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“It’s too early for riddles, Tell.” He chuckled and moved until he lay beside me, encasing me in his arms. We lay there for a while, blissed out in a rare moment of morning silence.
I peeked up at him to see his face set in consternation. I traced the thin line that ran between his brows whenever he was chewing on some dark thought. “What is it?” For a moment I thought I was going to get another door slammed in my face, so I was surprised when he spoke.
“Yesterday was bad.” Yeah, it had been. The morning, anyway. The evening had been better.
“Yes, it was. And the day before.” The lecture in his office, then the messed up fuck on his dining table.
“And the day before that,” he said.Adam.When did we last have a good day? When it was just us, that’s when. Whenever we let the world in, that’s when things went wrong. “Lo?—”
“Do we have to talk?” I sighed. “Every time we talk things get worse.”
“No, baby. We don’t have to talk.” He cupped my jaw. His lips found mine in a frozen river embrace, the kind of kiss that seemed calm on the surface, but underneath…
That baser part of me sensed his need and reacted in kind, and suddenly we fell deeper. His mouth grew hot, his tongue searing his need into mine. One hand gripped the flesh of my hip and the other fisted my hair, holding me in place as he rolled onto me, seating himself between my legs. Despite myself, I opened up, welcoming him.
What am I doing?
“Alfie…”
He paused immediately, his forehead pressed against mine. We panted hard, the static of sexual tension crackling between our bodies as we fought our most natural instincts.
Oh god…Oh god…
He rested poised at my entrance, and my core ached with need, my entire body yearning to be connected with his.
“I need to fall with you.” I needed it too. To fall with him off the edge of insanity. I wanted it because I didn’t care…I’d rather be insane than be alone without him. I wanted to wrap my legs around him, to pull him into me, for the tip of him to part my soaked folds.
I felt rather than saw his jaw flex as he pulled himself away a few inches, the unreleased tension between us stretching as taut as a bow string.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “If I hadn’t lost my stupid pills then we wouldn’t be in this position right now.”
“It’s not your fault.” The hard edges in Alfie’s face softened and he cupped my cheek. “Don’t blame yourself anymore. I forbid it.” He stared down at me for the longest moment, a haunting darkness behind his eyes.
“Well, if you’re forbidding my dark thoughts then I’m forbidding yours too.”
“Maybe I deserve my dark thoughts.”
“Maybe you’ve served your time.” He didn’t answer. Instead he rolled off of me and sat up in bed. I tucked myself into his side and gazed up at him, feeling warm and safe in our nest of pillows and sheets. “Let’s think about good things. Are you excited for us to leave together?”
“Terrified.” He clamped his jaw shut—that word had escaped by accident. “Fuck.” He ran an exasperated hand through his hair. “How do you do that to me?”
“I have powers.” I pressed a kiss to his collarbone. “I’m scared as well, but I’ve been scared worse. I think you have too.” I traced the scar on his eyebrow. “Are you ever going to tell me how you got this?”
“I’m working on it,” he replied, repeating my own words back to me from that perfect night when he had asked me if I could love him. I opened my mouth to push for an answer but he cut me off. “I thought you didn’t want to talk about serious things.” I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want tonottalk. I squeezed his hand and studied him, searching for the secrets behind his eyes as I’d done so many times before.
“Why won’t you let me pleasure you?”
He let out a small huff and threw the covers back. He was done having his brain picked at but I grabbed his hand anyway, kneeling on the bed as he stood, towering over me. “Please. I need to understand.” I watched as his shoulders stiffened and he stared me down with that hard glare that would have frozen another woman to her core.
“Enough.”
“No. This isn’t a boardroom, remember? It’s a bedroom. I’m letting you hold onto so many of your secrets but your body is mine, Alfie. I need to know why you won’t share it all with me.” I squeezed his hand. “I want to pleasure you. I want to do for you what you do for me.”
“Do you really think you have the skill?” he snapped. My skin burned as his words sank in. “My body has been worshipped by the most skilled women in the world. Did it ever occur to you that I might be trying to save your ego?” His lip curled with a disdainful sneer. “How could you possibly compare?”
His words hurt, but they weren’t as painful as they would once have been. I tilted my head, searching his beautiful face. There were cracks in his exterior now. He was trying too hard to push me away and it was showing.
“You, Alfie Tell, are the biggest faker I know.”