Southern Seducer (North Carolina Highlands 1)

I circle and circle, and she rises and rises, and when I lean down to take her nipple in my mouth, I know she’s close because her tit is hard.

Her hips roll. I circle harder, a little faster, right where she likes it.

But then, just when I think she’s going to come, she reaches between us. Setting my cock at her entrance, she rolls her hips again so that I slip inside.

No, the motion says. I wanna come together.

I look at her. She looks back.

Her eyes well with tears when I buck my hips and surge inside her. Soft, hot, sweet.

So sweet.

So bittersweet.

I close my eyes, and our mouths meet. Noses brushing, tongues tangling.

I give her everything I can. She gives back.

She gives, even though I’m about to rip her fucking heart out.

The weight on my chest is crushing now. I’m getting dizzy from the lack of oxygen. My mind is going foggy, and I hate it; I hate the reminder of why I’m holding myself back.

Why I’m breaking everyone’s hearts now, so I don’t have to do it later, when the tragedy will be that much more devastating.

When it will hurt that much more, the way my whole family still hurts, decades later.

It’s the kind of hurt that echoes across generations.

The kind I don’t want to share with Bel or her daughter.

So I’ll share what I can.

The need in my core burns brightly. Bel reads my body like a book and starts to play with herself, circling her fingertips over her clit. I drive into her with gutting strokes that make me sweat.

Tears fall. Hers, mine, who knows.

I want to come, I need to come, but she’s not there yet.

I growl, and she moans, and I rest my weight on her a little more because my arms—my whole body—is shaking, and I’m not sure how much longer I can hold myself up.

I kiss her neck.

Her body arches, and I feel it: her pussy tightening around me.

No yes no.

Don’t let it be the end.

Please.

But I need. So badly.

I need to let go.

She comes, hands curling into my chest like she’s looking for purchase. Something to claim, claw.

I come with a roar, not recognizing the sound. My body goes stiff at the same time hers goes soft, and if that’s not a fucking metaphor for what’s gone down between us, I don’t know what is.

The orgasm is so intense that for a beat, I’m positive I’ve finally suffered a cardiac event and kicked the bucket.

I’m in heaven, but it’s dark, and only when I open my eyes and see Annabel, tears streaking down her temples, does the light come in.

“You’ll be okay,” I whisper, kissing the tears away.

She just shakes her head, her lips doing that curling in, flattening out thing when she cries. “I don’t think so,” she whispers back.

I know one thing, I want to tell her. I know you won’t be okay if you stay.

She starts crying in earnest. I try to pull out of her so I can roll us onto our sides and hold her, but she doesn’t let me. She plants her palms on the small of my back and holds me there to keep me inside her.

I touch my forehead to hers. I’m fighting a new deluge of tears like a soulless prick who’s afraid to feel his feelings. But I am.

I am afraid.

I’ve had to say goodbye to someone I loved before I was ready, and it hurt like hell. It still does.

I guess this is my lizard brain’s way of protecting itself.

If I disengage now, it will hurt less later.

If I keep it together, I’ll upset her less. She needs her energy, emotional and otherwise, to get back to Charlotte today with Maisie and her mom.

Sounds easy enough. But my throat aches with the effort.

I manage to hold it in while holding her.

But the deluge—it’s coming.

I just don’t know when.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Beau

I tell Annabel I need to go into the office that afternoon.

It’s not a complete lie. I always have shit that needs doing. But I could’ve easily taken the day off.

Part of me feels like a fuckwad, leaving Bel on her last day to go work. But part of me sticks up for self-preservation. I was tempted to do something stupid in bed, and God knows I’ll be tempted again spending the next handful of hours with my best friend.

I need some air. Time to get my head screwed back on straight.

Then I’ll say goodbye. When I’m myself again.

We pack her up and get the baby ready to go. Then we load up my car—ever seen a car seat in a Bentley? Me neither—and I drive up the hill to Bel’s.

Lizzie and Larry come out to help us carry everything to Bel’s car.

“You need something bigger,” I grunt, shoving Bel’s breast pump bag in the last remaining corner of space in the trunk. We’re packing up what we can now. That way they can hit the road after Maisie’s nap later.