“Good night, Ms. Quinn,” he mumbled, smiling like the idiot he was, despite the killer case of blue balls he was going to be nursing for the remainder of the night.
He was in love.
He’d always suspected it would hit him hard and fast if it ever chose to hit.
Now, he could only bide his time, do everything in his power to make Bella the happiest camper in the Deepweeds, and hope that pretty soon she’d feel the same. If that meant keeping his cock in his pants, then so be it. He’d concentrate on other ways to show her how much pleasure he could bring her. Visions of his favorite purple vibrator teasing along her clit were dancing through his head as he pushed his trundle to the corner and slipped off his khakis and button-down.
He’d head home tomorrow and take care of the calls that needed to be made for the Procter children. Then he’d be back in Deepweeds Monday morning to make sure that their transition to Bella’s temporary custody went smoothly and Mr. Procter was convinced not to cause any trouble. Heath knew the right people to pay off to make sure what he wanted was accomplished with the utmost speed and discretion.
And if Mr. Procter weren’t bribable, he’d find other ways to make him see reason.
Then, when all the dust had settled and Bella had succumbed to the inevitable love and lust growing between them, he would put his mind back on other things. Like business. It was what he obsessed over twelve hours a day, seven days a week, his raison d’etre and his favorite use of a mild case of obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Strangely, however, the real reason he’d come to Deepweeds this afternoon was starting to seem unimportant. Sure, he still planned on making sex toys—the best damn sex toys in the industry—but it suddenly didn’t seem so important for Bella to work for him.
No matter how many nondisclosures they signed, gossip had a way of spreading. There was always the chance that there would be a leak, that the truth would come out and she’d be back to suffering the same kind of public relations disaster she was dealing with right now.
And she was better than that.
Maybe even he would be better than that if he were with her.
“But will she want to be with you, jackass?” He whispered the question into the darkened cottage before he closed his eyes and willed himself to fall asleep.
He wanted to be unconscious before he had to listen to Bella sliding into her bed, and more importantly, before his brain had time to figure the odds on the Queen of Sweets making a go of it with the King of Smut.
As he slipped into dreamland, however, his mind broke the news that it didn’t look good. It didn’t look good at all.
CHAPTER NINE
Bella
Bella was dreaming, she had to be dreaming.
The raging fire inside of her could never burn in waking life. She would be incinerated, destroyed by its heat, eaten alive by the raw need that was quickly consuming what was left of her right mind.
But she could still smell the familiar scents of her cottage—lavender, baked goods and sugar—and the unfamiliar smell of Heath across the room. She could hear the night birds calling outside, the last of the summer insects humming into the darkness, and the soft snoring from the man on her trundle bed.
The man responsible for this unbelievable burning.
She shifted again, throwing off her quilt, grateful that she hadn’t lit the wood stove. She was already twisting, writhing against the suddenly coarse sheets. Every nerve in her body screamed for her to get out of bed, to go to the only person who could ease the ache that was becoming more than she could bear. Each whisper of her nightgown across her nipples, each shift of thigh against thigh, seemed to make the burning worse. It was impossible to catch her breath, her skin was damp with sweat, and it was all she could do to keep from moaning her desire into the night.
Go to him. Go to him and take what you need.
“No.” She muttered the word aloud, then closed her eyes and forced herself not to move, not to feed the itch inside of her with any more friction of sheets and fabric against her sensitized skin. She had made it so long. She was stronger than this. It was only a month. Was she such a slave to her newly awakened lust that she couldn’t delay her gratification a few weeks longer?
Take what you need, Bella. He’ll never come back.
Do you want to die a virgin, alone in your cottage, never knowing what it feels like to have a man in your bed?
Damn that voice, it was evilly persuasive. Maybe Heath wouldn’t come back. He’d promised to help Hansel and Gretel and she believed he would. He had said he loved her and as crazy as it seemed, she almost believed that, too—she knew she was falling for him.
But what if she were wrong? It had happened so fast, so quickly it made her head swim. What if this were all some crazy dream, the climax of which was her lying in her bed as her body cried out for liberation from the sexual hunger that had tormented her for most of her adult life?
He wants you. He’s hard for you even in his sleep.
You could claim him now. He would never have to know you were a virgin or wonder why you’ve waited so long to share your body with a man.
She didn’t know if it was the word “claim” that did it, or the whole idea of ravishing Heath while he was sleeping, but she was suddenly positive that the voice in her head wasn’t hers.