The Reluctant Romantics Box Set (The Fall, The Mind, The Heart)

“I intend to, Rose. I intend to take all of you: your heart, soul, body, and mind. Even when I do have all of you, it still won’t be enough.”

“Why are you talking like this?” He guided himself to my entrance and pressed himself into me achingly slow, stopping before he gave me all of him.

“Because, Rose, I’m falling for you already, and I can’t stop thinking about you, or us, or our future, or this.” He buried himself inside me, and I felt the relief. My protest fled immediately.

He took me with a gentleness that made my chest tighten and resolve melt. For the first time since we’d met, I thought he might be onto something.

“Grant, I have to study. I had fun and all but you have to go.” I tried not to make eye contact as he lay in bed next to me, strumming his fingers over my skin.

“Fun . . .” he muttered in disbelief. I had no choice but to look over at him.

“Fun? That was fun?” His eyebrow quirked as he waited on me to answer, and I had to resist the urge to fill his dimple with my tongue.

“Oh, baby, you are already hell bent on breaking my heart,” he said playfully before tilting my chin towards him. “This isn’t just sex, Rose. I want to know you and not just in this way. If you hadn’t attacked me and I still had no idea how good it felt, I would have waited. But now I do so . . .” His eyebrows swept up in a double tap before his tone changed. “Seriously, you can’t kick me out. I won’t let you cheapen this to bullshit.” He groaned in frustration, swiping his hand over his face. “Fuck...I sound like a girl.”

I pressed my head into my pillow, equally frustrated, before I turned to him. “Quit making this into something that it’s not. I like you. I do. I love sleeping with you, but I’m so close to finishing school. I have to stay focused. I don’t have the time to fool around with stuff like this.”

He stilled his fingers and adjusted his pillow so he was closer to me. “Rose, this is the most important thing you will ever do besides being a doctor.”

“And what is this again?”

“It’s love, Red, or, at least, it will be.”

I rolled my eyes as the butterflies began to circle each other from my stomach to my chest. Looking at him made me want, touching him made me raw, and hearing his words made me weak. Even so, the reasonable woman in me was still fighting.

“Right, Grant, and five or ten screaming orgasms constitutes love?”

“No, it doesn’t and stop being so damn pessimistic. I’m not asking you to be the misses yet. I’m asking you to keep an open mind.”

“I can’t help it. This is crazy talk.” We hadn’t made it out to dinner last night and I had barely escaped him this morning for a shower. I thought I was home free until he whisked me back to bed. I was starving, and I knew I had to at least manage going over the rest of my notes for Monday’s rounds.

He took my nipple in his mouth and I let out a small cry.

“Grant, I’m spent!”

“Come again, Rose.” He grinned up at me as he made his way down my bare stomach and buried his head between my thighs. His tongue whispered to me and now trained by it, I fell apart against his mouth. He grabbed the last condom from the nightstand and buried himself to the hilt as he lifted my neck to his waiting mouth.

“God.” I pulled his hair hard and he smiled at my vicious, aggravated plucking of his hair and quickly replied to it, turning me over on my hands and knees.

Every thrust was delivered without apology and I cried out, urging him to go harder. Grant slid his hand around my hip, touching my sensitive tip, beckoning me to obey him. “Come again, and again, and again.” My body replied to his order as he grunted out shooting his heat into me and with one last hard push held himself there, biting into my shoulder. When we recovered, I jumped off the bed, chest heaving, and glared at him in frustration.

“Stop it! Put that damned thing away. I can’t take it anymore.... Maniac!”

He laughed at my outburst and after a short pause, I joined him in near hysterics.

He lay back on my pillow, beautifully bare, his hands behind his head, accentuating his bulging arms, a smug expression on his face. “I prefer insatiable, but only for you.”

Blowing out a puff of air, I watched a slow smile creep across his face. Suddenly aware I was just as bared to him, his eyes roamed my body and I could see the new naked scenarios of the two of us taking shape in his mind.

“Unh unh, nope.” I put my hand up in protest before I turned and fled to my bathroom for my second shower, making sure to lock the door. I was overwhelmed, excited and terrified because of his effect on me. It took a small eternity for me to calm myself beneath the water. I was intoxicated and definitely losing ground. He completely had me under his thumb sexually. Besides the skills I’d already shown him, my bag of tricks was empty. I’d only had a handful of sexual partners and he was by far way more experienced than I was. I was lucky that I found my sexuality young and was able to bring myself to orgasm, but this man could do it with so much ease that it frightened me. Experience or not, I seemed to have the same effect on him. I felt the soreness between my legs and vowed to give myself a break. The thought of his tongue on me led my lower half to protest, and I immediately found myself wanting him again. I threw an all-out fit, scrubbing my body with exfoliant and shaving my legs. He had to go. He was in my head, under my skin, and merciless in the bedroom. I had a goal to meet, a fellowship to earn. I needed all of my wits about me and he was fucking them into oblivion.

I found him in my kitchen with breakfast made. He pulled out the seat for me as I gave him a wary look.

“You aren’t leaving?” I tried to ignore the hurt look on his face though it pained me to see it.

He brushed off my rude comment as he kissed my cheek. “We’ll go to my land. You can study there.”

“I will not. I can study just fine here.”