“But you can’t just stay for them.”
I put my hands on the door and levered back, my head slumped forward between my shoulders.
“And I hate Mal Jezic, even though I sent my kids off with him.”
“What?” I gasped, scrambling fast, throwing open the door to have him almost fall in on me. He’d been leaning hard and had to correct quickly or hit me.
I ended up catching him, my hands on his hips, making sure he didn’t fall.
We stood there, both of us at six-two, eye to eye, neither of us flinching or making excuses or running away.
“I said,” he murmured, as he eased from my hold, turned, closed the door, and locked it, “that I hate Mal Jezic.”
I stared at him, watching him, mesmerized, as he turned to face me after having made sure no one but the two of us could get into the room.
“Don’t you need to go back out there?”
He took a step forward, and though normally—or the new normal that we’d established—I would have taken one back, I couldn’t bring myself to move.
“Emery, I—”
“Brann.” He said my name, husky and deep, the sound of it, the feeling I could hear as my name tumbled off his tongue, rolled through me, snapping and crackling over my skin. “Don’t you want to know why I hate him?”
I nodded, unable to speak, drowning in the way he was staring at me, hearing my own breath start and stop.
“I hate him because you like him and trust him and you’re so relaxed when you’re with him,” he murmured, smiling at me. “I’ve seen you two together, along with his wife and his kids. You’re yourself when you’re with him, like you are with the girls, and not at all how you are with me. Not anymore.”
What could I say? It was the truth; I’d been perfect with Emery since the day I’d kissed him. No one could have asked for a better caregiver for their children, but I’d checked out when it came to him. I was more robot than human.
He stepped closer, making the space between us nonexistent, and I couldn’t stifle the moan of having him there, against me, his thighs pressed to mine, his groin, his abdomen.
I was afraid to do anything, not wanting to wake up, to break the spell.
“I want you to be real with me too, Brann,” he whispered, his breath ghosting over my face. “Say you will.”
But how could I?
I went to move, but he cupped my neck, holding me still as his left hand slipped under my sleep shirt to slide over my hip.
The answering shiver was involuntary. “No, don’t touch me,” I groaned, the exact opposite of what was in my heart coming out of my mouth.
“But I want to,” he assured me, leaning in to press his lips to the side of my throat.
I caught my breath, and I heard his satisfied male rumble, and for the first time I realized something important.
All this time I thought I was the one in charge. I thought I was the one making the decisions, holding myself back, in check and not pushing. But it hit me that Emery had been playing along. He hadn’t been participating before, but now he was. This was what Emery Dodd looked like when he was engaged.
“You have people in the living room,” I ground out, because it killed me to remind him, but it was the right thing to do.
“No,” he said hoarsely, his voice thick, like poured molasses, as he kissed up to my jaw, his hand fisting in my hair, holding tight, the other sliding back to my ass. “Everyone’s gone. We’re the only ones here.”
We were?
“Lydia and I have a few more things to hash out, but we’re done, which I needed so I can concentrate all my energy on you.”
I recovered then. Instantly. Like a drunk sobering up from shock. And even though I was already painfully hard, that fast, I shoved free and stared at him.
“What?” I yelled at him.
He looked me up and down and then sighed deeply. “You should see yourself with your hair all sticking up and the flush on your skin and your beautiful blue eyes.”
“I—”
“You take my breath away.”
“Emery! What the fuck is going on?”
“Come here,” he said, gesturing for me. “I want to kiss you.”
“You’re gonna turn me into a crazy person if you don’t start talking.”
He moved fast, and I did too, but I only succeeded in bumping up against the wall, because the room was only so big.
Pinning me there, he put a hand flat on my chest, and reached down inside my sweats, under the elastic band of my briefs, and took hold of my already leaking cock.
I bucked into his grip, eyes closing, lips parting, as he stroked me from balls to head. It felt amazing, and every nerve ending in my body sparked to life.