The One In My Heart

He gripped the back of the chaise, his teeth gritted. “God, Eva.”


I braced my hands on his shoulders. “This is what you want, isn’t it? To fuck me bareback?”

For a minute only the sounds of our heavy, ungovernable breaths filled the air as my hips lifted and lowered, merging with him again and again.

Then he wrapped his arms around me and brought me close to him. “Yes, this is what I’ve always wanted, to make love to you with nothing between us.”

And I was lost.

We were both lost.





Chapter 13





BENNETT WRAPPED ME IN A bathrobe and carried me upstairs to his tub, which was huge and deep, perfect for two. He didn’t join me inside, but used the shower instead. And that was fine, because I needed a moment to myself.

I needed days, perhaps weeks, to recover from the shock of not only finding myself in love, but to such a disastrous degree. And why must it be with a complicated man, one whose heart was as tightly guarded as Fort Knox?

When Bennett came out of the shower, I closed my eyes, pretending to be half-asleep. He kissed me on the tip of my nose. “I brought a few things here that you can wear.”

Then his footsteps descended the stairs—and my heart felt as if it were dragged behind him, bruising against every single step on the way down.

It was another quarter of an hour before I could leave the relative safety of the tub and put on a set of his flannel pajamas.

At the top of the stairs, I met him coming back up. “Late-night snack is ready, if you still want one,” he said cheerfully.

Offer me your undying love; then maybe I’ll think about dinner. “Smells nice, but it doesn’t smell like ravioli.”

“Ravioli got too soggy and bloated. I made grilled cheese sandwiches.”

“Yum,” I said mechanically.

But the sandwiches turned out to be scrumptious, the cheese inside hot and gooey, the bread gloriously butter-soaked.

I sighed as I finished my last bite. “So how long have you been a vegetarian?”

“Since I was nine. I read Charlotte’s Web and that was it for me.”

“Hmm, when I was nine, I watched Babe and stayed away from pork for all of one week before I scarfed down a slice of pepperoni pizza.”

He smiled, a gorgeous man in a great mood. I didn’t quite return his smile—hard to do that when I could scarcely breathe from falling hard and fast into that eventual abyss.

His expression turned more solemn. He touched the back of his hand to my cheek. “I bolted upright in bed earlier when I thought you’d escaped my evil clutches.”

“You should have more confidence in them.”

“Usually I do.” He took our plates to the sink. “By the way, speaking of evil clutches, I already told Zelda you’re staying the night.”

A horde of thoughts stampeded across my mind, from, Can I handle having sex seven times in twenty-four hours? to, Does this mean anything other than that we’ll be having sex again in the morning? “Don’t tell me Zelda immediately sent over a change of underpants and my toothbrush.”

“She offered to. But I already have spare brush heads for my toothbrush and a change of underpants for you.”

“What?”

He turned around, braced a hand on the countertop, and grinned. “Hey, I’m a regular, hot-blooded male. I bought my fake girlfriend lingerie for Valentine’s Day. Except she refused to go out with me, so the lingerie is still in a gift bag somewhere.”

Was it wrong that I really wanted to see the lingerie he’d chosen? “I can’t go home in the morning in an evening gown. Everybody will know I’m doing the walk of shame.”

“As long as you aren’t leaving at the crack of dawn, I can have some clothes delivered for you. So go ahead and sleep in.”

With him? Lying side by side…all night? “I don’t know if I can sleep in a strange place.”

“We don’t have to sleep right away. We can stream a movie. But the only TV that’s set up for streaming is in my bedroom, so you’ll have to come there for now.”

“Okay,” I said, still feeling uncertain, but resigning myself to the fact that I didn’t have enough willpower to actually leave. “I guess we can watch a movie.”

Even though it was getting ridiculously late.

I brushed my teeth. We pulled the curtains shut, tossed a few more pillows onto his bed, and started an action flick that promised to be entertaining and not terribly demanding. But less than ten minutes into the movie, I’d already stopped paying attention to what was happening on the screen.

Bennett nuzzled my neck, raining little drop kisses that turned into dangerous bursts of heat deep in my abdomen.

“You’ll miss the next set piece,” I told him.

“What a tragedy.”

“Is this really the only TV that streams?”

“Of course not,” he murmured.

And turned my face to kiss me, a leisurely kiss that led to another. And then another. He kissed my throat and opened the buttons on my pajama shirt. “I love how you look in these pajamas.”