Текст книги "Darker the Release "
Автор книги: Claire Kent
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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 15 страниц)
Responding to his silent request, she wrapped both legs around his waist. Closing her eyes and whining in pleasure, she still managed to ask drily, “Better?”
“Yes,” he gasped, shaking a little at the sensations of sinking deeper inside her. He loved having her legs around him. Loved feeling like she wanted him deep, like she didn’t want to let him pull out. Her body was the most luscious home he’d ever known, and he clung to any evidence that she felt the same way about his.
He moved his forearms until they were crossed under her neck, and he kissed her again as he started to thrust.
He had great plans for keeping their lovemaking slow and leisurely tonight, but as soon as he began to move inside her, Kelly started bucking her hips up urgently and whimpering with pretty little sounds of pleasure and impatience.
Her obvious need for him broke the lingering threads of his control. With a rough groan, he pumped his pelvis more rapidly, and his kiss became hungry and clumsy. He could feel his climax building with dangerous speed, and he tore his mouth away from hers so he could try to regain his focus.
It didn’t help. Because now he could see Kelly’s lovely face. It was flushed and twisted with the sensations washing over her, and her eyes were hot and wild, never looking away from his face. She was already panting and was still making those erotic little sounds every time he drove his cock into her.
“Kelly,” he moaned, the one word almost a plea, squeezing his eyes shut and burrowing his face into the space beside her neck in a vain attempt to hold back his release. It was almost embarrassing. He was usually so much better than this—he usually lasted so much longer.
She was gasping against the side of his head, and her breath was warm and moist. “God, Caleb,” she choked. “Faster. And harder. I’m almost there.” Her body was writhing frantically beneath him, her legs tightening around him with each of his thrusts and her fingers digging painfully into the skin of his back.
He tried to kiss her again, but they just moaned and panted against each other’s mouths. He accelerated their motion, trying to please her, making his strokes shorter, faster, and more powerful. Her inner muscles had contracted around his throbbing cock, and the tighter feeling made him want to howl.
Then Caleb felt his balls tightening, and—in a panic—he reared up, clinging to the last of his control. “Come, blossom,” he demanded roughly, clenching his jaw until it ached. “Come. I can’t…”
Her whimpers were louder and more desperate now, and her face was contorted with effort and rising pleasure. “Yeah,” she gasped, jerking her hips wildly as she tried to claim her orgasm. “Caleb…Yeah…I’m…God, Caleb!”
The last word was a sob as her body shattered beneath him. She shuddered through her orgasm, but Caleb could see that she was trying to keep her eyes open. On the first spasm of her channel around him, he let himself go, thrusting hard a few more times before he let his pleasure erupt.
He choked on her name as her muscles contracted steadily around him, and then the white rush of sensation overwhelmed him. He forced himself to keep watching her, and their eyes met in a vague, hot blur as he released himself in spurts into her quivering body.
He was weak and gasping when the pleasure finally faded, and he had to force himself not to collapse with his whole weight on top of her. Her arms and legs were still clinging to him, as if she couldn’t bear to let him go.
Caleb never wanted her to.
“Caleb,” she said at last, her voice just as breathless as he felt.
“Yeah,” he panted, nuzzling her neck and not finding the strength yet to pull away from her.
“Are we really all right?” she asked softly, her hands now stroking the little scratches she’d made in his skin. “After everything that happened? Do you think we’re going to really be all right?”
Her words weren’t entirely coherent, but he knew exactly what she was asking. And for the first time in so long, the answer didn’t scare him. “Yeah. It doesn’t have to be perfect for it to be…to be good. I love you. You love me. That’s never going to change. If we can survive this, then I’m sure we’re going to make it.”
He paused. Added, because this was still so new to him, “You think so too, right?”
She pressed a damp kiss just over his ear. “Oh, yes.”
They hugged and lay together in silence until he wondered if she was starting to go to sleep.
But finally she asked out of the blue, “So, seriously, what do you think you’ll do for a job?”
“I really have no idea.”
“I guess you’ll probably get a bunch of offers. With your résumé, I mean. You’ll be asked to sit on boards or do all kinds of things.”
“Yeah.” He was sure he would get offers like that. He wasn’t planning to accept them.
“You won’t take them, will you?” she asked, as if she’d read his mind. “Because it will still be a result of what…”
“What I did. Yes. I won’t take them.”
“So what do you want to do?”
He smiled and shook his head, nestling her closer to him. “I have no idea what I want to do. I’ll figure it out. It’s a strange feeling—being jobless like this, without any direction at all.”
“Well,” she said, a teasing note in her tone that warmed his heart, “at least you have plenty of money to tide you over in the meantime.”
He chuckled. “There’s that.”
Her mood shifted abruptly. “I didn’t mean it wasn’t hard for you to do. The decision you made. I know how difficult it must have been. I didn’t mean to imply it was easier for you than—”
“I know,” he assured her. “Kelly, I know what you meant. It was hard. But this is the first time in a really long time when I’ve been absolutely sure that it was the right thing to do. I feel…I don’t know…almost free.”
She pressed a soft kiss against his jaw. Then she readjusted in a way that made it clear she was ready to go to sleep.
He was too.
And a vague thought came to him then, holding Kelly in the dark, that pretty soon he wouldn’t have to wake up with endless emails waiting for him to answer.
He smiled in the dark. That would be a very good morning.
Epilogue
Six months later, Kelly finished up with her client at about four on a Saturday afternoon. She hadn’t wanted to meet with the client on the weekend, but it was the only time the woman could make it work. Kelly had met with her for almost two hours, and now she was ready to get home to Caleb.
Both of them had been busy all week, and it felt like she hadn’t really seen him since last weekend.
A couple of months ago he’d given up his apartment downtown, and she’d moved into his big house outside of the city, so she had almost a full hour’s drive to get home. When she got there, she found Breah polishing the railings of the main staircase.
“That looks beautiful,” she said, admiring the way the old wood shone.
Breah smiled, evidently pleased by the compliment. “There’s some life in this old house yet.” Then her expression changed. “He’s in his office.”
Kelly frowned. “What? I thought he wasn’t going to work today.”
Breah appeared as displeased as Kelly was. “He’s been in there since you left.”
With a sigh, Kelly gave Breah an understanding smile and then headed back to the office. She should have known Caleb couldn’t stay away from work for an entire weekend.
Three months ago he’d run into a former business acquaintance who was some kind of technological genius. It hadn’t taken Caleb long to woo the man away from his current employer and partner with him in a new medical technology company.
The project had consumed him since then. Kelly had been very happy that Caleb had found something to pour his intelligence, energy, and ambition into, since he’d been kind of aimless and restless since his resignation. But he was a workaholic by nature, and the last few months had reminded her of this fact.
She found him at his desk, typing up something that looked like an email.
“Hey,” she said sharply after poking her head into the room.
He didn’t look away from his computer monitor. “Hi. You back?” He sounded distracted, exactly as she’d expected.
“So much for taking the day off.”
“Just catching up on some stuff while you were gone.”
“Well, I’m back now.”
“Give me a minute to finish up.”
He still hadn’t looked away from the screen.
She sighed, half in frustration and half in resignation. “I’ll be by the pool. I have a new bikini, in case you’re interested.”
He was still typing like crazy. “Nice.”
She turned to walk out, shaking her head, but then she said over her shoulder, “There was a time when the promise of me in a new bikini would have immediately roused the beast in you. Whatever happened to him?”
Caleb gave a wordless grunt as a response.
She pitched her voice as a lilting taunt. “I guess he’s too old to be roused.”
She left when he didn’t respond. She wasn’t even sure he’d heard her, but she thought he probably had. She knew him really well by now. No matter how consumed he was by work, there was no way he could resist a challenge like that.
She went to change into the swimsuit she’d bought earlier in the week to celebrate the arrival of warm weather—a dark red bikini that left little to the imagination—and she went to lie out by the pool, figuring she’d be seeing Caleb pretty quickly.
She was enjoying the warmth of the sun on her skin when she heard the gate to the pool area open about ten minutes later. She managed to hide a smile as she opened her eyes behind her sunglasses and saw Caleb approaching.
He’d changed into a suit too, and he was smiling at her with a familiar heat that looked almost predatory.
But she was annoyed with him for working when he wasn’t supposed to, so she kept her body still, rather than showing the sudden surge of feeling she felt at his presence.
“I approve of the bikini,” he murmured, his voice slightly thick as his eyes crawled up and down her outstretched body.
She stretched and let out a long sigh, as if she were too sleepy to focus on conversation. “I’m glad.”
Then she closed her eyes and pretended to sleep.
She felt him watching her for a minute, and she could almost hear his mind working, figuring things out—what she was thinking, how he should respond, what he should do to address her annoyance.
When she could hear him moving around, she peeked out of her mostly closed eyelids to see that he was leaning over the chaise beside her, stretching out his back.
No wonder. He’d probably been sitting in that desk chair since she’d left the house hours ago.
Her eyes lingered on his lean body—his long legs, firm thighs, strong arms, impressive shoulders. The rippling muscles in his back. He had a really good body for a man his age. Her appreciation for his body was inevitably mingled with everything else she knew about him. His relentless will, the dark shadows in his soul, the power and intelligence and humor, the tenderness at the heart of him that he’d only recently allowed to come out.
She loved all of it. All of him. Body and mind and heart. Even when he was being annoying.
She felt herself melting as she watched, and she was about to drag him down on top of her when she noticed that his motion as he stretched gradually became slower, more intentional.
It was strange. Not at all like he normally moved. Her eyes lingered on his tight ass. It was almost like he was…
She suddenly knew what he was doing. She could even see the corner of his mouth twitch up in suppressed humor before he managed to hide it. She almost laughed out loud at the revelation, filled with amusement and appreciation and affection.
“That doesn’t work on women,” she said instead, struggling to hide the laughter bubbling up inside her.
He turned to meet her eyes with a bland expression. “What doesn’t?”
His tone was perfectly convincing. He’d always been a good liar. Just as good as she was. But she knew him better than anyone else. “Luring me out of my perfectly justified mood with your body. As fine as it is, that doesn’t work on women. We don’t have dicks to be led around by.”
He stopped trying to hide his smile as he stretched out on the chaise beside her. “Oh well,” he said, grinning at her. “It was worth a try.”
She couldn’t resist his grin—or anything else about him—so she got up and lowered herself on top of him, straddling his hips with her legs and leaning down to kiss him.
He returned to the kiss slowly, deeply, but he was still smiling when she finally pulled away. “I guess it did work,” he said, looking quite pleased with himself.
“No, it didn’t. I wasn’t that annoyed by you working when you weren’t supposed to. Appealing to my libido will only get you so far.”
He took her head in both his hands and pulled her down into another soft kiss, this one almost gentle. “I wasn’t appealing to your libido. I was appealing to your heart.”
She knew he was right. He hadn’t wanted her to be overcome with lust by his little show. He’d wanted her to laugh and remember how much she loved him—exactly as she’d done.
She smiled, relaxing in his arms. “My heart always seems to get me in trouble with you.”
He brushed a kiss into her hair. “Yours isn’t the only one.”
“I wasn’t even supposed to have a heart.”
“Me either.”
She raised her head to meet his eyes, and they gazed at each other for a long moment, understanding each other completely.
“I think mine has completely swallowed up the beast,” he added, a wry, resigned note in his voice. He must still be thinking about her comment before, as she’d been trying to spur him to put away his work.
“No, it hasn’t. The beast is still lurking in there somewhere. I like when he comes out to play occasionally.”
His brown eyes ignited at her words, and his focus lowered briefly to her breasts, which were barely covered with the material of her suit.
She smiled, her heart overflowing with a sudden, stark realization of how far they’d come in the last year. “But I think I was right when I told you on the first day we met that, by the time I was through with you, all your unrelenting alpha-maleness would be broken.”
“Not broken,” he objected, the corners of his mouth tilting up again. “Maybe just bent a little.”
She smiled and kissed him briefly. “Just so you know, you were right about me too. I used to think I was better off alone. I don’t think that anymore.”
“Good. Because you’re stuck with this man, no matter how old and boring and work-obsessed he gets.”
“I’m not stuck with you. I chose you, out of all the other men I could have had.”
His eyebrows arched. “Just how many other men are we talking about?”
She giggled and gave him a soft hug. “I’m not sure you’re in a good position to start comparing numbers.”
“Probably not,” he agreed drily. Then he adjusted her so she was looking at him again, his expression sobering. “I might be half the man I was before, but it’s the better half. You know that, right?”
She felt her chest tighten with feeling again, knowing how much he meant it, knowing how far he had come to be able to share his heart so nakedly. She nodded, her eyes burning slightly, realizing how far she had come too. “Yes. I know it. Same here.”
After a minute of silent acknowledgment, she gave her head a little shake, deciding the sappy part of the afternoon was over. “Now,” she said, pitching her tone as a taunt again, “if you think you can manage to rouse the beast a little, I can think of a few things I’d like him to do.”
It worked. Of course it worked. Some things would never change. And Caleb Marshall would never let a challenge go unanswered.
About the Author
CLAIRE KENT has been writing romance novels since she was twelve years old. She has a PhD in British literature and, when she’s not writing, teaches English at the university level. She also writes contemporary romance under the pen name Noelle Adams.
You can email her at [email protected] and find her online at:
clairekent.com
Facebook.com/NoelleAdamsAuthor
@NoelleAdams3
The Editor’s Corner
Another month of new Loveswept romance books is here! I know you’ll adore this selection of stories chosen just for you….
USA Today bestselling author Claire Kent continues her emotionally charged story of longing, betrayal, and insatiable desire with Darker the Release, the sequel to Sweet the Sin. Another Loveswept USA Today bestseller, Lauren Layne, introduces her new Oxford series with Irresistibly Yours. Wendy Marcus’s latest sexy yet sweet military romance, All I Need Is You, releases this month as well. Then there’s another Friends First story from USA Today bestseller Laura Drewry, How Forever Feels. USA Today bestseller Stacey Kennedy finishes up her successful BDSM Club Sin series with Mine, simultaneously introducing her next series of erotic play, Dungeon’s Key, and hot hero Micah.
We’re back on the ice with the first in the Aces Hockey series from Kelly Jamieson, Major Misconduct. Ladies, hold on to your hearts, the Caldwell Brothers are here—USA Today bestselling author MJ Fields and Chelsea Camaron want you to meet Hendrix, the first book in a series about three alpha men who live up to their legendary names. Lastly, something a little different—bear-shifter’s anyone? An alpha hero to the extreme, hot highlander Ronan is all that you could want in Bearing It All by Vonnie Davis, perfect for fans of Jennifer Ashley and Shelly Laurenston.
Fabulous variety with a book for everyone, yes? I hope you’ve found your book boyfriend in this month’s releases. However, if you haven’t, fear not, as November’s hot lineup is just around the corner. Until then…
Happy Romance!
Gina Wachtel
Associate Publisher
Let USA Today bestselling author Claire Kent introduce you to Matt Stokes, the sexy-as-sin male stripper and club owner who really knows what it means to bare everything in Taking It Off
Coming soon from Loveswept
Continue reading for a sneak peek
Chapter 1
Elizabeth Marks faked a smile as a buff, polished man shook his nylon-encased dick in her face.
She wanted to cringe and back away, but she was afraid of offending Melissa, her college roommate who was having her bachelorette party at Bare Assets, the most popular male dance revue—which was obviously just a male strip club—in Boston. So she pretended to laugh and quickly stuck a ten-dollar bill beneath the waistband of the guy’s clingy black bikini briefs to make it clear he could move on.
She hated this.
She hated the overdone music, the squeals of all the women around her, the vulgarity of the humping motions from all the dancers who had left the stage and now spread out around the audience. Melissa and the four other bridesmaids all appeared to be having a great time.
Elizabeth wished she’d had the foresight to fake a migraine.
Maybe there was something wrong with her, but she didn’t find the forty-five minutes they’d spent so far at Bare Assets either fun or sexy.
“Come on, Elizabeth,” Melissa said, reaching all the way over the table so she could tuck a bill into the stripper’s underwear too. “Don’t be so uptight.”
“I’m not uptight.” Elizabeth looked away as the man walked over to Melissa, pulled her to her feet, and began to hump her, much to the delight of the other women at the table.
Unlike the rest of them, Elizabeth really didn’t want to see that.
It wasn’t that she was afraid of sex—not at all. She enjoyed the physical aspects of love as much as anyone else. The real issue was that this didn’t feel anything like sex to her.
It felt ridiculous.
When the guy had given Melissa a thorough dry fuck, he thankfully moved away from their table, and Elizabeth let out her breath when it appeared that this act—the sexy-construction-worker routine involving five different dancers—was finally drawing to an end.
“See,” Melissa said, grinning. “It’s just for fun. They’re careful about the sleazy stuff here. The staff is really well-trained, and anyone who goes too far is asked to leave. It’s all very professional.”
Maybe it was professional compared to other clubs like this, but the abundance of guys in tight underwear shaking their dicks around seemed kind of sleazy to Elizabeth.
“You’ve got to learn to let loose a little,” Jenna told her, holding up her phone to take a selfie with her cosmopolitan.
“I’m happy to let loose. This just isn’t my thing.”
Melissa shook her head. “You never let loose. You never let yourself be anything but perfect.”
Elizabeth faked another laugh, slightly annoyed because she didn’t think a woman had to enjoy male strip clubs to not be considered uptight. “I’m not that bad. I’ve gotten better than I was in college.”
She said that mostly so she wouldn’t end up in an argument with the bride to be. There might have been a little truth in her friend’s words. She did try to make sure everything about her life was in order. She’d done well in school, and then she’d gotten a master’s in art therapy from an excellent school. She’d worked hard to get a job at one of the most exclusive preschools in the Boston area. Given her professional responsibilities and the age of her students, she was more of an art teacher than an art therapist, but it paid well enough and she enjoyed working with the children. She’d generally been a good girl growing up, and she’d rarely gotten in trouble. But none of that was why she wasn’t enjoying this evening.
She just found this whole scene kind of…gross.
She relaxed during the brief break between acts, since the music wasn’t so loud and she could look around without being confronted by the waxed body of a barely clad man.
She scanned the faces of the women at the tables and felt a weird clench in her stomach. She didn’t get it. She just didn’t understand their enjoyment of this kind of show.
It was like she was alone in a dark corner when the rest of the world was at a party.
As she was looking around, her eyes landed on a man standing at the back, near the bar. He stood out in the crowd because he clearly wasn’t a member of the staff—all of whom were shirtless—or a customer, nearly all of whom were female.
This guy was tall and well-built but was dressed casually in jeans and a black T-shirt. It looked like he had tattoos down both arms. He was talking to the bartender, and there shouldn’t have been anything special about him. He was very good-looking, but he wasn’t calling any attention to himself.
Elizabeth had no idea why she couldn’t look away from him.
There was just something sexy and kind of deep about him, as if there were layers to his personality that were waiting to be peeled back. She kept watching as his eyes made an impersonal tour of the room. They paused on her, maybe because he noticed her watching him.
She felt a rush of excitement as their eyes met, although he didn’t smile or change his expression. She made herself look away, since she didn’t want him to think she was staring.
She wanted to stare, though. Something kept drawing her to him in a way she wasn’t accustomed to.
It took real effort to keep her eyes away from him. And every time her gaze drifted back, the man was looking at her too.
Her heartbeat accelerated at the idea that she’d caught his attention.
Not that she would ever date a man she met in a club like this. She had fairly high standards for romantic relationships. She was looking for an educated, attractive professional who would fit into her social circle, wouldn’t be intimidated by her family’s affluence, and was basically moral and upstanding. The guy she had in mind wouldn’t spend any time in a place like this.
But it was still nice. That he’d noticed her.
Of course, he might have just noticed her because she kept looking over at him.
When the lights briefly dimmed, signaling the beginning of a new act, she shook her head at the squeals from the women around her. She couldn’t help but wonder yet again what they found so appealing.
The brief shared glances with the guy in the back were a lot sexier and more exciting than any of the vulgar moves from these dancers or their unnaturally shiny, beefed-up bodies, with everything on display.
When three men dressed as soldiers came out onstage amid ecstatic shouts from the women, Elizabeth let out a resigned sigh and discreetly glanced back toward the bar.
The man was no longer there.
She told herself not to be disappointed. Meeting a guy’s eyes a few times wasn’t any sort of a sign or a promise. It didn’t mean he wanted to talk to her or get to know her. It didn’t mean she would ever see him again.
She tried to keep smiling so Melissa wouldn’t call her uptight, but as the evening progressed, she found it harder and harder to fake interest—especially since the good-looking mystery man never made a reappearance.
During a fireman routine, as the performers spread out into the audience, one of the guys came over to her and wanted to give her a lap dance.
She tried to decline—the attention she’d had from a dancer earlier had been more than enough for her—but her friends all demanded she participate so she felt trapped into doing so.
The guy was attractive and very young, and he was playful rather than genuinely sexy, but still….She found the whole act of him grinding against her with his hips—all of his “assets” fully visible beneath the tight briefs—so uncomfortable it was almost repellant.
She kept the plastered smile on her face and hurriedly offered him a tip afterward, but she pulled away as soon as she could without offending him or Melissa.
She should never have come here tonight.
She sat stiffly for a few minutes afterward, blindly watching the tight butt of the guy as he made his way back onstage.
“It’s really not that bad,” Katie said, leaning over close enough to be heard over the music. “You don’t need to act like you’re being tortured.”
“I know. I just hate this.”
Katie was Elizabeth’s best friend, and she was the only one of the women at this table with whom she could be fully open and share what she felt. “Just laugh at it,” Katie said. “A lot of the women here are having fun because they think it’s funny. You could try to enjoy it that way.”
“You don’t think it’s sexy, do you?” Elizabeth asked.
Katie was eying a gorgeous black man who was built like a rock. “Not all the moves, no. But I don’t mind looking at the guys.”
Elizabeth frowned, vaguely disappointed in her friend and genuinely confused about the look in her eyes. Katie was married to exactly the kind of man Elizabeth was looking for. Her husband Steve was a nice-looking lawyer with good manners and a good sense of humor. He loved their two kids, and he made a very good income.
Occasionally Elizabeth would feel jealous when she looked at Katie’s life. She didn’t want Steve herself, but she wanted a family and lifestyle like that. It had all worked out so smoothly and perfectly for Katie, but Elizabeth couldn’t even find a guy that she was remotely interested in dating.
Steve wasn’t any sort of movie star, but Elizabeth thought he was more attractive than the overinflated physicality of the strippers in this club.
“Nothing wrong with looking,” Katie said with a little smile. “You know guys do it too.”
“I know. But just looking doesn’t do it for me.” When Katie laughed, Elizabeth hurriedly explained, “I mean, I don’t get excited by a body in a vacuum. I need something more.”
Katie didn’t even seem to hear her, since she was ogling another one of the strippers.
Elizabeth sighed and tried to consciously loosen up and find something to enjoy about this experience.
She tried and tried and tried and tried—until she was absolutely exhausted from working on loosening up.
Finally, she couldn’t stand the noise, the gyrations, the crude physicality any longer. Maybe it meant she was uptight. Maybe it meant she was repressed. Maybe it meant she was boring and vanilla. But she didn’t like this, and she didn’t want to be in this room anymore.
She told the others that she needed to go to the bathroom, and she maneuvered her way through the crowd until she could shut the restroom door on the screaming and pulsing music.
She didn’t like to sit on public toilets and she didn’t really need to go, so she just stood in a stall and tried to breathe, gradually relaxing her body, which she hadn’t realized had been so tense.
Maybe she could pretend to be sick, so she could go home. It would probably be another hour before her friends were ready to leave.
She stayed as long as she could in the bathroom, until there was another break between acts and several women entered at the same time. Since she felt bad about occupying a stall she didn’t really need, she flushed the toilet with her foot and went to wash her hands, giving a polite smile to the middle-aged woman wearing a sash that said I’M 50 YEARS YOUNG, who was waiting for an available stall.
When Elizabeth left the bathroom, she wasn’t yet ready to face the main room again, so she lingered in the foyer, near the door, pulling out her phone so she could pretend to be texting, which would give her an excuse if anyone was wondering why she wasn’t going back in.
She was so absorbed in tapping out nonsense fake text messages that she didn’t notice anyone approaching her until a low, male voice said, “You’re going to miss the next act.”
Elizabeth jerked in surprise, looking up from her phone to see the handsome mystery man she’d noticed earlier by the bar.
Up close, she saw that he had smoky gray eyes, a hint of stubble on his strong chin, and an elaborate scene was inked down both of his arms.
“Oh,” she said, feeling rattled, since he’d surprised her and she was still ridiculously attracted to him. “That’s okay.”
“You aren’t enjoying it.” The words were a statement rather than a question.
She made a face. “I’m sure the guys are doing a great job, but it’s not really my thing.”
“Why did you come then?” He didn’t look offended or annoyed—just curious.
“It was my friend’s idea. This is her bachelorette party.”
His eyes lingered on her face with an intentionality that confused and excited her. “That doesn’t answer my question.”
She had to pause a moment to think through what he meant, and she could feel her heartbeat accelerate even more. Her skin flushed slightly. “I came because I didn’t want to offend my friend. Why else would I have come?”
