I hadn’t come back to the cottage with her expecting sex, either. We hadn’t made it past her living room couch. It was just something that kept happening with us—our bodies needing the connection physically. There was no denying it was a primal drive with me. I wanted to fuck her every day for the rest of my life. An absolutely crazy idea to wrap my head around, but also brutally accurate for how I felt when we were alone and I could touch her. I craved to see her satisfied and marked with the telltale signs of being well used and pleasured by me. Especially after last night’s soul baring. She’d been through a tremendous ordeal, and nearly lost her life in the process. I could not have the luxury of forgetting that fact or pressing her to move on from her past at a pace faster than she was able.
“HOW do you feel about birth control?” The time had come for me to ask the question.
“I am all for it,” she said with witty sassiness plus a stealthily delivered dig into my side with her hand. She got me good, zinging me before I could tamp it down, revealing my weakness.
“Oh, you are so getting tickled for that little move, beautiful.” I launched my attack, pinning her onto the couch with one hand and going to town on her ribs with the other. She shrieked and writhed, trying to escape my onslaught, but to no avail. Because my inner caveman impulses were being triggered by the sight of her perfect tits and flushed skin moving beneath me, ready to go another round of fucking.
“Noooo! Caaaleb, I’m sorry for starting it—really—I—I was going to bring it uuuuup to you.”
“Oh, you were? Are you sure you don’t just want me to stop tickling you, baby?”
“I want you to stop, aaaaaand we can talk about it,” she begged.
I quickly moved my tickling hand down between her legs and found my way into her slippery folds with my fingers. “Oh yeah, you’re wet for me.” I stroked her in measured circles and watched her reaction to my touch. She came alive with movement, and her eyes flared in passion as she moved against my hand. “Because I want to be right in here with nothing between us. I want it, Brooke.”
I lowered my lips to hers and plunged my tongue deep, claiming her mouth in suggestion of how I wanted to claim her with my cock where my fingers were buried in her slick, wet heat right now. I curled my fingers inward and found the place where the texture changed and worked her G-spot mercilessly. My tongue impaled her mouth and my fingers her cunt—mine completely in the moment. I was a motherfucking caveman with my woman beneath me.
The experience was incomparable.
She moaned into my mouth and gripped her inner walls around my fingers as she rode her way to climax. I felt her clench and spasm. I heard her gasps of pleasure as she came. I tasted her sweetness. Her breath gusted against my mouth as I used my teeth to nip at her lips while she descended from the high. I relished the way her whole body softened in my arms as I held her to me—a fusion of body and spirit.
I readjusted our bodies so she could lie on top of me, and drew the throw blanket from the back of the couch over us. I could have carried her up the stairs to her bed, but I didn’t want to lose the moment we’d just shared. It was something too special to interrupt.
“Caleb?” she asked in a soft voice, after a few minutes had passed.
“Hmm?”
“I was only ever with Marcus . . . before you . . . and with him it was nothing like it is with you. I never knew sex could be so good until you showed me. I’d heard stories, of course, but it wasn’t my experience. I just wanted you to know.” She lifted her head to rest her chin on my sternum so we could see each other. She smiled. “And to thank you for healing that part of me, which was very much in need of it.”
Her words gutted me in a way that was both wonderful and shameful. Wonderful that I’d been the one to show Brooke sexual pleasure for the first time—and shameful for being the guy who’d had his dick in countless women before her, women who were nothing more than a screw that ended in an orgasm. Nothing to be proud of there. Not something I wanted to discuss, either.
With my finger, I traced from the corner of her eye, down her cheek, and over her lips before I spoke. “Brooke, I feel like you are the one healing me.” She shook her head in doubt. “No, I mean that. It’s one hundred percent the truth. I’ve been with many, but none have made me feel
the way I do with you.”
“And how is that?” she asked wistfully.
“Like we have to be the only ones to work on healing each other from now on.”
“Ahh . . . so Sexual Healing should be our song then?”
“Amusing. You say the wittiest things, baby.”
“I only do it because you seem to like it so much.”
“You’re right, and I think you should keep right on being witty for me, too.” I pulled her lips to mine and kissed her thoroughly, mentally preparing myself to tell her the part I wished I didn’t have to bring up. “I want you to know I was with someone before I met you. She left me in doubt about what she was doing, and who she was doing it with when I wasn’t around. Even though we always used protection, I still got tested immediately after we split. I’m clean. I never would’ve gone there with you just now if I wasn’t, Brooke. You can trust me.”
As much as it pained me to mention Janice, even in the past tense, I felt better telling her myself, because the Internet was loaded with a multitude of stories and photos about me. If Brooke wanted to know about Janice and others I’d been with, the pictures were there for her to find in living color right along with some gossip’s take on where I’d been, with whom, and for what purpose. She’d probably seen some of it already. I hoped Brooke realized most of it was absolute bullshit, too. The kind of press I loathed because it was paparazzi reporting based only on my name and personal wealth. Nobody wanted pictures of men with barely two cents to rub together when out with a date. Just once I’d love for some press on the clean well water Blackstone Global was bringing to third-world farm villages to be plastered next to my picture. I wouldn’t hold my breath, but it would sure be fucking nice for a change.
“I know I can trust you, Caleb Blackstone.” She reached up and held my face. I wondered if she knew I was her captive when she did small things like touch her hand to my face. “So, about the birth control . . .” She rubbed her thumb over my lower lip, which I struggled to resist from claiming by pulling it into my mouth. “Before I left the shelter they offered testing and an exam, which I had done. The doctor gave me a prescription for pills. I never filled it because it felt like I would be putting myself out there for casual sex, and I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready emotionally for much of anything when I first returned to Boston. I needed those five months to work and take care of Nan and rediscover myself even. But that was before I met you, Caleb. I can’t deny that after meeting you, it was different for me, too. I wanted to be with you. I knew that you would be good for me, and I could safely entrust my body and my heart to you. My point is, I can have my prescription filled now and start them. We should be protected by the time you return from Abu Dhabi.”
She gave me a look when I didn’t respond in an appropriate amount of time, and then a little squeeze to my cheek where her hand still rested.
I guess I was too busy falling more in love with her to notice.
THE Black Bay Club was situated right on the rocks, overlooking the bay from its miles of manicured green fairways that were prized by golfers the world over. Golf had been my father’s game, but it wasn’t mine. I’d kept the exorbitant dues at his private golf club current after he’d died, though. You never knew when it might be useful, and tonight being a member of Black Bay was very useful—affording me a private venue for taking Brooke to dinner and saying my dreaded good-bye before I took off for Abu Dhabi around midnight. She’d cooked for me and spoiled me rotten for two solid days, and now I insisted she have a break.
The thought of leaving her behind on the island was a bit easier to take than the idea of leaving her in Boston. I knew she was taking the rest of the week off from work to help her grandmother get settled after her release from physical therapy. I couldn’t deny being pleased my girl would be tucked away safely on the island for most of my business trip. I didn’t trust the media getting hold of Brooke and my relationship with her. I knew it would happen in time, and hopefully when it did, I could have her more under the shell of my protection to shield her from the worst of their scrutiny. The paparazzi were fuckers, pure and simple. They would dig up any dirt to be dug up and share it with the world just to sell a few papers. I didn’t want her hurt by their certain insensitivity to her past or anything to do with her life before I’d met her.