AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘And just because I’m here, you shouldn’t feel like you can’t...you can’t bring people back.’
I see his surprise in the flaring of his eyes and bite my lip.
‘You mean women?’
My cheeks burn but I hold my ground. ‘I mean anyone—but, yes, women too.’
His eyes dance in the lamplight and I suck in my cheeks. He’s laughing at me.
‘Are you giving me permission to date, Summer?’
‘No. I’m saying that just because we’re stuck together for a year it doesn’t mean...it doesn’t mean we need to put our lives on hold.’
‘Our sex lives?’
I nod, swallow, squeak—oh, God, did he hear that?
‘Believe me, Summer...’ His eyes darken, and colour slashes his cheeks. ‘If I want to bring a woman home, I will.’
Well, you deserved that.
And then he’s gone, and my legs twitch with the desire to run after him, jump him, kiss him, until the only woman he could possibly want to bring home is me.
Edward
I close the door between us, deliberately slow. I don’t want her to know that every sinew in my body is straining to go to her, to prove that the only woman I want to bring home is already here.
The moment I heard her scream my name, I shot out of bed. Racing to her side with no thought as to how I was dressed...no thought as to how she would be dressed either.
Such a fool.
I drag a hand over my face, lean back against the solid door and suck in a breath that’s no longer tainted with her scent. How can twenty years have gone by and she still possess the same smell? It’s driving me crazy. As is her voice, her smile, her laugh...
Hearing her distress, seeing her twisted up in the bedsheets, her hair clinging to her damp brow... Nothing could have prevented me from going to her side. But the second she saw me and scurried back I knew I’d made an epic mistake.
The way her eyes burned back at me...the way she caught at her lip, her cheeks still damp and flushed from her nightmare. I wanted to kiss her until she forgot it all. I wanted to kiss her more than I can ever remember wanting to before. The sight of one shoulder exposed, of her nipples, teasing points as they pressed through the thin fabric of her T-shirt...
She was distressed—dazed, even—and I was no better than a horny teenager. Frustrated as hell at myself when I should have been focusing on her wellbeing and her wellbeing alone.
And then she had the audacity to taunt me with the possibility of my bringing another woman home. As if I could even think of anyone else with her unique brand of temptation on such flagrant display.
It took every ounce of strength for me to turn and walk away, and she made me do it twice over. Forcing me to turn back each time and drink her in.
The attraction was so fierce off the back of that drive to protect her. Her dream and her distress luring out feelings I’ve been trying to suppress since the moment she walked into Charles’s office.
Did she see how much I wanted her? Did she see it and panic—throw the idea of other lovers out there with the intention of keeping that line drawn? As a reminder that whatever this is between us, it isn’t that?
I stride to my bed, tug the quilt back on top, but sleep is impossible.
I reach for my phone and unlock the screen. There she is, in all her Instagram glory. She wasn’t kidding when she said she had followers...thousands and thousands of them. Her photos garner so many likes and comments and it’s easy to see why. She’s a vision of happiness—stunning, carefree, living her best life.
Stripped to the barest of layers on a cliff-edge, her arms outstretched to the blue sky and even bluer waters.
Chilling on a beach with a coconut tipped to her mouth, the juice escaping her lips, trailing down her neck, her chest, beneath her loose-fitting vest...
I move on swiftly.
To a rainforest with colours as vibrant as her, wildlife of various shapes and sizes, all coaxing a smile from her and filling her eyes with joy.
