Best Kept Secret (Rochester Trilogy 3)

At the top of the steps, she breaks into a run. I don’t know a man on earth who could keep himself from chasing her. I’m right behind her on the way into her bedroom. The door slams shut under my hand and the sound is like the beginning of an avalanche. It’s already happening. It’s the sound of thick walls around my heart crumbling into a million pieces. Jane looked into my face and she saw. She understood. She saw straight through me, to all the guilt and anger and fear I’ve tried so hard not to feel. I don’t fucking like it. I don’t like this vulnerability.

She stands tall to face me at the edge of her bed. I can’t keep myself away from her. I’m on top of her like a wild thing. My hand on her throat. Kissing her harder than I did downstairs. I’m taking her. Fuck this. Fuck Noah and fuck Rhys, fuck all of them. She’s mine. Jane breathes hard when I let her up for air. Her eyes glide over my clothes, my suit. She couldn’t stop looking the day of the meeting. Now she lifts her hands to touch. Her fingers go to the buttons and her eyes rake over the fabric as I strip it off my shoulders. More buttons underneath, on my shirt. Jane darts her hands in to tug the hem free, but I can’t let her have it. I’m so close to her, and I want her so much, and she watches me strip off these godforsaken clothes like they’re nothing. They are nothing.

“Take them off.”

Jane’s hands go to her own clothes. Trembling now. Her shirt goes over her head. She wrestles herself out of her jeans. Every piece of cloth between me and her skin. I want it gone. I want everything gone.

“Nothing happened.” This time it’s not a question. This time, I’m trying to convince myself.

“I only want you.”

I want to believe her so badly. I want to believe her with everything I have, but there’s a small, hidden part of me that doesn’t. I believed Emily, and it was a lie. Everything turned out not to be true. Jane’s naked, her eyes huge, lips parted. Panting. She lets me scare her, and then she lets me bend her over the bed.

I push into her without any more hesitation. I’ve been waiting all goddamn day. I’ve been waiting all my life. Jane’s hands fist in the blankets and she makes a sound like I’m hurting her, like it’s almost too much. But she doesn’t stand up. She doesn’t tell me to stop. Doesn’t push me away.

None of that. She spreads her thighs for me and angles herself back to take more of me. I thrust into her like an animal. My hands circle the bones of her hips and hold her down so she can’t escape.

“Yes,” she whispers. “Please.”

“No more.” No more of Noah. No more of the past. Those things are gone now. Done. I’m not going back to that fear and that betrayal. It’s not happening again with Jane. It won’t. “You’re mine.”

Another thrust knocks the breath out of her. “I want to stay.”

“Then stay. Don’t ever fucking leave. Don’t leave again.” I bend down over her and write it on the back of her neck with the tip of my tongue. S-T-A-Y-S-T-A-Y-S-T-A-Y. She’s slick around me. Tight. I didn’t give her time to be ready. I didn’t lick her until she was squirming. I took her like this because I thought she might not let me. She might fight, she might run. She might be like every other good thing in my life. S-T-A-Y. Jane clenches around me and buries her face in the covers. I put my fingers in her hair and pull her face up.

“I want to hear you. I want to hear everything.”

She whimpers, needy, and I hear what she wants in that sound. I’ve made my point. She’s mine, she’s mine.

I turn her onto her back and crawl over her. Jane throws her arms around my neck and I find the wet seam of her with my fingers. Toy with her. Her body is all movement under mine. Movement and soft skin. “Tell me what you need. It’s yours. It’s all yours.”

I’m talking about sex. I’m talking about money. I’m talking about everything in the whole damn world. Everything I have is hers. All the old hurts and the danger that stalks under my skin. All of it.

“I need you.” Jane’s breath catches. My thumb on her clit makes it catch again. “I need you everywhere. Inside me. Everywhere.”

She rocks her hips until she finds me. Takes me in. Envelops me completely. I bend to kiss her. O-N-L-Y-Y-O-U, I write into her mouth, into her body, with every thrust, with everything. Jane Mendoza could have gone anywhere, but she came back to me. S-T-A-Y.