mouth.”
I groaned, helpless as she worked open my pants. A second later, her hand was sliding along my bare length and cupping my balls. I’d barely reeled the stars in my vision back into orbit before she dropped to her knees in front of me.
I met her upturned eyes, losing my mind at the sight of her blown-out pupils, flushed cheeks, and swollen lips.
