Page 32

Eden

A fter making sure the campfire’s out, we go inside.

Rhys pours me a glass of red wine and himself a tumbler of whiskey, and we sit together on the couch.

The guesthouse at Sonya and Quinn’s new house is lovely—cathedral-ceilinged great room, big stone fireplace, windows that right now are big black rectangles but I’m guessing, from the location and direction, look out on the three mountain peaks we affectionately call the Triplets.

“I should have told you sooner how I felt,” he says. “But I didn’t want it to be true. I didn’t want it to be true when I was representing Teller, and I didn’t want it to be true when you were marrying Paul. Then you weren’t marrying Paul but I needed you to be marrying Paul, and?—”

He closes his eyes and shakes his head. “It was a fucking mess, and it was easier to keep ignoring my feelings. It had worked for me up to that point, so why wouldn’t it keep working?”

“Because we were stuck in a car together?” I hazard.

My chest has filled with a light, buoyant feeling that I think might be happiness.

“And in hotel rooms?” I take the glass out of his hand and set it on the coffee table, set mine beside it.

I throw a leg across his thighs and straddle him, knees on either side of his thighs.

It feels so good to have him there, between my legs.

“The piggyback ride almost killed me,” I say.

“It almost killed me .”

“Mutually assured destruction.”

Rhys sighs. “That’s about the shape of it.”

I jack my hips closer to his, and he makes a rough sound deep in his chest. I feel it everywhere. My body is hungry, and the only way to ease the craving is to press myself closer to him.

“God. You have no idea how much I’ve wanted this,” he grits out.

“Me, too.”

“I wanted this the first time you walked into my law firm’s conference room.”

“You did not.”

“I did. I swear it.”

“You wanted to squash me like a bug.” I hold a thumb and forefinger up to demonstrate.

“I wanted to squash you between my body and the wall.” He tugs my hips closer.

“You looked at me like I was the gum on the bottom of someone’s shoe.”

“I looked at you like you were the one woman I couldn’t have and therefore wouldn’t let myself want.”

I thought the kiss in the backyard was intense, but this is something else entirely.

Fierce and primal. Rhys’s mouth claims and devours, and I’m barely able to keep up with the pace he sets.

He seals his mouth over mine, his tongue seeking entrance, and I open to him willingly.

We kiss and kiss, until I can feel my heartbeat setting the pace for my hips to rock against the hard bulge in his jeans.

I reach for his hand and bring it back to my breast. He lets out a grunt of satisfaction, his thumb brushing over the tight peak of my nipple, sending silver threads of need straight to my clit.

I can’t stop grinding into him. I can’t pull away from the touch of his fingers.

“Rhys.”

“What do you need?”

As soon as he asks, I know. “You, too. I want you to come, too.”

He shakes his head. “Tonight’s about you. Just you.”

I still my hips, and he makes a raw, dark sound, like it hurts him that I stopped. “Don’t stop,” he pleads.

“You, too,” I repeat.

He’s still hesitating. I shift my position so I can rock over the thickest part of his thigh, a hot, hard tree trunk of muscle against my over-sensitized flesh. I reach for his zipper.

His fingers intercept mine, anchor them. And I know if I’m going to get what I want, I’m going to have to tell him why I want it. And I’m hot enough that the words come easily, the confession slipping through bruised, swollen lips into the safe space between us:

“You looked at me like you hated me. You were this big, broody, restrained, ultra-serious lawyer, and nothing got to you. You were going to do your job, and I was nothing. Just this…nuisance in the conference room and the courtroom, something to brush away like a mosquito buzzing around you. And I want—I want—I need—you to fall apart. I need you to make a mess of me.”

He groans, a harsh sound yanked from deep in his chest, and his head falls to my shoulder, and he doesn’t try again to stop me as I work his button free, his zipper down.

As I reach into his jeans and free him from the constraints of his briefs.

In my hand, his cock is gratifyingly big and thick and so, so hard, the skin pulled taut over the pretty head.

He makes another rough, wrecked sound, and God, I hope he’s close, because I’m so fucking close, knowing I can do that to him.

Then he’s kissing me again, deep and thorough, hungry, one hand on my hip, guiding my movements, the other still teasing the taut bead of my nipple.

Heat and need curl and flare through my belly and thighs, pulling all the pleasure into a twisting, winding spiral that gathers everything with it.

My thighs tighten around his, my core clenches around its own hunger, the bright pleasure in my chest tightens harder and deeper down, and then I’m coming, licking my pleasure into his mouth as he kisses his name and my cries off my lips.

And then he’s shouting— shouting!— his body rigid under me, his face split with pleasure, as he falls apart under my touch.