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“Let me go there and get you a couple of towels to dry off,” suggested Star and skipped up the stairs to the second floor, leaving me alone with Clara.
Left alone with Clara, I was riveted on her. It was the first time I’d seen her in anything but a perfectly tailored suit and full makeup. She was barefoot, wearing leggings and a long-sleeved T-shirt that she’d likely borrowed from my sister. Thick waves of light brown hair, streaked with lightning bolts of blond, cascaded down the sides of her face, ending at her nipples.
She looked so achingly young and vulnerable. I hurt with the possessive urge to wrap those long tresses around my fist and tug her to me. Crash my lips over hers and taste her exceptional, sun-drenched taste to assure me she was alive.
Our one kiss was seared on my brain, and the memory of her pouty lips against mine reared its head, thickening my cock.
I asked in a hoarse voice, “Are you okay?”
She nodded; her sparkling eyes larger than when she circled them with her raccoon makeup.
From fear?
No, I didn’t like that idea. It jangled the demon inside me. It’d been howling to be freed for hours now. He railed at me to touch her. Hold her. Crush her to me and inhale her until we were fused into one.
I took a step closer.
Then another.
I was so close I could reach out and touch her, so I did, cupping her warm cheek and breathing her in. It was soft. Jesus, was it soft. Her cheeks turned a pretty shade of pink. The same pink I imagined the imprint of my hand would leave on her buttocks when I jerked off to fantasies of her in the darkness of my bedroom.
“You okay?” I asked gently, my heart in my throat as I awaited her answer. On the radio, I’d already heard of one woman drowning in her basement in Jamaica, Queens, only a few miles from here. If anything had happened to Clara, I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself. She was mine to protect.
Realization jolted through my body.
She wasn’t just mine to protect. She was mine, period.
Her eyes widened further, tears brimming in the wells. Not a single one fell, but it didn’t have to. I cursed under my breath, loud enough for Star to make another gasp of surprise.
I stepped closer.
Images of Clara’s beautiful body floating facedown in a pool of cold, dark water in the Lupu basement assaulted me.
“You should’ve been with me. I should’ve taken care of you. I’m so sorry, Clara.” My tone was stark. “I will never fail you again.”
A tear dropped. Then another. Her plump bottom lip quivered.
“I was scared. Really scared,” she choked out in a wheeze.
My heart felt like it had been gouged out with a carving knife. I took her by the shoulders and squeezed her tightly to my chest. Feeling her soft curves against my hard frame, her rapidly beating heart against mine, was a fantasy come to life.
Her tears wet my skin. Her breath puffed over my exposed chest. The combination was erotic, tempting me to do something bad. Very bad. My nipples hardened at the contact between us.
Her hands braced my flanks. They may have been cold as ice, but her touch burned me. She inhaled sharply and pushed to get away. I tightened my hold on her, crushing her to me. My cock dug into her soft belly, but I didn’t care. She hated me; I knew that. But. I. Didn’t. Care. Let her know what she did to me. Let her know where my cock would one day be.
I’d been up all night, watching the torrent of rain outside my window, watching the news as a deluge as ancient as the Great Flood from Genesis traveled across the city. I knew in my bones that I could’ve lost her.
I’d tried to keep my distance and look where that had landed me. With her at death’s door.
Lesson learned. I’d never let her get far from me again.
A shiver rippled through her body. Her teeth chattered. She was in shock from what she’d been through. At one point during the worst of the hurricane, the house shook so hard that the glass windowpanes had shattered.
I scanned her face and neck.
No marks.
“Are you hurt?”
