I don’t know if she reaches her peak first or if I do, if it’s her orgasmic spasms that trigger my release or my convulsive grinding on her pelvis that triggers hers. All I know is we find ourselves in the eye of the same storm, caught in a sensual upheaval so intense that when it’s over, we’re both left completely drained, our chests heaving in the same rhythm as we lie tangled together, our hearts thumping heavily but in sync.
“Are you okay?” I finally find the strength to ask, lifting my head, and she nods mutely, looking dazed and shaken as I climb off her.
The bed is a mess of twisted sheets, the floor covered with our torn clothes, but for once in my life, I don’t give a fuck. Gently, I scoop up Emma and carry her into the shower, where I wash us both, noticing as I do that I once again forgot to use a condom. We’ll need to get another morning-after pill tonight—tomorrow, at the latest—but right now, an unintended pregnancy is the least of my worries.
All my life, I’d been driven by ambition, pursuing wealth and power because I thought that was what I needed. I took pride in my possessions, my social status, everything I’d achieved—and all the while, I’d been missing the one and only thing I truly wanted.
Like Emma’s cats that evening, I’d had all my needs taken care of except for one. And like her pets, I can’t get it from anyone or anything but her.
Love.
I want that from her. I need it.
I have to have it because I’m no longer just obsessed with her.
I’m in love with Emma Walsh, and the knowledge scares me shitless.
23
Emma
Something’s changed. I can feel it in the way Marcus holds me, the way he looks at me as he carries me back to the bed after toweling me off like a doll. Our sex life has always been intense, but he’s never taken me the way he did tonight, with a dark, almost savage desperation… a hunger that seemed to go beyond the physical.
What happened didn’t feel like sex.
It felt like a mating.
I’m still trying to gather my endorphin-fried brains as he carefully sets me on my feet next to the bed and straightens the tangled sheets and blankets. The luxurious bed looks how I feel: like a tornado touched down on top of it.
A tornado named Marcus, whose gloriously naked body is all bronzed skin and flexing muscles as he stretches over the bed, tucking the blanket underneath the mattress like a maid at a hotel.
“Geoffrey hasn’t gone home yet, so I’m going to send him to get the pill,” he says when he straightens, and I stare at him blankly for a moment, my mind still on the way his muscular ass looked when he was bent over, doing his neat freak thing. Then it dawns on me what pill he’s talking about.
“We forgot the condom again?”
He nods, his gaze hooded.
“Shit.” I can’t believe I didn’t catch that myself. Actually, no, I believe it. With sex that intense, I could’ve had a kidney taken out and been none the wiser. Case in point: he’s been carrying me around tonight like I weigh no more than my cats, and I’ve just now realized it.
Those big, sexy muscles aren’t just for show. And neither is the semi-erect cock hanging between his legs. My mouth waters at the thought of wrapping my lips around that long, thick column and—
Oh my God, Emma, stop it. You’ve just had sex with the guy. Enough.
“I think I need to get on birth control,” I say, forcing myself to look at Marcus’s face instead of all that muscle-y temptation. “It’s ridiculous that this keeps happening.”
He stills, an indecipherable something darkening his gaze. “Kitten…” His voice is low and soft. “Do you want kids?”
Wait, what? “You mean like… ever? Or soon?”
I’m sure he doesn’t mean the latter, but I have to check, because his timing is odd, to say the least. It would be one thing if we were having a nice dinner and the conversation drifted to our future dreams and goals, but we have a forgotten-condom situation on our hands. At this very moment, his little swimmers are inside me, and if they’re anywhere near as goal-oriented as their daddy, we need that morning-after pill, pronto. And I need to find the cash for a long-overdue visit to my ob-gyn.
Not having health insurance sucks.
Marcus’s gaze is unblinking. “Either. Both.”
“Well, I…” I gulp in a breath. “I do want kids. Eventually. With the right person.”
There, that should be a neutral-enough response. My dream is actually three children, two girls and a boy, spaced about two years apart, but I’m not about to tell Marcus that. Men tend to get freaked out when women get overly specific about stuff like that, as if a woman fantasizing about children in the future means she wants to steal his sperm that very day.