She lifted her head from his shoulder so she could see his face, confused by his statement. “How so?”
A wry smile barely touched his lips, but she saw it in the moonlight and it made her stomach twist uncomfortably. “Trish and I were fraternal twins. We shared the same genetic profile. I’ve read articles and there is a risk that I could develop cancer, too.”
Shock rippled through her. She’d only known Eric a short while, but that possibility wasn’t something she even wanted to consider. “You can’t live your life thinking like that.”
He shrugged, and she could see the resignation in his eyes as he looked into hers. “I already have, Evie. It’s why I’ve never had a long-term relationship.”
She gaped at him in disbelief. “Ever?”
“Ever,” he stated adamantly.
She shook her head incredulously. “How is that even possible at your age?”
“It’s possible because of everything I just told you,” he said, as if it were that simple. And for him, it probably was that straightforward. “I’m not going to put some woman through that possibility, then end up breaking her heart. It’s not fair to her. I’m not going to build a family with someone and chance leaving a wife without a husband and kids without a father. It’s just easier to keep things light and casual.”
His rationale seemed so extreme . . . but then again, it made sense, too, considering his traumatic past. “Eric, you deserve to be happy, just like anyone else.” Despite the risks he faced.
He lifted his hand and brushed back the hair that had fallen forward and around her face as she glanced down at him. “I am happy.”
Maybe superficially, she thought, but he was living only half of what should have been a whole, fulfilled life. And the fact that he’d likely never experience a true, deep sense of joy and someone to share it with because of his fears wrecked her own heart a little bit.
She realized there was nothing else she could say to make him change his mind, and because she was desperate to make him feel more than just pain, she lowered her head and kissed him. As soon as her mouth brushed across his, he groaned deep in his throat and his hand tangled in her hair, tight and urgent, as he crushed his lips against hers.
They parted beneath the onslaught of his silent demand, and she gave herself openly and generously, and he took greedily, the sweep of his tongue claiming every inch of her mouth. She tasted his raw, vulnerable emotion, his grief, his sorrow . . . which gradually gave way to heat, desire, and the bright burn of passion.
With a low, possessive growl, he rolled her beneath him on the blanket, so his firm body half covered hers and she felt the hard length of his erection digging against her hip. He nudged his knee between hers, and her legs spread shamelessly for him, while the hand still wrapped in her hair tugged on her scalp to tip her head back, giving him better, deeper access to her mouth. The urgency in him was wild and reckless, his lips unyielding against hers, as if imprinting the taste of her in his mind would obliterate everything else he’d just shared with her.
She curled her fingers into his shirt and let him have free rein, and when his other hand pushed beneath the hem of her dress and squeezed her upper thigh, there was no holding back the mewling sound of need that reverberated through her. His hot palm skimmed higher, his thumb brushing along the damp panel of cotton covering her sex, then gliding up to her clit. He pressed and rubbed her through the increasingly wetter fabric, making her ache so damn good. Her hips bucked of their own accord against the hand between her legs, trying to increase the pressure, the friction . . . anything to give her body the release it craved.
He continued kissing her as his fingers moved away, and she whimpered against his lips at the loss of his touch, pulled tighter on his shirt to draw him closer, but she didn’t have to worry, because seconds later he was sliding his hand into her panties, touching her skin on skin, his long fingers tunneling right into all the wetness he’d created, before two of them plunged deep into her core.
Shocked by the sudden, unexpected fullness, she tore her lips from his and gasped for breath, her entire body tensing, then quivering as the pads of those two fingers rubbed a spot that had her shaking and her clit pulsing. She buried her face in his neck, panting, so close to orgasming that it was embarrassing. She never came this fast.
He didn’t let her hide. He gently pulled her head back, a sinful, knowing smile seducing her even more. He looked into her eyes, his so dark and hungry, and somewhere in the back of her mind, she realized that she’d never had a man look at her like that before . . . with such undeniable want and unbridled lust.