I was married.
I knew I should just leave. Hadn’t I gotten what I wanted? That something amazing I knew he’d be able to give me—I’d gotten it. He’d touched me. Kissed me the way that a woman should be kissed. With passion and care. Some of the ugliness of my life before was wiped away by the last few hours.
But to accept more…it was too greedy.
Wanting more only got me punished. Wanting more got me hurt. I had to carefully calibrate what I wanted to what I deserved.
A penny more, an inch more, and it would rain something awful down on my head.
I’d let myself have this terrible, terrible thing. And I should end it. Now. Before it got worse. Before I wanted even more. Before…before I ruined everything and told him.
“I have a question for you,” he said. He came over to my chair, and with one hand, he picked me up and set me down on the table and then he pushed in between my legs, bracing his hands on the table beside me.
He was crowding me and I wanted to push him away and pull him closer. All at the same time. I pulled in a deep breath and my breasts touched his chest. The robe had split over my legs and I could feel the denim of his jeans on the insides of my thighs.
He tilted my face up so my eyes met his.
“What are you scared of?” he asked.
DYLAN
Dylan knew fear. He knew how it smelled. What it tasted like—the bitter, coppery taste of blood and adrenaline in the back of the throat. And he knew what it looked like when someone was trying not to be scared.
After he turned sixteen he’d had four long years learning every inch, every side of fear.
“I’m not scared,” Annie whispered.
“And now you’re lying.”
She shook her head and he eased his grip up under her chin.
“Are you scared of me?”
She shook her head, that white-blond hair falling over her eyes. Dylan reached up and brushed it away, taking in all her softness. Her skin. Her hair. All of it. Her entire body communicated her fear. The white-knuckled grip on the champagne glass, the way her eyes wouldn’t stay locked on his. Her shoulders were up at her ears.
“Then who are you scared of?”
“No one,” she breathed. “I’m fine. Just…maybe nervous.”
Why the fuck was she lying? He’d kicked women out of his life for far less than lying to his face. If Dylan was thinking at all, he’d pack this girl up and send her on her way.
But he wasn’t thinking. And that always meant trouble.
“No one’s ever gone to all this trouble for me,” she said, putting her hand out toward that gross cheese Margaret insisted was the best and the olives.
“It’s not that much trouble,” Dylan muttered. Truthfully, he would break every rule he had, every promise he’d ever made, and go to all the trouble in the world for this girl and she had no idea. None.
He’d made a joke earlier about her living in a box before. And he knew he wasn’t wrong. She’d talked about her mom, and Dylan had the sense that she wasn’t the only one that had kept Annie small and pushed down.
“I don’t need champagne,” she said, setting down her glass. She was doing it again, that thing that made him nuts. Pushing past her fear to be brave, to reach out, however scared, for what she wanted. “I don’t need fancy cheese and all this…stuff.”
“It’s a seduction, Annie. It’s about want. Not need.”
“You’ve already seduced me,” she whispered. “All I want is you.”
She reached up and pulled the lapels of the robe off her shoulders, revealing herself to him. That creamy skin. The small, round, tight breasts with the pink nipples. She pulled open the belt and the rest of the robe fell away and she sat there surrounded in black satin, like a present just for Dylan.
And Jesus…she’d shaved.
That tender sweet spot between her legs was nearly bare.