Andrew fell onto the bed beside her, his expanding and collapsing ribcage rubbing against her own. A sticky pressure built in her throat and pressed against the backs of her eyes.
Oh no. Panic was already setting in. What they’d just done had been a horrible mistake. The most glorious, perfect, life changing kind of mistake possible. How was she supposed to move forward with her life when she not only loved this man, but with the knowledge that he knew her body’s melody, chorus and refrain like he’d been singing them his whole life?
“Stay,” he whispered against her shoulder. “Stay stay stay stay stay.”
She shouldn’t. They both knew she shouldn’t. Lying in his arms was going to be the cherry topper on the cake she’d already constructed out of love and physical chemistry. She had almost collected enough gumption to decline and go home, but then. Oh then. Andrew found a discarded T-shirt on the floor and wiped his come off her stomach, gently, sweetly.
He went on to kiss every inch of her body.
Every. Inch.
He started at her toes and worked his way up to her ankles. His lips coasted up her shins and lingered on her knees, giving attention to all sides. He spent a lot of time on her thighs, his palms skimming, fingertips connecting moles and freckles, creating constellations. His breath ghosted over her sex, loving it with humming strokes of his lips, before traveling over her hips, belly, breasts, arms, shoulders, neck. He ended at her mouth and said good night.
“Good night,” she whispered back, allowing herself to burrow into his warmth. Allowing herself to find out being held in his arms was even better than she’d been dreaming.
Allowing herself to sink into a love from which she’d never recover.
*
Andrew stared across the pillow at Jiya.
The sound of his heart pounding almost drowned out the inner voice calling him a bastard, but not quite. He’d slept with Jiya. Spent the night with her. Every day of his life had been leading up to last night. Every hard day of work, every failure and triumph. All leading to her. To touching her skin, sinking into her body, breathing with their mouths joined. Everything else had just been details. Precursors.
Yet those details were the reasons he should have sent her home last night.
He wasn’t that strong, though. Or decent, apparently. At least not enough to resist the girl of his dreams coming to him in her nightgown. Comforting him. Being so Jiya. So his.
Not yours.
Even after last night, she can’t be yours.
How could he stay away now? Letting her walk away, watching her date, was already going to be torturous. Now? Now, he actually worried for his sanity. Or the lengths he might go to distract himself from reality. The mere thought of her smiling at another man made his skin feel flayed. He turned over and pressed his face into the pillow, something sharp wrenching in his chest. What the hell am I going to do?
What if he talked to her?
What if he told her everything…and she didn’t condemn him?
What if she wanted to be with him, despite what he’d done?
Cautiously hopeful, Andrew lifted his head and took in her beauty. The sun was only beginning to rise and it outlined her rich skin with the slightest orange, like she was the sunrise itself. His white sheets were twisted around her hips, leaving her tits bare, her navel bathed in the sunlight like succulent fruit. God, she’d been a virgin. All this time. The fact that he’d damned himself for stealing that virtue, which she’d likely been saving for marriage, didn’t stop him from wanting her again. Again. He’d sacrifice a decade off his life expectancy to be on his back right now, watching her buck those hips on top of his stiff cock while he gripped the headboard.
Beneath the bedclothes, Andrew’s shaft filled with blood and lengthened along his inner thigh. Don’t even think about it.
He’d been weak from the nightmare last night. Plied with alcohol. And still, he should have done the right thing. If he woke her up with his tongue between her thighs and fucked her again, he would have no excuses. None. He’d be taking the pleasure of her body, knowing full well he could offer nothing in return.
Unless.
Unless he told her his secrets and she accepted him nonetheless.
Afraid to even hope, Andrew got out of bed carefully so he wouldn’t disturb her. He pulled on a pair of sweatpants and went to the dim kitchen, making coffee in the beginnings of sunlight. A car door closing outside brought his head around and a pit opened in his stomach.
He knew it was Handler before he even looked out the window.
“Motherfucker.”
Andrew unlocked the door, stepped outside. God help him, he wanted to beat his chest and bellow at this asshole who dared come within a hundred yards of Jiya while she was naked and vulnerable inside. Or his brothers, who still slept upstairs. He was selling his soul and this guy couldn’t grant him one simple request? “I told you not to come here again,” Andrew growled when they met at the edge of the driveway. “Get back in your car and leave.”