I turned my head and met his dark eyes. “There’s no question anymore about where we’re sleeping. We eat dinner, clean the kitchen, watch a little TV, and then we both stroll in here, strip naked, and then climb into bed. We’ve gotten really comfortable with each other, and as much as I enjoy it, I’d be lying if I said it didn’t concern me.”
“Then talk to me. What about our situation concerns you?”
I pushed down the urge to sweep everything under the rug again. I didn’t want to be the one who had to say this out loud, but it didn’t seem like I had much of a choice. However, I couldn’t look him in the eye, so I averted my gaze back to the glow on the ceiling cast by the lamp next to him. “How is this supposed to end? Like…do we just shake hands? Hug? See each other on weekends and act like we didn’t spend months in some fake relationship?”
He shifted onto his elbow and hovered over me. The tips of his free hand grazed my side on its way to hold my face. “It doesn’t have to end, Janelle. This…what we agreed to at the beginning, doesn’t have to be the way it all plays out.”
“Then how does this play out? Because I’ll be honest with you, Holden…the thought of forfeiting that money and choosing you, only for us to not work out, scares the shit out of me. Because then I’ll have nothing. And I can’t accept that.”
“You won’t end up with nothing. I can promise you that. But if it’ll make you feel better, we can figure out an alternative plan. You said the show gave you a year to marry the toolbag? Let’s go with that then. Forget the six-month agreement we made and base it all off the deal you made for the money. I wanted you to stay here so you could patch things up with your family, and from what I can see, you’ve done that.”
“But that still doesn’t answer my question about us. If we break up, it’ll make things difficult with my family, with my brother, with us.”
“Then we don’t tell them. We can keep this between us for as long as you want or until they figure it out. That way, it’ll buy you time to see how you feel about this. About me and us. And no matter what happens, I’ll never erase you from my life.”
“Why not?”
He lowered his lips to mine and breathed, “Because I need you,” against them.
If I had a switch that took me from zero to sixty in a millisecond, he flipped it with those three words—I need you. I bent my legs on either side of him and dug my heels into the mattress just enough to feel him where I needed him most. And that must’ve been his switch, because without wasting a single second, he covered my mouth with his and dug his fingers into my hip.
“Baby, I need you…now.”
I splayed my fingers across his bare back and said, “Then take me.”
For a moment, I thought this had to be a dream. I was convinced it wasn’t real. Not because the situation dripped with idealistic fairytale qualities, enough to ask for a pinch to tell if it was a figment of my imagination, but because it was so…raw. So…desperate.
His breathing became ragged when he found my entrance. Considering the sensual way my body responded when he’d kissed me, I knew he felt how wet I was for him. Holden seemed to be teetering on the edge of control. His face etched with desire and his eyes half closed in bliss. He thrust inside me feverishly, as if his life depended on it, but I didn’t bother trying to slow it down. Truth be told, I craved him just as badly, and a part of me was happy I didn’t have to wait.
He slid inside me again, but he stayed fully seated this time, exhaling into the crook of my neck. The heat seeped into my pores and set my insides aflame. But nothing could’ve come close to what his next words did to me. He gently nipped my earlobe, and in a husky, needy voice, he whispered, “You’ll always be a part of me. Always. I’ll never be able to quit you.”
I dug my nails into his back and flexed my hips, urging him to move once again. At first, he rolled his hips in slow rotations, but then his momentum increased and became more intense. Not much faster than before, but harder. Deeper. He dragged his long, thick shaft almost the entire way out, leaving just the tip inside, before driving himself back in with enough force to knock the air from my lungs. All while never breaking the contact of his hungry stare.
He buried himself over and over, teasing the spot inside me that no one had ever found before. Not that I’d had many partners, but of the ones I did have, it’d remained undiscovered. Until Holden. He’d found it and continued to stroke it with each and every thrust.
“Don’t stop,” I begged, wrapping my arms and legs around him in an effort to drive him deeper, urging him to move faster, pushing me toward the explosion he’d sparked. “I need you…right there.”
He had one arm behind my back and one holding my hip. In a swift move I didn’t expect, he maneuvered his arm up just enough to wrap his fingers around my shoulder to keep me from sliding up the bed every time he propelled himself inside me. He snaked his other arm under my leg, locking my bent knee in the crook of his elbow, and then he leaned slightly onto his side. It had to have been the combination of the angle and having developed more control over my body, but within a few seconds, I was ready to shatter and could no longer hold on.
A long, pleading whimper ripped through my throat as I lingered on the peak, and the second I fell over the precipice, gripping him with every muscle within my body, the whimper turned into a full-blown cry of ecstasy. Before I finished riding out the wave, his gruff words filled my ear. “I’m coming.” And they took me higher, prolonging my orgasm, and strengthening the hold I had on him.
The part I dreaded when being with Holden was when he rolled off me. Even though he remained inside me and we lay wrapped in a twisted knot of arms and legs, I hated not feeling his weight on top of me. Without him over me, the air cooled and I felt less protected.
Holden was more than my hero.
He was my cape—he could send me flying while cloaking me in refuge all at once.
And it made me even more worried about what would happen to me if it were suddenly taken away.
18
Holden
I tapped my fingers on the manila envelope on the table while staring at Janelle in the seat across from me. I had no idea how she’d react to this, but it was too late to take it back now. “I was going to give you this weeks ago, but then you got sick. So I waited until you were better, but then obviously, I got a little sidetracked. And after our talk last night and our decision to see where this goes between us without time limits—”
“Except the limit set by the show,” she corrected.
I rolled my eyes. Like I’d be able to forget about the show. “Yes, except that one…I thought this would be the perfect time to give you this.” I slid the folder across the table, practically holding my breath, and waited for her reaction.