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But knowing how and where she liked to be caressed, and how it felt to slide inside her, was an electrifying familiarity. It was as thrilling to him to know the explosive orgasm that awaited him as it had been to touch her for the first time.
Too aroused, too crazed, to play any longer, he pulled her to the very edge of the counter and fastened his hands to her hips, feeling her wetness as he positioned himself at her entrance. To know that she was that eager, that ready for him, made him even harder, and as he drove powerfully into her Carrie arched, her hands clasping his shoulders, her nails biting into his skin and her green eyes exploding with dazzling emerald colour.
With each strong and claiming thrust she clung tighter to him, her moans ripped from deep within her throat, the sounds unleashing such a fire within him that Damon didn’t know if he would ever get enough of her to put it out. But then he plunged into her a final time and they crashed into their climax together, and the storm that broke inside him was so intense that every inch of him pulsed with a fulfilment unlike anything else he’d ever known.
Carrie’s heart pounded in a reckless, uneven rhythm, but it was matched by the frenzied beats pulsing in Damon’s chest. Burying her face in the sweet-smelling nook of his neck, she inhaled the scent of his skin and splayed her fingers against the smooth, strong muscles of his back as she waited for the violent lashes of the orgasm he had given her to subside into pleasing, teasing ripples of silky sensation.
Damon had turned her inside out half a dozen times already, but none of those moments had been as passionately explosive at that one.
And she knew why.
‘I’m not interested in the past. Only this. Us.’
They were the magic words she’d been longing to hear since... Oh, only since the first moment they’d met. And they had unlocked so much within her—everything she’d been trying to contain. Hope. Need. Desire.
Lying awake in his arms a short while earlier, Carrie had been thrumming with nervousness, convinced that, regardless of what he had said about not regretting anything, once he woke he would feel remorse for making love to her again. She had fled his bed solely to spare herself the hideousness of that moment. But then he’d come after her and issued those words, and with the promise of them glowing in his eyes, the truth of them burning in his hungry kiss, the uncertainty she felt had quietened, slipping almost entirely from her mind, leaving her free to give in to her need for him, her feelings for him.
She knew it was a risk, because she couldn’t give her body without engaging her heart. But if there was a chance that they could besomethingto one another, a chance to explore all that moved and burned between them, a chance that she could better know the complicated, emotional, compassionate, sexy man that was Damon Meyer, that was a chance Carrie wanted to take. For herself and for their child.
She wouldn’t waste time fearing it or questioning it. She would simply accept it. Embrace it.
In spite of the chaos happening in the outside world, Carrie and Damon enjoyed a blissful few days in the seclusion of his Ojai estate. Damon showed her all around the house and the gorgeous land surrounding it, walking her through orange and avocado groves and sunflower gardens. She felt such peace and contentment that in certain moments she even managed to forget about the media craze that had propelled them there in the first place, but generally it was never far from her mind, and when she emerged from the bathroom one morning, her body still humming from their steamy session in the shower, and saw Damon’s frowning expression as he hung up the phone, her stomach clenched.
‘What’s happened?’
‘Nothing bad.’ Strolling towards her, he pressed a reassuring kiss to her forehead. ‘It was my aunt Bree, reminding me about my cousin’s birthday dinner tonight.’ He sighed. ‘I suppose since I’m here I should make the effort to go.’
‘You don’t normally make the effort?’ Carrie asked, slightly surprised, as she’d seen the fondness with which he talked of his cousins. The most breathtaking smile had lit his face when he’d shared stories of growing up with them in Ojai, although it hadn’t escaped her notice that most of those tales hailed from the time when his father had been alive, further proving just how much his world had changed, darkened, in the days after he’d died.
‘I’m not in Ojai that often.’
‘LA isn’t that far away.’
‘I’m not always in LA either,’ he countered, turning away from her with a look that expressed aggravation at being questioned and striding to the closet, snatching the first tee shirt he touched.
‘And that’s what’s stopped you from showing up? Geography?’
Carrie’s eyes narrowed as he kept his back to her, his muscles tellingly taut, and her senses clanged with the warning that they had stumbled into difficult emotional terrain. And even though it was obvious that Damon wanted to retreat and hide from whatever feelings had been stirred up, Carrie wanted to know and understand them. To help him.
Closing the space between them, she ran her hand down his tense arm. ‘Damon? Talk to me.’
It was a long moment before he spoke. ‘I’ve got very good at keeping myself separate, okay?’ he admitted roughly. ‘After what happened, I didn’t want to be close to anyone. I didn’t want to take that risk.’
He was scared to love in case he lost again, Carrie realised with a painful twist of her heart.
‘That’s understandable. You went through something awful, losing your father and then having your mother walk away too. You’re trying to keep yourself safe.’ She paused, wondering how far her new privileges extended...if she could push a little deeper without scaring him into shutting her out too. ‘The only problem is that doing that stops you experiencing good stuff too.’
Carrie knew that from personal experience. Fear had made her hide herself away and she’d missed out on so much... If she hadn’t taken that chance with Damon in Paris she’d have missed out on something extraordinary. And if Damon couldn’t conquer his fear, what did that mean for the future? Would he hold back from his child to avoid being hurt? And what aboutthem?
He’d made no promises, and Carrie hadn’t asked for any. They were simply acting on their mutual attraction and enjoying it. But if he remained a hostage to his fear of loving and losing she knew there was not even the hope of it turning into something more.
‘I’ve kept my distance for so long, Carrie...’ He sighed. ‘I wouldn’t know how to change even if I wanted to.’
She smiled, his words giving her hope that hewantedto change. ‘I think you start by showing up at that party and let it go from there.’
He fired her a look of scepticism. ‘Just show up? After years of not showing up?’
‘Yes. And they’ll be happy. The people who truly love you just want you with them, and everything that’s gone before will become irrelevant once they have you back.’ She slid against him, worked herself into his arms. ‘They’ll understand—even if you can never find the words to explain it to them.’
