Her eyes widen at my question. She’d never thought of it that way. “Oh, baby.” I cup her face. “Why are you so ready to believe stuff that hurts you? What’s going on?”
Tears slip down her cheeks. “I don’t know. I don’t really know. You’re hiding something from me. Holding back. I can feel it. Maybe not her but something!”
I thumb a few tears away, and when the waterworks continue, I start to kiss them away. “Charlee, there is never going to be another woman for me. If you leave me, it’s going to be a mess. I’ll sit outside your apartment, waiting for you to come out. The business will go to hell. People will lose their jobs. Families will be wrecked. The world will stop spinning.”
She chokes on a laugh, a watery hiccup escaping from her throat. “The world will stop spinning?”
“Yes, scientists have said that if one true love is thwarted, the world stops. I know you don’t want to be responsible for that.”
Charlee laughs again, swipes her cheeks, and rests her head against my chest. “You’re right. I don’t want to be the one responsible for ending the world.”
I stroke a comforting hand down her back. “I don’t want the divorce, Charlee. I think you know that by now. I came here and put all these conditions on you because I wanted to make the divorce as hard as possible, so hard that you gave up. I love you. I want to stay married. Can’t we do that? If you want things to change, if you don’t like the house, if you don’t want me to work so hard, I can change those things. We’ll move. I’ll cut back. Tell me what you want, and I’ll make it happen.”
She stops breathing for a second. I can feel her still under my hand. Then she lets out a deep sigh. “All right, Rowan. You win.” She lifts her head and cups my face. “I’ll set aside the divorce.”
I win? That’s not what I want, though. But she fits her mouth to mine, and I can’t think anymore. This is the first time in a while that she’s initiated lovemaking. Words and explanations and questions can come later. I kiss her back, angling her head so I can dive deeper into her mouth.
She swings around on my lap so that her sex is pressed against my hard cock. Her hands go to work on my zipper. I cup her ass and rise up so she can pull my jeans down far enough to extract my shaft. Her warm soft hands around my dick make me groan.
I’m feverish with want and need. “Put me inside you.” It’s an order. A plea.
She positions herself above the shaft head and slides down slowly, enveloping me in a hot, wet vise. My eyeballs roll back in my head. She begins to ride me slowly. I let her set the pace, letting my hands rove all over her bare skin, kissing her deeply, trying to show her with my body that I’m following her lead.
Her back tightens under my hold, and her thighs quiver around mine. Pleasure sinks into every pore, wiping away my doubts and filling me with an overload of sensations. The friction she’s creating with every clutch and slide of her cunt around my erection makes me dizzy. I dig my hands into her ass and pull her close.
She grows frantic; her movements become fractured, wild. She can’t control her reaction, and I don’t want her to. Her pussy convulses, and her cum covers my cock and spreads along my thighs. I pull her off and toss her onto the bed.
“What—?” she starts to ask, but I answer her with my mouth on her sex. When our clothes are off and our defenses are down, when all we are doing is feeling, we are one. I can’t give that up. Not yet.
I flatten my tongue and drink down her essence. Her core is wicked hot and sticky. I eat it all, filling my lungs with her scent and flavor until she’s thrashing on the bed. Mouth and heart full, I strip off all my clothes and plunge into her. She throws her head back and screams as her third orgasm catapults her back into the plane of ecstasy. I let myself go this time.
“You’ll never leave me,” I vow, thrusting so deep into her that I can feel her womb against my cockhead. “I’ll never let you go.”
eight
CHARLEE
“Let me.”
“Sit.” I bat Rowan’s hand away from trying to help me. He doesn't look like he wants to listen to me. He’s fighting himself. He does that far too much for my liking, and it’s time for that to change if he wants to do more than put the divorce papers away. “Sit,” I say again with more force this time. “I enjoy taking care of you, Rowan. I’ve missed doing it,” I admit. He relaxes, taking a step back.