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I felt positivelywild as I stomped through the house toward my bedroom. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt this out of control.
I used to drink to feel numb, and I used to fuck to forget. This wasnotthat. I hadn’t craved any of those women the way I craved Deva. The way she’d come apart under my hands, at my touch, it had been the most glorious thing I’d witnessed, and the way her lush, round ass ground into my cock as she chased her release and came on my fingers was almost enough to have me blowing in my jeans like a goddamn kid.
Ihadto have her. Some primal, territorial part of me was screaming inside, fighting and clawing to get out, to get toher. It was taking everything I had to fight back the urge to take her and make her mine. I’d felt her, the way her pussy squeezed my fingers. She was so goddamn tight. If I wasn’t careful, I’d end up hurting her, and that was the last thing I wanted.
“You have no fucking clue how sexy you are when you come,” I grunted as we reached my bedroom. I kicked the door closed behind me and carried her over to the bed. I dropped her onto the mattress, causing her to giggle in a way that set my blood onfire. She smiled, those beautiful dimples coming out to play, and I was a goner. “Christ, Deva. I want you so badly I can’t breathe.”
She pushed up on her elbows, her eyelids drooping to half-mast thanks to the orgasm I’d just given her. Her teeth scraped across that plump bottom lip as she stared me up and down, squeezing her thighs together.
What she said next nearly had me losing control. “Then you can have me, Laeth. Because I want you too.”
This woman would be the end of me, no doubt about it.
“You don’t understand,” I said as I shook my head. “If we do this, that’s it.”
Her brow furrowed. “I don’t—”
“There is no more Holton Clarke, no more anyone,” I growled. “We do this, you let me in there, you’re mine. I’ll fuck you so good you’ll see stars, but it’ll only ever be me doing it. You understand?”
Her eyes widened with understanding, her pretty lips rounding as she let out a soft, “Oh.”
“Yeah. I have experience. I’ve been around the block, but you haven’t. This would be your first time, and you need to be sure you’re ready for me to be your only.”
She pushed up to sitting, her expression one of shellshock. It was clear she hadn’t been expecting that, and that was my own damn fault. I hadn’t said everything that needed to be said before going at her in my kitchen like a goddamn animal.
“I don’t deserve you,” I started, ripping off the Band-Aid, as they say, with that opener. “You can do a lot fuckin’ better than me. I’m a goddamn train wreck, Deva. I’ve got more scars than you can count and more baggage than anyone could carry. You deserve someone without my brand of darkness. But I think I’ve been falling for you since you walked into my office in that hideous fucking dress.”
A bark of bewildered laughter burst past her lips, and God, it was the most beautiful sound aside from my son’s laughter.
“I don’t expect you to choose me just because we have chemistry, but you deserve to have it all, so there it is. If you’re unsure, I won’t fuck you. I’ll get you off as much as you want baby, but not like that. I’ll let you use me until you’re ready to move on to someone better, but I won’t fuck you. I’ll let you keep that to give to someone who deserves it.”
But fuck if I didn’t want that gift for myself.
My chest felt like it was on fire as I watched her take in everything I’d just said. I couldn’t remember a time when I’d ever been so open with another person. I wasn’t sure I’d ever laid myself bare to anyone the way I just had with Deva. I felt raw and exposed as her eyes swirled with a million different emotions. I wanted to run and hide, but at the same time, I wanted to stand my ground as some pathetic attempt to show her I at least hadsomethingto offer.
I felt like I was going insane as the silence enveloped the room and pressed down on my chest, slowly crushing me.
Then she broke it, putting me out of my misery.
“It’s not just chemistry,” she said, her soft, melodic voice washing over me and beating back some of the shadows I always felt lurking. “It’s more than that. There’s a reason I feel your eyes like a caress every time you look at me. I can’t stop thinking about you, no matter how hard I try.”
“Deva—”
She refused to let me interrupt. “You aren’t the only one with baggage. I’ve dealt with my fair share of darkness, Laeth. It’s why I recognized it in you the very first time I saw you. It made me feel like I understood you. I’m not trying to scratch some itch with you or use you for experience. I don’t need or want to sleep with a bunch of other men.”
I growled at just the thought of that, my hands clenching into fists, wanting to pound the faces of these non-existent men.
“I’ve spent my whole life being unwanted. You’re the first person who made me feel like I could actually belong somewhere, like maybe a person could want me after all. These feelings I have for you have been growing so fast that it sometimes scares me.”
She bit down on the corner of her lip as she drew her legs up, wrapping her arms around them protectively as sadness washed over her expression. “That’s why it hurt so much when you told your friends I was just the nanny,” she confessed quietly, gutting me.
“Jesus,” I hissed, dropping down to my knees on the ground in front of her. Grabbing her ankles, I pulled her legs down and scooted her closer to the edge of the bed, widening her thighs so I could fit between them and take her face in my hands. “I’m sorry,” I gritted out, my throat feeling like I’d gargled sand. “That wasn’t about you. That was all me. I was an asshole for that. I was trying not to want you because I was scared it would complicate things, so I said that in an effort to turn those feelings off. But it didn’t work. And when you shut me out, it drove me crazy.”
Her hand came up tentatively, pausing for a brief moment before her fingers sifted through the hair that had flopped across my forehead. I closed my eyes and breathed deep, pulling those roses into my lungs as I leaned into her touch.
“Laeth?” she said quietly.
“Yeah, baby?”
