Stealing Her (Covet 1)

I laughed. “Do you know me at all? That’s the last thing I would ever do. Remember, I haven’t even been skinny-dipping.”

His look was playful, his eyes twinkled. Damn, the man was beautiful to look at, too beautiful, too tempting. I should have looked away, but I found I couldn’t, I was living for the next words out of his mouth, the deep voice that said my name. I was falling for him again, falling into the same old trap. I played along. I played into it, fully knowing that I would never come back from whatever this was.

I only had a few pieces of my heart left.

And I knew he would demand them all.

“Tell me something you wish you could do but are too afraid to pull off.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Hmmm, I thought you knew everything about me.”

“Humor me,” he said, resting his forehead against mine, waiting patiently for my answer.

It was hard to focus with him staring at me so intently, with his warm muscled body covering mine protectively like he would do anything to keep me safe. “I always wanted to be a part of a flash mob.”

“Tame.” He nodded. “But I’ll take it.” He tilted his head. “A flash mob, huh? Why’s that?”

“It just seems so . . .” I shrugged. “Magical, like all those romantic comedies you see where everyone knows the same song and dance, everyone’s happy and part of the same wonderful thing.” I sighed. “I know it sounds childish, but—”

“Not.” He covered my mouth with two fingers. “Not at all.”

“Alright, what about you?”

“Ahhh, so we’re both playing?”

“It’s only fair.”

“It’s two a.m.”

“Is it?”

“Hah.” He grinned. “You’re cute, you know that?”

“You’re full of compliments, and you’re also deflecting,” I pointed out.

He sighed. “Fine, I’ve always wanted to go to culinary school.”

“What?” I almost shot up out of bed. He’d never shared that with me before, not in all the years we’d known each other. “But you majored in business, and you were always going to take over for your father.”

“Exactly.” He sounded disgusted. “It may look nice, knowing that you never have to worry about money, but what you don’t take into account is passion. I love cooking. I love food. I love the looks on people’s faces when they try something you just made up. It’s a pipe dream, one I will never follow, but that’s the thing about dreams. Even if we don’t accomplish them, they still exist, floating around in our psyche reminding us that there are things we need to do before we leave this earth, and making us feel resentful that we’ll probably never be able to do them.”

I was quiet for a minute. “Do you think your father would—”

“Yeah, I’m gonna stop you right there. We both know how he is.”

“I have a confession.”

“Wow, two in one night? How’d I get so lucky?” he teased, tucking my hair behind my ear and patiently waiting for my next words, like he was just happy to be in that moment with me, talking, when I knew we both had a busy few days ahead of us. He always woke up before the crack of dawn to work out. Time was a precious commodity he didn’t have enough of, and yet there we were, using it up to talk about things that would never come true.

How wonderful and heartbreaking.

I wasn’t sure how he would respond to what I was going to say, but at least it would be proof that he really was trying to change. “I always thought that’s what you wanted, to be exactly like your father.”

Julian made a disgusted face then quickly recovered as if he hadn’t done it. He shook his head and looked away. “Nobody wants to be Edward Tennyson, not even Edward Tennyson.”

I was so shocked I couldn’t speak. “Are you actually admitting that you don’t want that life?”

“What I want”—his words toppled over each other—“is a life of my own, on my own terms, with you.”

My heart melted as he ducked his head and pressed a feather-soft kiss to my lips.

It wasn’t his normal kiss.

I defined Julian’s kisses and separated them into boxes. There was the kiss he gave me in public, hardly any tongue, but he held my embrace long enough to prove ownership. There was the kiss in the privacy of his office as opposed to home, often on the cheek, sometimes on the corner of my mouth because in his mind there was no room for PDA at work. There was the kiss he gave me when he wanted sex, usually sloppy, aggressive, dominating. And then there was the kiss he gave me when he wanted me to do something I didn’t want to do.

That kiss was always, sadly, perfect.

This kiss didn’t fit into any of those boxes; it had no definitions, no restrictions, no hidden meanings.