“No wedding date?” I asked.
“No date. You tell your parents you’re living here, and together we tell the world we’re getting married.”
So many thoughts were running through my brain. “If I announce my engagement before the date of my canceled wedding, the world will blame me for what happened with Skylar. They’ll think it was me who found someone else. I did, but the canceled wedding wasn’t my fault.”
He tilted his head as his palm came gently to my cheek. “Who gives a fuck what the world thinks?”
“I guess maybe I do.”
“You shouldn’t. Don’t. What others think of you is irrelevant. You’re strong and determined. You’re smart and beautiful. Whatever misconception the world has doesn’t matter. They’ll judge no matter what you do. You can’t win with them, don’t try. Agree to the engagement and I promise Wade will turn around.”
“Will you sell when it’s high?”
“What happens to Wade is immaterial to me. The only thing I give a shit about regarding Wade Pharmaceutical is you. Do you want Wade to fail?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t think I cared, that all I wanted was to write and explore the world...but now, hearing Dad’s voice...I do care. I don’t want Wade to fail. I don’t want to see what my family for generations has worked to achieve be devalued and sold for nothing.”
“Then...?”
I blinked as I contemplated my next sentence. There were so many unknowns about Donovan Sherman. However, I reasoned that this was only an engagement. I’d broken one of those off before. “I will agree to an engagement.”
Van’s lips captured mine.
When he pulled back, he grinned. “Fucking, dinner, more fucking, and then I’ll call my press secretary. A statement will go out first thing in the morning before the markets open.”
I smiled at Van’s timeline. “I should call my parents.”
He looked at the clock. “Do your parents stay up until after ten?”
“Yes.”
“You can call your parents when I call my press secretary.” Taking a deep breath, I nodded. “Turn around, beautiful. I’m removing those soft black pants.”
My pulse quickened. “Van.”
“Don’t make me repeat myself.”
Turning toward the cabinet, I splayed my fingers over the ivory surface as Van reached for each soft sock, removing them one by one, and then he reached for the waistband of my black pants. Soon the pants and my panties were lost to the kitchen floor. My insides twisted with anticipation as I heard the click of his belt buckle and sound of his zipper only moments before his large hands seized my hips and his foot spread my legs.
Looking down, I saw his shiny loafer and the hem of his suit pants.
I came to my toes as my back arched and my lips opened, and I let out a moan. Without foreplay or so much as a check to see if I was wet—I was—Van drove deep inside me. My body clamped down around him as my forehead fell to the cabinet.
His shoes were again in my line of vision—his shoes and my bare feet. Van was fucking me while still mostly dressed.
In the kitchen.
The ferociousness of his initial invasion now satisfied, Van’s thrusts took on a rhythm that I could anticipate. In and out. Closing my eyes, I saw us last night on the dining room table. I recalled the beauty of his cock moving in and out of me. With my hands on the cabinet, I pushed back against his thrusts, bending further at the waist, taking every inch of what he was giving me.
Despite his rule of controlling what happened during sex, I was hardly helpless in this encounter.
If I were to admit it to myself, I was also becoming addicted to this unexplainable connection we shared.
Van fisted my ponytail and pulled my head back. His warm breath came to the sensitive skin near my ear. “You’re mine now, Julia. All of you.” He gripped tighter, using my hair like reins as he thrust in and out. “You’re perfect, perfect in every way. You feel so fucking tight. I’m the only one who ever comes in your pussy, ever.”
I nodded the best I could, hearing his words while distracted by his actions.
My thoughts were consumed with the stretch and friction of his thrusts. Van filled me in a way I’d never imagined was possible.
Releasing my hair, Van’s hand came to my neck, keeping my head tipped back. “Say it.”
“It feels good.”
He pulled my neck back farther. “You’re mine. Say it. Tell me who else has ever or will ever feel how good it is to be inside you.”
I struggled to breathe and yet his rhythm continued. “I’m yours, Van. Only you. Only you.”
His grasp of my neck loosened, and his lips brushed my sensitive skin.
My thoughts tried to sway, to think about what others would think of our sudden engagement and to worry about all the unknowns about Van, but his attention and devotion to my satisfaction washed those thoughts away as well as anything not connected to the here and now.
Beneath my top, his large hands began to roam, tugging each breast from the lace cups of my bra, tweaking my hard nipples, and moving lower, swirling my clit. His mouth was also engaged, kissing, licking, and nipping. I was on sensory overload as my body began to tremble and we both came.
Again, my forehead fell to the cabinet as my knees weakened. After our union ended, Van spun me around and picked me up, cradling me to his wide chest. He sat me back on the kitchen counter. As his eyes met mine, he teased loose strands of my fair hair away from my face, put himself back in his boxer briefs, and secured the button on his pants.
“I can’t tell you what you do to me,” he said as he spread my knees and his gaze went to my core. “Fucking perfect.” Before I could say a word, Van went to the sink and dampened a paper towel.
Wordlessly, I watched as he came back and gently tended to me.
The contrast in Van’s unbridled passion versus this gentler caretaker was as different as night was to day. And yet as I leaned back on my arms as he prompted and he cleaned the evidence of this recent encounter, I had the revelation that Donovan Sherman wasn’t one man who I could learn about in a few days. There were too many sides to him. The mysteries wouldn’t go away, but with time, maybe I’d learn the secrets they kept buried.
Once Van was satisfied, he helped me off the counter and proceeded to clean the cool granite.
My large sweater hung to the middle of my thighs. After retrieving my socks, panties, and pants, I stood and my gaze met Van’s. “Is there any sense in putting these back on?”
His smile warmed something within me. “That’s up to you. I don’t mind taking them off again.”
I scanned him from his dark mane to his shiny shoes. “You’re still completely dressed.”
“Does that bother you?”
“I mean, I like looking at you when you’re—” I was going to say naked, but honestly, Van was sexy no matter what.
“When I’m...?”
Leaving my clothes on one of the stools, I went to him, wrapping my arms around his torso and looked up. “That was hot.” Warmth filled my cheeks. “I like looking at you. Period. That’s the end of my sentence, Van. I find you attractive in these clothes, your mountain-man clothes, and no clothes at all.”