It was a contradiction. A perilous exception to my rules. Like everything else I felt about her. Never before had my logic differed so drastically, so dangerously, from my instinct.
My hand slid higher, cupping over her bare ribs, my thumb tracing the edge of her bra, coaxing her to keep moving. To forget everyone else around us. To forget anyone could see our primal desire bleeding from every seam.
“Gentlemen, she should be your sole focus. Her wants. Her needs. This is the garden you must water before anything can grow ...” The mention ofgardencaught my ear, but not enough to shake me from Lara’s trance.
“Calder.” Her whisper stamped her warning to my lips.
To move. To turn. To take control.
Dragging my other hand to her head, I brushed her hair back from her face and bracketed my palm to the side of her throat. Here, I could read her pulse. The rapid-fire Morse code that signaled for help. For relief. For another taste of this thing that neither of us seemed to be able to stop.
I angled my head to take her lips. There was nothing holding me back, nothing strong enough to keep me from kissing her again.
Nothing until a loud shout and cry spiked my adrenaline from pleasure to protection.
With one swift movement, I slid Lara off my lap and rose up on my knees in front of her, quickly tucking my cock into the waistband of my pants. Thankfully, everyone’s attention, including Lara’s, was on the commotion on the other side of the gathering space, where Trent was making a scene.
“This is fucking ridiculous. You get off when I get off—that’s how things work.” Trent’s chauvinistic snarl wormed like a sour weed through the clearing as he shoved Sarah off him; she was in the process of moving, but he wanted her to feel small. Like he couldn’t get away from her fast enough. He wanted that humiliation for her, and I wanted to introduce my fist to his face. Unfortunately, he was already gone, and Maxwell had swooped in to calm Sarah.
I turned to Lara. “You okay?”
Her blown-out pupils flared.Okaywas a relative term.
“As you can see, this journey isn’t for the faint of heart,” Maxwell addressed the group, stealing everyone’s focus from Trent’s dramatic exit. “But with every great and wild relationship, there are speed bumps. Sometimes they slow you down to find something deeper and more meaningful. At other moments, they show you it’s time to take a different course.”
My brow furrowed as I listened—and watched.
Tracking a person’s emotions was similar to tracking their physical location. The important clues were in the details. The trail of Maxwell’s eyes, stealthily roaming around the group until she mentioned slowing down, then swiftly plummeting to the ground before resurfacing onSarah. The break in her projected facade that didn’t go unnoticed. At least, not to me.
She was thinking of someone when she’d mentioned a speed bump. Possibly her relationship with Adam, given what I’d heard.
“We’ll conclude this morning’s session and get you into your reflection time a little early. Like before, please find somewhere secluded and quiet to reflect and journal about the feelings and emotions that this morning’s session brought up for you.”
I stood and offered my hand to Lara. She jerked her chin, a wordless instruction to look behind me.
Maxwell was talking to Sarah.
Taking Lara’s hand, I quickly guided us in their direction.
“I would like to speak with you privately, Sarah, after this morning—” Maxwell stopped abruptly as we got close and looked to Lara and me. “Great work this morning, you two. I have to say, there are very few couples that I can feel a wild connection from the very start, but yours was all nails and teeth. Good job.”
Dammit.Fortunately, Maxwell was too concerned with her wounded disciple to notice how uncomfortable her remarks made Lara and me.
I wished I could’ve said they were too off base, but it was more like they struck too close to home.
“I’d like to have another session with the both of you now. Matthew will take you to the Sanctuary, and I’ll join you in a few minutes.”
I managed a sound to acknowledge her as Matthew appeared to do her bidding and led us away.
Chapter 17
Lara
“Are you ever still?” Calder asked, turning from his seated position on the blanket in the Sanctuary.
“Not if I can help it.” I took one more, defiant trek across the clearing where I’d been pacing, restless for Dr. Julia to arrive.Or because not even thirty minutes ago, I was dry-humping my sister’s ex-boyfriend in the middle of a wellness retreat and it hadn’t fazed me.
When I’d been on his lap, his hands on my skin, his hardness right where I needed him ... I’d forgotten everything. Where we were. Who we were with. Who we were there for. It had all incinerated under the heat of our attraction.
