“I’m all yours, Seraphina, and I don’t want to be anything else,” he promised her quietly.
She lowered herself down, taking him inside. His breath threatened to stop at the feel of her surrounding him. Warmth flooded his body and he had to grit his teeth in an attempt not to lose it then and there. He wanted this moment to last, wanted to watch her find her pleasure again.
She looked down at him, her eyes warm. “I’m crazy about you.”
He let his hands stroke from her waist up to her breasts as she began to move over him. He watched her, studying and memorizing how gorgeous she was when she took over. He managed to last until she’d shuddered and moaned his name and then it was his time. He flipped her over and lost himself in her body.
He let himself go, giving her everything he had until he finally found his own bliss.
They lay tangled together. Somehow they’d managed to get under the covers, and he wrapped her up in his arms. Peace suffused him, his heart rate starting to come back down.
“I like having you here,” she whispered. “I like not sleeping alone.”
“Me, too.” He liked knowing if she needed anything, he was right here, and Luc was next door. He liked being together. “I like waking up next to you even better.”
“I hope I don’t snore,” she said with a yawn. “The only other man I ever spent all night with said I snored.”
“He was obviously an ass.”
“Wes could be a jerk when he didn’t get what he . . .” Sera went still.
And he was suddenly perfectly awake again.* * ****
Sera sat straight up, utterly unable to believe she’d said the words. But she had. She held the sheet to her body and tried to think of a way out.
“Wes? My cousin Wes?” Harry’s brow had furrowed as if he didn’t quite understand the words she’d said. “Why would you wake up with Wes?”
“Oh, we were friends for such a long time.” Now that the moment was here, she felt a pit of panic open inside her. She wasn’t ready to tell him, but was she ready to lie?
His hand came out, tilting her head up. “Sera, did you sleep with Wes?”
She couldn’t lie to him. She simply nodded.
“I thought you were only friends.”
“We were. It was a mistake. I’d had a rough day. They were all kind of rough then. Everyone else had gone off to universities, and I couldn’t get through community college. Remy had lost our part of the restaurant. He had to sell to our cousin when he got divorced. Then he left and joined the Navy and we kind of fell apart for a while.”
Harry sat up, a blank look on his face. “So it was a one-time thing? You know my whole family thinks you and Wes were nothing more than friends.”
This was why she never talked about it. Well, one of the reasons. It was complex, and she could still hear Wes screaming at her, telling her she’d lied to him, had led him on for years. She could feel tears pulse behind her eyes. “We were friends, but we’d drifted a little. He was in school and I was home. He called a couple of times a week and he invited me up to see him, but I knew he wanted more from me. I knew I should put some distance between us.”
The old guilt came flooding back.
“But you didn’t,” Harry prompted. “So you were friends with him for years and one day you decided to sleep with him? I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be judgmental. I’m wrapping my head around it. It would be different if he wasn’t my cousin.”
“I honestly don’t remember much of what happened.” She hated this feeling. Loathed it. “I had just broken up with a guy I’d been seeing. He told me he had to get serious because he was about to graduate and I wasn’t a serious girl. I was a fun time. Then I got fired from the diner I was working at. Wes called and asked if I would come up. Wes always made me feel good about myself. We kind of helped each other out all through school. So I went to see him. I didn’t mean to stay, but he talked me into going to a party and I got drunk. I wanted to forget that I wasn’t one of them. I wanted to pretend I was a college kid with a future ahead of me. It got out of hand.”
“Did he . . .”
She shook her head. Her mother had the same questions. “I remember kissing him. I remember thinking maybe this could work. Maybe I had been wrong all along. But then I knew I’d made a mistake when I woke up the next morning and he talked about me moving in with him. It was way too much. I knew he’d had a puppy-love thing with me, but this was something more.”