Best Kept Secret (Rochester Trilogy 3)

My cheeks heat. He made me come so hard I was moaning his name, begging for him to stop. The echoes of my pleas remain in the room. “No.”

He touches a hand to my side, beneath my breast. There’s a small mole. “I missed this.” He slides his hand down to my belly button. “And this.” Lower, to the inside of my thigh, a place that’s not specifically sexy but somehow even more intimate. Everything he’s doing is intimate. It tears down my defenses. “I missed every goddamn inch of you.”

It’s hard to explain how painful it was when he sent me away. Impossible to describe how it feels to be left behind—alone. Always alone. “It hurt.”

Two words.

A lifetime of loneliness.

He drops his head. His forehead rests against the top curve of my breast. It’s more personal than sex, what we’re doing now. Linking our bodies together. Tying our hearts. “I tried to keep you safe, damn you. But here you are. In danger, and damned if that will stop me again.”

“You won’t send me away?”

“No, God help you. Though in the end, you may wish I did.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Beau Rochester

Jane sleeps on the pillow, her dark hair sprawled across the white, and I’m awake.

My body is sated from what we’ve done, but I want more.

Will I always want more?

Yes, the ocean whispers outside. I will always want more the way the waves always want to run up on the sand. The water crushes boulders into fine grains over and over and over. It can never get enough of the shore. I’ll never get enough of Jane.

How could I have ever thought of sending her away? I did worse than think of it. I did it. I made her leave when she didn’t want to. Paige didn’t want her to go. I didn’t want her to go. Watching her car disappear from view was like being held underwater. Having her back is like breaking the surface after weeks of drowning.

She’s oxygen.

I can breathe, and think. It’s never been more clear how disastrous I am for women. Jane’s done her best with me. She left when I told her to go and came back with her head held high, but it’s not good for a person. It’s not good for a woman to rely on my love for her. Love shouldn’t be painful, and it is. Coming back hurt her. I know it did. I know it from the worry in her voice when she talks about Emily and the way she always seems braced for me to send her away again.

As if I could.

It would be better for her in the end if I did. I’m never good for women. Look at Emily. Look at Jane, frowning softly in her sleep.

The fact that I’m in bed with her at all should be proof enough that I’m terrible for her. A responsible boss doesn’t get involved with the nanny. He doesn’t dream of the scent of her skin. He doesn’t lie awake at night watching her breathe. He doesn’t let her back into the house after he does the right thing and sends her away.

Turns out I’m not a responsible boss, just like I haven’t been a good man.

Claws scratch at the door. I get up and let Kitten in. She jumps up onto the bed and curls into a place next to Jane. I get back in the bed.

Jane stirs. She rolls over onto her back in the moonlight and blinks up at me. “You’re awake,” she says. “Why are you awake?”

The guarded expression sends another pang through my heart. I hurt her more than she’s letting on when I sent her away, and now I’ve compounded the issue by not convincing her that I have no interest in being with Emily. It’s always been my fear that I’ll fuck things up beyond repair with a woman, and now that prophecy is coming true. “I couldn’t sleep. Too much on my mind.”

She swallows. “Are you thinking about Emily?”

“I was thinking about you.” Not entirely true. “And I was trying to figure out what the hell to do about Emily.” Jane tenses, but she doesn’t speak. “At her place today, she wanted me to go above the police department. Above her brother.”

Jane wrinkles her nose. “Who’s above the police department?”

“Local prosecutor,” I say. “I know her from school.”

“Did you have classes together?”

“She had a crush on me. I never dated her because I was too interested in Emily.”

Jane looks away. “You think she’ll help you now?”

“I think if Joe Causey gets to her first about this whole situation, none of us has a shot. But I could go to her. Talk to her about what’s happened.”

“Dazzle her with how rich and powerful you are?”

I stare down at her, wishing there was a way to understand her the way I do when I’m inside her. “I think it has less to do with being rich and powerful and more to do with having a history here. I’ve never been a white knight but I wasn’t a complete asshole like Rhys. She’ll have a conversation with me.”