Page 31 of Rival Hearts

My thumb stroked over the tip, and then I imagined her on her knees, her big brown eyes looking up at me, closing those perfect lips around my shaft and swallowing me down.

It was more than enough.

I came hard, spilling all over my hand and groaning as pleasure crashed over me.

My cock pulsed and twitched in my hand, and I gasped her name into the silence of the room. “Charlotte!”

It felt good, so fucking good, but it didn’t help.

Nothing helped.

She had been everything, but I wasn’t allowed to go near her again. I wouldn’t be able to control myself.

I sat back on the couch, calming down in the aftermath of my only-marginally-satisfying orgasm. My mind drifted to Charlotte—not naked, but the rest of her. Her passion. The way she’d talked to me like she genuinely wanted to know about me. She hadn’t just been making small talk.

She’d wanted to know whoIwas underneath my mask, underneath my armored plates.

Underneath the image I showed the world.

But what would that do? If she found out who I really was, she’d go running for the hills. There was no way she would still see me as someone interesting when she knew the truth.

When she understood where I came from.

What Iwasn’trather than what I was.

The hum of lust slowly faded, replaced by an uneasy churning in my stomach. I let go of myself and yanked my pants back up.

I scowled, got up—the darkness was threatening to creep in, and I hated it. I hated the memories that came back to me with it. I’d been able to push it all away for so long, pretending it didn’t exist. No one else knew about it, so I could act like it wasn’t real.

That didn’t change the truth.

I walked through the penthouse, switching on every light in every room, trying to drive away the darkness, trying to drive away the agony.

Karma sure had a funny way of screwing me over. I didn’t know what I’d done to deserve this—I was pretty sure there was more than just one isolated thing. I’d fucked countless girls and discarded them once I was satisfied, insisting that love wasn’t for me, and this had to be punishment for that.

That the one woman I actually wanted to get to know, the one woman who’d caught my attention, was the one woman I wasn’t allowed to have.

Not just because of who she was and where we stood on the social scale.

But because of who I was underneath this immaculate façade.

Damn it! Fate could be so fucking cruel.

But what was I thinking? That I would find a beautiful woman like Charlotte and settle down? Play happy families like my parents did?

It wasn’t that simple. I’d grown up in a home where the only form of affection I’d ever felt had been in fists raining down on me. I’d seen my real dad beat up my real mom so that she could barely breathe.

I’d felt the sting, nursed the bruises. I still had the scars where there hadn’t been money for stitches.

Love was an illusion. Love was pain, embroidered with empty promises and gifts that never made up for the broken shards underneath it.

Thomas and Eleanor Blackwood—the only people who’d been actual parents to me—had found something special but that wasn’t for everyone. They’d been lucky, and that didn’t happen to the rest of the world.

I wasn’t under any illusions. I wasn’t stupid enough to think just because I’d grown up with a great example it meant that life had other possibilities for me, too.

I wasn’t a dreamer. I was a realist.

And the reality was I was an idiot even thinking about having anything more than a one-night stand with Charlotte.