He was kidding. It was the only reason my adrenaline didn’t spike sending me into a panic. My emotional baggage when it came to marriage was a topic for another day—way, way, way in the future.
I giggled to myself. “Your nerd friends are going to bust when they hear this bit of seduction you have going on.”
He blanched. “I’m not telling them.”
“And why not?” I winked.
“You think I want them imagining what I’m about to do to you when we run into them at the grocery store? Think again, Remi. This…” His palms slid under my skirt to my hips and tugged my panties down before he stuck them inside his pants pocket. And just like that, he was unfastening his belt, lifting me to my feet, and then folding me over the arm of the chair. “This is all for me.”
Wanton and needy, I swayed, waiting for him to claim what was his. When it took a second longer than I was anticipating, I chanced a glance over my shoulder.
“Are you okay?”
Bending down to me, he answered against my lips. “Never, not in my whole fucking life, have I ever been better.” And then he crashed into me, kissing me with such passion and desire. All the humor was set aside for a while, and what was left was intensity and fire.
It wasn’t two naked bodies making love in a warm bed.
It wasn’t even a pair of lovers so eager that they couldn’t wait to get home, opting for a little back seat action.
We were a man and a woman working off debts to one another’s souls. It just so happened that we were doing that fully clothed, in broad daylight, hunched over the arm of an expensive club chair in an office downtown.
And it was perfect.
He wasn’t kidding about knowing the spots or going deep to find them, because Bowen knew every button to press and exactly the right order to push them in.
Within minutes he had me crying his name, but it didn’t slow him one bit.
“I can’t come again,” I said between inhales. “I can’t do it.”
One of his hands slipped between us and ran through my wetness. Then a sensation I’d never felt before surfaced in my consciousness. A light pressure. A gentle but firm nudge of a finger circling my puckered skin.
“Relax, baby,” he coached, and if I’d known that his voice could persuade me in such a physical way, I’d have had him training me at the gym.
I moaned, but it was more of a whimper. I was nervous and, well, curious.
“Trust me,” he said. “I won’t hurt you.”
I believed him, and my body did too, surrendering to how good it felt.
Still, he moved in and out of me at a delicious pace, and soon I grew feverish again and wanted more, finding myself matching the pressure he applied with his finger. Just as I pressed for more, it breached me and sent sparks shooting into my vision.
“Oh my God, Bowen.” It was almost too much. Almost uncomfortable. Yet decadent. “Oh. Oh.” My words came out in staccato puffs as an orgasm rocked me inside out.
“Fuck yes, Remi,” he growled, both his finger and his cock buried inside me. So full, I could feel him pulse and throb more than I’d ever noticed before. “So fucking good, baby.”
As I floated back to Earth, he fell against my back, gently pulling out of me. Together our hearts beat out a booming cadence. After a minute or so, he got up, walked to his private bathroom, washed himself up, and returned with a warm damp cloth for me.
He was so attentive and knew how to take care of me. Not only after sex, but I had a sneaking suspicion in general too.
“Only two thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine more installments and you’ll be all paid up, Ms. Grey.”
“Are you freaking serious?” I pretended to be shocked, scandalized, and offended. Though the truth was I’d pay double. “You’ll be bankrupt before you know it after I contact the Better Business Bureau. That’s highway robbery.”
The joke was funny but not nearly as comical as he was letting on. Perching a hand on the corner of his desk, he said, “At least you didn’t accuse me of breaking and entering.”
My jaw hung open. I was stunned—and seriously impressed. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought my sense of humor had been sexually transmitted to the broody, grumpy man I’d been so attracted to only a month or so earlier.
“Who are you?” I whispered.
His face turned serious as he stared back at me. “Same person I’ve always been: yours.”
I grinned. The “I love you” I’d been biting back for weeks was poised on the tip of my tongue. I wanted to say it, to finally free the emotion from the confines of the prison in my heart.
But love had never come easy to me. Not even when it came in the shape of the most perfect man—inside and out—I had ever laid eyes on.
Instead, I moved into him, wrapped my arms around his hips, and pressed my front to his. “Then I’m yours too.”
He smoothed down the back of my hair before kissing the top of my head. “I know, Remi. I’ve always known.”
Bowen
Three weeks after the plane crash…
“Why are you doing this?” Cassidy whispered.
“Because I have to know,” I replied, leaning against the column outside the hospital discharge area with all the casual coolness of a man on fire. “I can’t stop thinking that if maybe she sees me…” I didn’t have to put on the manly-man-with-no-emotions act in front of my sister, but the way my voice broke with desperation was a new low even for me.
Hooking her arm through my good one without the cast, she leaned her head against my shoulder. “Okay. Just breathe. Mom said she talked to Jack yesterday. He’s been calling you too, right?”
“Yeah,” I mumbled. “He said she’s doing great. Happy, healthy, back to the Remi we all know and love.”
“Well, that’s good, right?”
It was. It was fucking amazing. And while I was rotting away inside without her, I was so fucking relieved that it was almost bearable.
Every night, I swore to myself I was going to wake up the next morning and go see her. Fuck whatever Mark and Aaron had to say about it. It was time for me to take back my woman. But then Jack would call me and tell me some story about how incredible she was, sobs of happiness in his voice.
I wanted that for her.
The absence of fear.
The peace and tranquility.
The innocence and naivety.
It was a constant battle of me versus her. What she needed—to never remember—versus what I so desperately wanted—to have her come back to me. It was one of the most confusing times of my life. Who knew that utter joy and the darkest sorrow could exist in the same moment?
Yet there I was, standing outside the hospital after Jack had told me she was going home. Tempting fate, praying she’d recognize me, all the while hoping she wouldn’t remember anything else. The emotional whiplash was merciless.
“You shouldn’t have come,” I told Cassidy.
“Yeah, well, coulda, woulda, shoulda. I’m here now.”
“What? Did you draw the short straw? Lose Rock, Paper, Scissors? Pick the wrong number?” I joked in an attempt to distract myself.
She frowned as she peered up at me. “Actually, I won all of those things to be here. Thank you very much.”