“Same thing. Come here.” I opened my arms to him. Because he was. With all his faults, Scott Blackstone––sensualist, reformed playboy and dilettante, lover of a good time, environmentalist, and newly minted king of the cattle business––was perfect for me.
He stood naked and proud. And proudly showing off each delineated line of muscle meeting muscle. His erection jutted out from the rest of him, leading the charge. An instrument of God. A work of art created to give pleasure and take pleasure.
I thought about what my grandparents would say to that and chuckled. Maybe I was just like my mother after all, a creature of passion and pleasure, a sinner…a hopeless romantic. My grandparents had done everything in their power to beat it out of me and it hadn’t worked. It had gone into witness protection, hiding, waiting for Scott to come along and draw it out in the open.
“You’re laughing at me?” my dream lover said with a half–cocked grin. God bless him, Scott had such healthy self-esteem it would never even occur to him to be offended. I loved that about him. Gloriously naked, he placed a knee on the bed and stalked up my body.
“I was just thinking that I must be a lot like my mother because I’ve never seen anything more beautiful than your body––”
Or your heart…
I couldn’t say that out loud, though. I was seventy five percent certain that I was one hundred percent in love with him, and I couldn’t risk losing him by letting it slip out in a moment of weakness.
Truth was, I didn’t know how Scott felt about me. There was care there, a lot of it, sure, I wasn’t blind, and he’d always been a very expressive guy. But love? I was fairly certain Scott had never been in love before. In addition, he was definitely the type to wear his emotions on his face, so wouldn’t I have known if he was? Wouldn’t I have sensed it?
No, I didn’t think he was in love with me. Not the way I was in love with him.
“Living art?” he said smugly.
“The Guggenheim’s got nothing on you, babe.”
“And all yours, Mrs. Blackstone,” he declared in a husky voice. “Do with me what you wish.”
Locked on mine, those deep blue eyes of his held steady as his head slowly delved between my legs, his beard sending fireworks shooting across my skin as it scraped the inside of my thigh. My fingers curled into the sandpaper sheet and fisted, my legs stiffening at the feel of his hot breath on me as my heels dug into the mattress.
By the time his mouth latched on to my sweet spot, I was already halfway to coming. There is something to be said about a man who knows his way around a woman, and not just her body. Before long I was writhing in pleasure, the events of the last forty-eight hours fading into distant background noise while I was having the best sex of my life.
With his lips and his hands he wrenched a grand total of not one, but two epic Os out of me. Then he went up on his knees and crawled over my body, marking points of interest with his kisses. Pushing my legs apart with his, he settled between them, made a place for himself like it was his right. Scott moved decisively, with the confidence of someone who knew how to give pleasure and ask for it in return.
Our hips kissed. His erection pressed against me and he rocked his hips back and forth until he’d driven me mad with wanting. Grabbing him, I guided him onto his back and straddled him. He groaned in satisfaction as I slowly sank down. Eye to eye, my body bowed over him, I placed my hands on both side of his head and paused to admire him.
Scott was devastatingly handsome. I’d watched women fall at his feet for years, but that wasn’t why I found him irresistibly sexy, why I hadn’t pushed him away when he’d kissed me at his sister’s wedding. It was the unencumbered love of life that shone in his eyes. He was unapologetically himself, a fun-loving sensualist. And that I envied. It was contagious. He made me want to have fun too.
“I’ll always find you,” he murmured, lids heavy, gaze filled with longing.
Maybe it wouldn’t last. Maybe it would. I wasn’t sure Lady Luck was on my side this time, but I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Not yet anyway.
“Who are you?” I said, staring into the face of the man I loved.
“Your husband.”
Chapter Twenty
Sydney
“I know you’re not asleep,” he declared, voice husky due to being up most of the night having sex. Not that anyone was complaining. Still, the letters kept me awake. “Syd?”
“Yeah.”
It was almost dawn. I was big spoon and he was little. I placed a kiss on his bare back, and he turned to face me, searching, no doubt for a sign of distress. He ran the pad of his index finger down my cheek and traced my lips, tapped once.
“Tell me what happened.”
It felt insurmountable, this story. But I knew I had to tell him. Scott wouldn’t have accepted my silence any more than I would’ve in his place. There was also the added complication that I was desperately in love with him, and now Josh was suddenly and seemingly back in the picture.
Did I want to right that wrong? Definitely. Was I going to give up Scott to do it? Definitely not.
“The summer I turned sixteen I volunteered at the town library. I did pretty much anything to stay out of the house back then. Worked at the Dairy Queen, babysat the neighbors’ kids. The store next to the library was under construction, soon to be a hardware store. I would eat lunch in the alley that separated the two every day…that’s how I met Josh. He was working the remodel. I’d never seen him before because he’d grown up in the next town and I didn’t go out at night unless I was babysitting.”
I paused, and Scott cupped my face, thumbs brushing lightly against the edge of my jaw, encouraging me to continue.
I loved this man. I loved him with an intensity that frightened me. I wanted him above all else.
“He liked to read fantasy. That’s how we started talking––books. He was older, eighteen, and smart but couldn’t afford college, single mother, food stamps…We fell in love.” I breathed deeply. “Long story short, I’d never done anything to disobey my grandparents, but Josh gave me hope. It was like…my love for him opened my eyes to the world. That I could get out of this town. That I could get out from under their control…”
Some people believe living in fear is the worst existence, but I’m here to tell you it’s not. Hopelessness is far worse. Fear urges you to keep fighting. Hopelessness tells you to give up.
“My grandfather randomly came to pick me up one afternoon––although he probably suspected because I couldn’t help the smiles on my face. He saw us sitting together, laughing. He saw Josh kiss me. It was so innocent. He barely touched me.”
I swallowed, pushing all those ancient feelings back down.
“My grandfather dragged me home, told me to get rid of him or he was going to report Josh to the authorities and have him brought up on charges. I was a minor––he explained it to me and I believed him. I was petrified for Josh. He was a gentle, sensitive soul. He couldn’t…
“Anyway…the next day I told him all kinds of things, that I didn’t love him, that he would never be good enough for me. That I knew all he wanted was my virginity and my grandfather was going to have him arrested. It nearly killed me to do it, but I was a pretty good actress. My grandparents had trained me well.”