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Alex yawned and rolled to give me space to join her. I pulled her into a hard embrace, her back to my front, relaxing to enjoy the stretch of her naked body and how she hugged my arms.
My dick, of course, didn’t stand down.
She writhed onto me. “Slide inside me again.”
“Tell me about painting.”
“I did some. I loved it.”
“Can I see?”
“Nope. Well, maybe tomorrow. Are you going to do as I asked?”
I kissed her shoulder. “Had the thought I should let ye sleep.”
“Sleep like that. In me. I want to.”
Without giving up the close hug, I angled to slide between her legs then inside her. Both of us groaned, settling into the sensation.
“Good boy,” Alex murmured.
I pulsed, thickening more.
It was dark in the bedroom. In the hall and the living room, we’d explored each other by lamplight. Now, in the all-encompassing dark, and with exhaustion wrapping around me in a warm hold, the frenzy left me. But not the need to claim her. That would never go, I was as certain of that as I was my love for flying.
“Just so we’re clear, there is no chance of me sleeping now,” I said.
Alex exhaled a shaky laugh. “God, same. Go slow until we’re done. Then maybe we can rest.”
I eased in and out of her, just an inch or two, the sensation of deep need stirring and spreading over me. Likewise, Alex shifted in a slow rhythm, working me like I was her. I had no idea how much time passed, only how the desire built and built. It wasn’t a hard taking now. Only soft and all-encompassing.
I was so gone for her, that when she came, triggering my orgasm instantly, I nearly told her. I nearly said the words that couldn’t be taken back. My heart thumped the message instead.
It said I loved her with every single beat.
Chapter 35
Raphael
That same heavy heart woke me hours later, darkness thick and Alex sleeping across my chest. For her, I needed to change. Myself, as a minimum, but also my ideas.
As carefully as possible, I eased out from under her, settling her back down in the warm patch I’d left, then stole away to the living room.
Spying on my father would be best not done naked, so I dragged on my boxers and took my tablet to the sofa, logging on. For a long while now, we’d monitored him. Anything urgent would prompt a notification, such as his private jet leaving the States, or mass movement of his associates, say, if they’d left him to burn, but all had been quiet.
Methodically, I worked through the various traces. Dad owned a transport company, and we had access to numberplate recognition software that told us his trade routes. I scanned the data.
Nothing new. He was operating as normal.
Nor had he strayed outside of California, which was reassuring. In addition to our tracking, his second wife had sworn to report back to us if anything went wrong with him, but it didn’t help me feel safe.
It should, yet I couldn’t shake the sense of impending danger. Maybe it was to do with the trauma my brother gently tried to talk to me about, of witnessing extreme violence from a young age and having no method of processing that. I’d confided once in Gordain, and he’d suggested therapy, but I’d found my peace in the skies and in having an escape method like nothing else could provide.
Under the tablet’s blue light, I sat back and considered what I’d done. Far more dangerous than my father was the fact I’d fallen in love. I’d let down my defences, and somehow that felt like every single other protection I’d had in place had been destroyed.
“Raphael?”
Alex peered around the doorframe, her expression hesitant, like she was worried at disturbing me.