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“So don’t.”

I felt him tense above me. His movements became a touch more rigid, and knowing that he was right there with me made me lose my grip on reality for a moment. I fell apart, a mind-numbing orgasm sweeping through me that made my toes curl and my ears ring.

Holden stayed with me all the way through, not stilling until I was completely spent and then pressing a kiss to each of my eyelids when it was over. Our pants hadn’t even come off, but he was breathing hard too, smiling as he tucked me against his side.

“Not too much?” he asked quietly as my lids drifted shut. “Please tell me I didn’t just fuck everything up.”

“Everything is perfect,” I whispered, so sated, happy, and warm that I could barely get the words out before I felt sleep starting to tug at the edges of my consciousness. “It wasn’t too much, Holden. Nothing with you will ever be too much.”

CHAPTER 31

HOLDEN

Alicia lay tight against my side in the aftermath, both of us still trying to catch our breath. Her head rested on my shoulder, her fingers splayed out across my chest.

She looked exhausted, her eyelids heavy and her body sagging against mine every so often before she’d start and blink her eyes open again. When feeling finally returned to my knees, I pressed a kiss against her temple and carefully slid my arms under her knees and her back.

“Let’s get you to bed,” I murmured, standing up before lifting her against me.

She let out a soft, sleepy murmur, her head dropping against my collarbone as I carried her out of the living room and up the dark staircase. “I can do it. I can walk.”

“Yeah, but you don’t have to,” I whispered against the top of her head, gently lowering her onto the mattress when we reached her bedroom.

After pulling the covers up to her shoulders, I started straightening up to leave her in peace, but before I could even take a single step back, she reached out from under the blankets, her warm fingers catching my wrist.

“Stay,” she whispered. “Please? Stay with me tonight.”

In the darkness of her room, I thought for a second I’d imagined the request, but then she tugged gently on my arm and my defenses broke wide open. I rarely did this. In the past, sex had been nothing but a physical release for me. No intimacy required, but since she was my wife, I climbed into bed with her after hesitating for just a second.

As I slid an arm around her side, she burrowed into me, her back sealed against my chest only moments later. She let out a soft, sleepy sigh, kissed my forearm before twining her fingers around mine. Then her body relaxed again and almost instantly her breathing evened out.

Meanwhile, my eyes were wide open and my muscles were rigid. I didn’t want to leave her, so I didn’t even consider trying to wriggle out of bed now that she was asleep, but shit. I’d only slept beside a handful of women in my life and never intentionally.

It had been more a matter of passing out before I’d managed to convince myself to leave the bed. This, however, was different. She’d asked me to stay and here I was, holding her in my arms as she slept.

I’d had all these grand ideas about going back downstairs to pick up our shirts and plug in our laptops. Hell, I’d even thought I might still get some work done on that paper, but my brain was numb and my body was struggling to catch up to what had just happened to it.

There was sex, there was fucking, and then there was whatever the hell that had been. Maybe it was just because I knew Alicia, and I was actually starting to care about her, but that experience had been something else entirely. It had blown my mind and sucked my body dry. And I was still half-dressed.

I was so out of it that I didn’t even realize I’d fallen asleep until I woke up the next morning to the pale sunshine streaming in through the windows. Alicia was still fast asleep beside me, one of her arms thrown over my chest and her hair a beautiful mess across the pillow.

Strangely, I still didn’t feel the urge to get away from her, so I woke up slowly and stayed exactly where I was for a long time, finally only extricating myself when my stomach grumbled. After I managed to get out of bed without waking her, I pressed a kiss to her hair, then padded quietly to the study to get cleaned up and throw some fresh clothes on.

As I walked in, however, my gaze snagged on the framed diplomas against the walls, the fishing caps, and the faded photographs left behind by Alicia’s father. Seeing them now, after everything she’d confessed about growing up with her aunt and uncle, put an entirely different spin on these relics of the past.

Before, I’d wondered why she’d kept them up, but I got it now. Her dad had been a high school history teacher, a genuinely good man who’d loved his family deeply. The evidence was carved into the support beams of the garage and just about everywhere I looked, from the happy family photographs to the souvenirs of trips they’d taken together.

I grabbed a quick shower and I was pulling on a pair of jeans when more of those familiar, uncomfortable questions rolled through my mind. Did Dad ever feel that way about us? Was there even one day when he looked at his kids and felt anything other than a desire to secure a legacy?

It should’ve been easy to answer, but the confusing thing about it was that I actually had more good memories of my father than bad ones. It always messed with my head when I thought about it, but I remembered him teaching me how to tie a necktie before my first school dance. I remembered him sitting in the front row for football games and track meets, his face beaming with a quiet, authoritative sort of pride.

In my memories, he hadn’t always been a monster. He’d just been a man consumed by the insatiable, toxic need to grow an empire until the law had finally intervened. I rubbed a hand over my face and shoved the thoughts of him out of my head as fast as I could.

Nothing good would come from obsessing about this shit, and since I didn’t have my first lecture until this afternoon, I had to find something else to channel this restless energy into. After shoving a shirt over my head and inhaling a couple of bananas in the kitchen, I pulled on a jacket and some shoes, then headed out to the front yard.

Yesterday, when we’d gotten home, I’d noticed that the grass was covered in a thick blanket of crisp, dead leaves, and it was even worse this morning. Thankfully, there was a rusty old rake resting against the wall on the porch, so I grabbed that before I jogged down the steps and started dragging it through the lawn.

“You’re missing a spot near the hydrangeas, young man.”