“But—”
“Go to sleep,” he says again, and his voice is so deep, so comforting, so soporific that I can’t help but do exactly as he says.
Chapter 12
Miles
How the fuck did I get myself into this? I wonder as Tori shifts against me, that sexy-as-hell ass of hers rubbing against my dick for the fifth time in as many minutes. She’s sound asleep—as in totally-out-of-it, dead-to-the-world territory—but that’s not a surprise after the day she’s had. I’m just amazed she lasted as long as she did without breaking down in hysterics. God knows she deserved it.
Every time I think of that asshole Parsons I want to beat the shit out of him. He’s probably sitting somewhere right now, drinking champagne and toasting all the publicity he’s getting from this sex tape, while Tori is devastated, exhausted. Completely wrung out.
I’m not okay with that. I’m not okay with him getting off scot-free while her whole world is turned upside down. I’m not okay with him fucking her over like this just because he doesn’t like taking no for an answer. And I’m sure as shit not okay with the fact that Tori is so, so hurt and messed up right now because of some dick who doesn’t even deserve the right to touch her.
As she shifts against me, her beautiful body setting every part of me aflame, I remind myself that she’s fragile right now. That she’s been hurt. That I have no business lusting after her. But as she rubs her ass over my cock and presses her tits—her beautiful tits with their hard little nipples—against the top of my forearm, it becomes more and more difficult not to wake her up and finish what we started downstairs.
Any other day I’d be buried balls-deep in her by now, fucking her long enough and hard enough to make her forget about Parsons and her asshole of a father, to make her forget—at least for a little while—about the sadness that is always apparent at the back of her eyes.
But this isn’t any other day. This is the day Tori’s whole world got ripped away from her and I’ll be damned if I use the crazy chemistry between us to take advantage of her fear or her loneliness—no matter how many sexy little sighs she gives or how many times she grinds back against my cock. If I did, I’d be no better than Parsons and definitely no better than Brandon, the guy who raped my sister and got away with it for far too long. I absolutely, categorically refuse to be that guy.
It’s bad enough that I already took unwitting advantage of Chloe’s pain by using the money his family paid to keep her quiet. I’ll be damned if I take advantage of Tori, too.
With that thought in mind, I shift around a little, pressing my hips backward as I try to put some space between us before I end up jizzing my shorts like some fifteen-year-old with his first girl. But Tori’s having none of it. For every inch I put between us, she moves that much closer, scooting back and back and back until I’m balanced on the very edge of the bed and she’s pressed right back up against me again, so close now that the hard ridge of my cock is nestled right between her cheeks.
Which is conducive to me sleeping in absolutely no way ever.
And still I hesitate to untangle myself. Still I hesitate to leave her alone when she so clearly doesn’t want to be.
It’s a stupid move on my part, especially since it’s going to doom me to a damn uncomfortable night—one where, instead of sleeping, I spend most of my time trying to keep my hands—and my cock—to myself.
What I should do is get out of this bed and head down to my workshop so I can get some work done—and so I can distract myself from Tori. It’s hard to believe that I haven’t set foot in there since she showed up this morning, even harder to believe that I haven’t given the desalinizer more than a cursory thought. Usually I can’t get the thing out of my mind. How to make it cleaner, faster, easier—most of the time the ideas chase themselves around in my head at all hours of the day and night. The fact that I haven’t even given a thought to what is soon going to be the biggest jewel in the Frost Industries crown doesn’t bode well for me getting it finished in time.
It also doesn’t bode well for what Tori does to my self-control.
The smart thing to do right now is to extract myself from this situation—and from her—as quickly and as quietly as possible. If I’m going to pull an all-nighter, it might as well be in the lab, where I’m comfortable. And where my defenses are back in shape. It’s only when I’m here in bed with her that everything gets shot to hell and all I can think about is want want want.
I’m about to say fuck it, about to slide off the side of the bed and crawl across the floor if that’s what it takes to keep her from waking up. After all, I have a ton of work to do to get this prototype up and running before the next board meeting; I can’t afford to be distracted. But before I can do anything more than put a foot flat on the floor, she whimpers. High-pitched and haunting, it freezes me in place. And has any thoughts of leaving her here, alone, flying right out of my head.
She’s been through hell today and if a little human comfort is what she needs, then it’s what I’m going to give her. And if I end up with fucking blue balls in the process, well then, that’s the way it’s going to have to be.
It’s the resolve in that thought—the inevitability of it—that finally lets me relax. That has me pulling her even closer, so that we’re sharing one pillow even as our bodies are pressed together from the neck down.
As I do it, as I tighten my arm around her waist and snuggle her into me, she sighs, and her entire body relaxes—almost as if the full body contact is, even asleep, exactly what she’d been waiting for.
As we lie there, her warmth seeps into me and a sweet, syrupy lassitude creeps through me as my breathing syncs up with the slow, steady rhythm of hers.
There’s a part of my brain that wants to run calculations on the desalinizer, that wants to work out the latest problem with saltwater conversion. But there’s another, bigger part that just wants to lie here with her. That wants to savor this moment, savor this night, savor the feeling of Tori burrowed so close to my heart.
And in the end, that’s exactly what I do. Seconds slide into minutes slide into hours as I lie here, holding her. Sheltering her. Breathing in the sweet cinnamon-and-vanilla scent of her. Eventually, dawn streaks across the sky outside her bedroom window and only then, when the dark threat of the night has passed for her, do I slip into a deep, dreamless sleep.
—
I wake up to a raging erection and heat sizzling through my bloodstream. Tori is stretched out on top of me, her tiny body doing the best it can to cover me from shoulder to calf. She’s soft and warm and her lips are just a little bit wet where they’re pressed against my throat. Her nipples are hard, her body restless, and her fingers tangled with mine on either side of my head.
It’s a novel experience, waking up with a woman on top of me, her hands and body pinning me to the bed. But from the way my dick is rock-hard and ready before my brain even knows what’s happening, it’s definitely not a position I mind finding myself in.
“Tori, baby.” I whisper the words softly against her temple. And if my lips happen to drop down a little and graze the sensitive skin at the top of her ear as I do, well then no one needs to know about it but me. “Wake up.”
“I am awake,” she murmurs, her hips moving sleepily against mine. “I’ve been waiting for you to wake up.”