The truth was that his time in the military wasn’t a reality she understood. Throwing yourself into danger. Fighting for your life. It was theoretical to her. She felt in awe of his service to his country but unknowing of the harsh realities—or aftereffects.
Why didn’t he sleep? She’d asked him that night in his study, but he’d never answered. She sensed the answer lay here, in the turmoil that rippled through the air unseen. He didn’t sleep because he couldn’t. He couldn’t rest because his heart was still at war.
In some ways, it was a far greater barrier to their happiness than her mistrust of men, than Melinda, his lover-come-lately. The pain inside him was an invisible enemy that invaded when they were most vulnerable, breathing desperation into their intimacy and inevitability into their sex. There were places inside him that she couldn’t reach, not with her words or her body. And if she could? She was a little afraid of what she would find.
He turned suddenly, though unsurprised. She got the impression he’d known she was there, probably heard her wake up, his senses finely honed, primed for a battle left behind.
“Are you okay?” she asked softly.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” he said, although it wasn’t really an answer, she realized.
He crossed the room and took her into his arms. Some of the tension left his body, and she felt grateful at least that she helped him that much. If she could only be his balm, then she would soothe and soothe him until she was spread thin.
She opened her palm, showing him what she’d found. Some of the papers dropped from her hand, twirling in the still air like dandelion leaves, wishes on the wind.
“They fell out,” she said. “You kept them.”
He spoke gruffly. “I thought if I saved up, then maybe I could have a future with you.”
Her yearning felt like a knife, slicing her into ribbons from the inside. A future, a together, a moment stretching out onto the horizon, never ending.
“Yes,” she breathed, revealing her want.
“Yes?” he repeated, and she wasn’t sure what he was asking for. A confirmation that they could have it, that they could last.
He’d told her he loved her on the first night they’d slept together. Never since, as if sensing how much she feared the undeniable pull of him, the sense that she could lose herself in him and never find her way out. With Doug it had been infatuation, but this was more—so much more. How much worse would it be to have him look at her with disgust? How much worse for him to pass her by on campus without even turning his head in her direction?
The memory of that winter break with Doug humiliated her, highlighting the worst parts of her life, how little she had to offer. She knew Blake didn’t judge her for being poor, but the fact remained that she paid her rent by cleaning his large, stately home. Her mother scrimped and saved from her own cleaning business to help pay for the rest of her tuition not covered by the scholarship and loans. She was in a different stratosphere, miles away even as he held her close.
“Do you think love is enough?” she whispered, staring into his fathomless eyes.
For a moment he was silent, and she thought he might not answer. He seemed thoughtful and…so far away she’d never reach him.
He bent to press a kiss to her lips. “You pulled me back from the brink. I don’t talk about it because I don’t like to think about how close I was, how weak I was then, but it’s true. And I never want you to feel beholden to me, stuck with me because I’d fall apart if you left. The fact is, losing you would hurt ten times worse than having half my face blown off, but I’d keep going. I’d go on living because I don’t know any other way.”
Her heart cracked a little then, an almost audible, tactile thing that filled her whole body with pain but also tenderness. A raw sort of hope, more jagged than love, more meaningful than all her fears.
“I love you, Blake.”
“God, I know,” he groaned against her forehead. “You can’t know how much that means. Do I think love is enough? It’s the only thing at all. The world is cold and hollow, but with you, I feel alive again.”
A tear slipped down her cheek, meeting his bare skin, dampening the crinkly hair and muscled plane of his chest.
“Ah, don’t cry, Erin. I never meant to make you cry.”
“I can’t help it. I just want so much…I need…”
“Shh,” he soothed her, walking her back into the bedroom, pressing her down on the bed. They were numbing the pain, they were pushing the worry out of focus to be dealt with another day, but she didn’t care.
There was only so much she could take, that he could take before he needed release. Before she needed to give it to him.
He murmured to her,
don’t cry, never cry, love you, love you
, and she found that she wasn’t the balm after all; it was him. She wasn’t the one to heal him; she was put back together with each soft touch and firm invasion of his body into hers.
Let go
, he whispered, and she wasn’t held together anymore; she broke apart. She fell to pieces, awash in a sea of sweet senses, a land with no edges and no divides—just this.
Just bliss.
A troubling revelation puts Blake’s newfound career in jeopardy and Erin’s impending graduation at risk. The couple forge ahead, determined that love conquers all. They find a new depth to their respect for one another and new heights for their sensual play, but secrets and shadows lay in wait along the path.
E
rin picked up
her clothes by the dawn’s pale light and left Blake’s room, shutting the door behind her. She slipped into the bathroom down the hall to change. She didn’t want to wake Blake. No, that was a lie. She wanted very much to wake him up, to make love to him, and to spend the rest of the day in bed with him. But real life was on her heels, right upon her.
Final professor assignments were announced today, and that meant textbooks would be listed in the university’s bookstore bulletin. She needed only one class for her last semester. The rest of her credits were for research, though in truth, the exploratory phase was complete. Now she had to write the final draft of her thesis, which would be presented to the committee at the end of the summer semester.
She splashed water on her face and looked at herself in the mirror. College graduate. Barely making ends meet. Master’s degree candidate. Maid service. She didn’t know which side was the real Erin.
She left the bathroom and paused outside the closed door. All was quiet. She continued on without disturbing him. It was so early.
Let him sleep.
The stairs were dark. She trailed her fingertips on the wall to find her way. Downstairs, she grabbed a banana from the bowl in the kitchen to eat on the drive home. In the shadowed foyer, she bent to slip on her shoes.
“Leaving without a goodbye?”
She turned at the low sound of Blake’s voice. He must have followed her downstairs, stealthy like a soldier. “You scared me.”
“I’m sorry,” he murmured.
She took a step toward him, hesitant. “No, I’m sorry for waking you.”
They were both lying. He didn’t like it when she slipped away, and she didn’t either. He came forward as she leaned closer. Strong arms pulled her to him. She rested her cheek against his bare chest, her sigh of relief mingling with his.
It was always a strain to leave him, even knowing they would see each other again soon. Perhaps because their relationship had to be secret. Their passion, their love for each other, existed only in the circle of their embrace.
She breathed him in, his sleepy male scent and faint musk of sex. Her body still hummed with remembrance of his touch, his tongue. His cock. Which was currently pressing against her hip.
She hid her smile against his neck. Morning wood was like God’s gift to women. Softened by sleep everywhere, except for there, hard and ready. What a beautiful way to start the day. Even at six a.m., he was primed for her, holding her tighter as her sex grew warmer, their bodies communicating in an ancient language. Her pulse, his groan. She pressed her lips to his collarbone. He crowded her back against the wall.
“I’ve got to go,” she said, even while she let her purse drop to the floor. Her wallet fell open on the tile, pens scattered as the contents spilled out, but she didn’t care about anything as long as he held her this way, as long as he surrounded her and ached with her. As long as they were together.
“Stay with me. Never leave.” He turned his words into action, pushing his hands beneath her shirt and tugging it over her head. He groaned at the sight of her bare breasts.
She bit her lip. “I couldn’t find my bra in the dark.”
He cupped one breast reverently. “Beautiful.”
She squirmed against the wall, aching for more. He was too gentle, too soft. He did it on purpose, the bastard. His tender admiration drove her crazy. She wanted
more
and
harder
and
faster
, and all he gave her was reverence.
But she was not without power here. His body awoke whenever she was near, heating up, growing taut. The muscles of his chest rippled beneath her touch. His jaw clenched when her thumb gently scraped his flat nipple.
He unzipped her jeans, and she slid them off with a wriggle of her hips.
“I really do have to go,” she said, more breathless this time and with far less conviction.
“I know. Just saying goodbye.”
“Is that what they’re calling it these days?” Her laugh was cut short when he slid two fingers between her legs, testing her—and finding her, she knew, slick and ready.
Her sex still felt swollen and tender, not yet recovered from the pounding he had given her last night. Nothing like now. This was slow and lazy, but somehow just as urgent. Somehow more poignant, as he hitched one of her legs on his hips.
Only a little foreplay this time. His fingers testing her, probing her. Then he pointed his cock to her core. She wound her other leg around him, and he slipped inside. She was supported by her arms around his neck, by his broad hands beneath her ass, by the wall at her back. Held suspended on his cock, writhing and wishing and begging for him to move.
God, she needed him to thrust inside her, but she was completely at his mercy. And sometimes he could be a real bastard. A horrible tease. He nibbled his way down her neck, as if they were going to make out now instead of fuck. She wanted him so badly that she tensed up—she clenched around his cock. He growled and pushed inside her, deep and fast. She gasped from the shock and pinch of pain.
“Sorry,” he murmured, and unlike earlier, she heard true regret in his voice.
“More. Like that.”
“I’ll hurt you.”
Yes, she wanted that too. “Fuck me, Blake.”
He shuddered in her arms. He always loved when she spoke dirty to him.
She rocked her hips, the only movement she could make. “Fuck me like you can’t take it anymore.”
His dark eyes burned. Slowly, achingly, he pulled back—and plunged in to the hilt. They both moaned at the complete and intimate contact. Stuffed full of his cock, impaled on his body, and yet yearning for more. Never enough.
She whispered in his ear. “Fuck me like you’re mad at me.”
With a pained groan, he let go. He shoved her hard against the wall and rammed inside her. Her body was held still, pinned by his, her mouth open on a silent cry of painful pleasure. His cock moved inside her, invading her, hurting her—and God, she never wanted it to stop. Never wanted to feel
empty
and
nothing
and
unwanted
again. This was desire and craving. It was consuming.
Tendrils of ecstasy threaded through the roughness, teasing her orgasm, drawing it out until she sobbed with needing it, until she called his name.
Blake, fuck me, fuck me. Fuck me, Blake.
It was a chant, a prayer, but he was too far gone to hear her, too far above her to answer.
He froze on a choked cry, pouring his seed into her. The twitch of his cock within the swollen tissue of her sex pushed her over. She let go in a rush of liquid and stuttered moan, tightening around him and wrenching a startled gasp from him. They held each other in the aftermath, their sensitive flesh pulsing against the other, his breath hot on her shoulder.
“Jesus, Erin.” He leaned on her a little, still rocking in a lazy rhythm. “You killed me with that. You fucked the life right out of me.”
Her laugh came out husky. “That’s because you’re not supposed to be awake yet.”
“So come back to bed.”
“I have to go to the bookstore. They’re going to have the textbooks listed today, and the professor assignments. Maybe I’ll see your name up there.”
“Don’t remind me.” He gently lowered her to the floor.
“This will be awesome, I promise. There’s still time for you to practice your lecture for me.”
“You get bored when I lose my shit about Tiberius Gracchus.”
He did get worked up over it. Tiberius Gracchus sounded like a smart and progressive leader, at least the way Blake told it, and it was pretty depressing that he’d been violently murdered for it. But Blake’s anger didn’t seem diluted by the fact that this had happened in the 2
nd
century BC.
“I don’t mind when you talk about it.” She blushed, remembering when he’d translated some dirty insults from Latin. “Especially if you read me more from
Martial’s Epigrams
.”
He snorted. “I must admit, U.S. history lacks a certain passion compared to Rome’s.”
“Come on, let me hear your lecture.”
“No way. I can make a fool of myself in front of a bunch of strangers. I don’t have to do it in front of my girlfriend.”
She couldn’t help it. She grinned, sudden and wide.
He cocked his head. “What is it? Morning breath? You should have told me.”
She rolled her eyes. “No, you called me your girlfriend.”
“What else should I call you?”
“Hmm. Your fuck buddy?”
He frowned. “My lover.”
“Your maid.”
His hands clasped hers. He rested his forehead against hers. “My everything.”