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“Thank God for that,” he said in a strained voice, and aligned his cock with my slick entrance.
He eased into me, inch by thick, glorious inch. No, he wasn’t too big at all. He was just perfect to fill me, to send bliss tingling through every nerve.
A sigh escaped me. My spark flared to welcome him, the passion between us igniting the power inside me even brighter than before.
Seth held me in place as he sank into me, withdrew, and plunged farther into me. A wave of pleasure rolled up from my core. I moaned, grasping at his shoulders, seeking out his lips. We kissed roughly, our bodies shaking with each thrust of Seth’s hips, with the pulse of bliss spreading through us.
Seth trailed his mouth across my cheek and nipped my earlobe. His breath stuttered. He drove himself even deeper, and I gasped as he hit the most sensitive spot inside me. Pleasure shot through my veins. I cried out, so loud I was briefly afraid Seth would stop.
He only drove into me more eagerly. “I’m sure of your magic,” he said. “I’m sure of you.” His lips grazed the crook of my jaw. “You’re everything I could have wanted, Rose.”
With those words and another pump of his cock, I started to shatter. Bliss radiated over my body and my spark sizzled like a firework. I came with another cry, pressing myself toward him to take him into me as deeply as I possibly could. Seth’s breath stuttered. With a jerk of his hips, he came with me.
He leaned over me, sliding in and out with a few last gentle strokes. I touched his cheek and brought his mouth to mine. We kissed so long and so intently my head started to spin, but I wouldn’t have asked to be anywhere else, with anyone else.
I’d come a long way from the woman I’d been when I’d come back home a month ago. I’d gained a lot. And I wasn’t letting any of it go. Least of all this man and the other three I loved.
Chapter Six
Gabriel
There weren’t a whole lot of things that scared me in life anymore. So the sinking in my gut as I rode my Triumph up to the gate of the Hallowell estate had to be something else. Trepidation? Sure, that was possible. Maybe indecision over whether I was making the smartest move I could have or the stupidest—because it had to be one or the other. The feeling was nothing worse than that.
The intercom was mounted in the exact same spot it had been the last time I’d been out this way, years ago. I parked the bike where I could to push the call button, pulled off my helmet, and waited out the faint whir of the moving camera mounted on the post overhead. The wind licked over my hair, damp enough with humidity that it actually felt like a lick. Leaning back against my bar bag, the sum total of my possessions at the moment, I shot a smile at the camera.
Whoever was keeping an eye on it today opened the gate. I rode on up the drive to the garage that had been my home for the first fourteen years of my life.
They’d repainted it. The old deep green was covered over with a dark maroon. Otherwise it looked pretty much the same: a low building with a slanted room broken by three dormers, long enough to house the family’s primary cars and Mr. Hallowell’s small collection of older classics. I could picture the row of hoods in my mind’s eye as clearly as if all those doors had been open.
As I stepped off the bike, the side door that led up to the overtop apartment opened and Rose stepped out. She smiled at me, a little proud and a little shy. The wind made her long black hair dance around her pale shoulders. She was wearing a casual tank top and jeans, but I couldn’t imagine her looking any more gorgeous to me if she’d been decked out in an Oscars-caliber gown. My heart just about flipped over, seeing her.
If there was anything I was still scared of, it was this woman. I could admit that. I hadn’t been able to resist her call. Hadn’t been able to resist her suggestion that I take this job—working my way up to the position I should have inherited from my father, if things had turned out the way they should have.
Which also meant, if I’d never beckoned a lonely little girl over to play with me and the other boys. If I’d grown up just watching the girl of the house from afar as she transformed into the woman she was today, without ever knowing what it was like to find the right words to make her laugh, to accept a hug from those slim but strong arms. If I’d stood back and let her marry some asshole “witching” guy who’d have turned her life into hell.
No, what really scared me was that I wasn’t sure I regretted anything, despite what had happened because of my decision all that time ago.
“Hey,” Rose said. “We just finished cleaning things up upstairs.” She swiped her hand past her cheek, a smudge of dust on her wrist suggesting she had literally been part of thatwe. “Do you need help carrying anything?”
“I’ve just got the one bag,” I said, smiling back at her. It would have taken a concentrated effortnotto smile at Rose Hallowell. I hefted the bar bag off the bike and followed her up the stairs.
I couldn’t let her be more than a distant friend to me now, not in any way I showed. I had to remember that. It was better for both of us.
The second I came through the upper door into the apartment, my knees jarred. A wobble filled my chest, potent enough that I set down my bag before my arm wobbled too.
Fuck. I hadn’t even thought about the fact that no one would have lived here while Rose’s family was out in Portland. No one had lived here since Dad and I had left.
The living room looked exactly the same: a big square with hazy light trickling past the moss-green curtains over the windows on either side of the angled ceiling, black-and-green striped sofa in the corner, birch-wood tables and bookcase scattered around it. A thick gray rug covered the floorboards between the sofa and the two matching armchairs. Someone must have replaced the batteries in the round clock that hung on the wall, but the second hand still clicked faintly when it passed the six at the bottom.
All furnishings had belonged to the Hallowells. We hadn’t even been able to take the dishes, the ones we’d been using for as long as I could remember.
The place even smelled the same: like the clover from the little lawn beside the drive and a hint of gasoline and engine grease seeping through the floor.
It was too easy to picture Dad sitting on that sofa with diagrams spread all over the coffee table, beckoning me over to show me some improvement he wanted to make to this engine or that exhaust system. Too easy to imagine the scent of his coffee—dark roast, preferably Colombian—wafting from the kitchen as he hummed an off-key tune and threw together a meal.
“Gabriel?” Rose said tentatively.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and jerked my head around to meet her gaze, recovering my smile. “Sorry,” I said. “It’s just been a long time.”
