Sex had never meant this much. Like being with him, having him fill me up, made for a spiritual connection. Like he saw all of the parts of me I would never dare to reveal. We were one tangled mess of emotions and body parts and life histories, and it was all beyond good.
With a hand beneath my butt cheek, he angled my hips higher and started stroking against my clit with the base of his cock on every pass. My back arched and my hard nipples rubbed against his chest and . . . fuck. The way he filled me. How the friction made the sensation build like a hot knot of tension between my hips. His nostrils flared and his lips thinned and he fucked me like a man possessed. And he didn’t look away for even a moment, keeping the bond between us.
My orgasm crept up on me. I came hard, breath hitched and heart beating out of time. My arms tightened around his neck, holding him to me.
With a growl, he shoved his cock in deep and came, hips pumping. There was just the warm scent of his skin and the smell of sex in the air. My whole happy world coalesced to this bed and this man. The long, heavy length of his body settled on top of me, and yes. I’d never been so delighted to be squished into a mattress. Never.
“You okay?” he asked eventually. His breath tickled my ear.
“Yeah. How about you?”
“I, um . . . yeah.” He studied my face, searching for something. “You can stay, right?”
“I can stay.”
“Did it work? Are your feelings safe from me now?”
“No,” I admitted.
He sighed in relief. “Good. That’s good.”
Being in another house in the small hours of the night was strange. The last time I’d tried this, it had been a dismal failure. But it wouldn’t hurt to try again.
Garrett had said I could go wherever I wanted and do whatever I wanted. To make myself at home. I took him at his word. And if I decided to go to my actual home, he would walk me. He’d made me promise to wake him and not go it alone. But before crashing out on the bed, he showed me the security system, the positioning of surveillance cameras and smart alarms. The upstairs bathroom even doubled as a saferoom. It must have cost a fortune. And right now, every door and window leading to the outside was locked up tight. Theoretically, I couldn’t be safer.
Gene followed me around the rooms on the ground level. I drifted from the parlor to the kitchen to the dining room, and then the sitting room. With my hair disheveled and wearing one of Garrett’s button-down shirts, I must have looked like a ghost, wandering about in the dark. The whole world was shadows in the ambient light and I was part interloper/part explorer. I couldn’t sleep because my brain was busy and my normal routine disrupted. But tonight there was the added bonus of another worry. That of Garrett’s dead wife.
The fact that Grace had never actually been here in this house helped me relax a little. Her ideas and style were here. But she’d run out of time and never gotten to step foot inside the place. Maybe it made me cruel, being grateful for that fact. Though I think setting some boundaries with the dead wouldn’t hurt. I was sleeping with her husband and walking through her house. However, her ownership of these things was in the past.
While it wasn’t her choice to leave, she was gone. She would always have a part of Garrett’s heart. It was a fact. And if I couldn’t make peace with it, then I might as well leave. But there was room for me here. There had to be. I refused to be somebody’s consolation prize. And being an insecure mess all of my days over my place in his heart wouldn’t work. But the love we’d made in his bed upstairs was important and right and . . . I don’t know.
Gene didn’t like the stairs. I went back up alone, taking my clutch with me. And there was Garrett, sprawled out on the bed like a marble statue, all hard lines with breathtaking dips and valleys. He lay asleep on his back, wearing only a pair of boxer briefs. A dark smudge sat on his ribs from the fight, another covering his right eye. The moonlight loved him. My feelings were a touch more complicated but no less intense.
He wanted me here. It was enough for now.
The bedroom, with its huge black four-poster bed, charcoal walls, fireplace, and small sitting area—it was all very rock star. I made myself comfortable in a large wingback chair and stared at him and thought deep thoughts. Like how there was no way I was going home even if I didn’t sleep a wink. I would happily sit there staring at him until dawn and count the hours not wasted.