Chapter 46
The sexbetween them that night was blindingly hot. There were no other words for it.
Emma had teased him about conspiring with her mother as they’d walked into the building. She’d shrieked with laughter as he’d tossed her over his shoulder and carried her upstairs with a firm hand on her ass.
They’d lost their clothes in a trail to the bedroom and then he was inside her, driving her across the mattress while she moaned and begged him for more.
The sex was hard and soft that night, dirty and sweet, and Emma saw constellations behind her eyelids again and again.
He wore her out, wore himself out, until they found themselves in the big clawfoot tub in the bathroom, lit candles on the vanity where Sassy couldn’t yet jump, soaking languidly while sipping Monkeynaut from the same can.
Sassy had been set free to run around the apartment. She flew in to check on them sometimes, then bounded off again to chase one of the toys Blaze had bought her.
“Happy?” Blaze asked when Emma leaned her head back on the rim and closed her eyes.
He sat opposite her, his legs stretched on either side of her body. She sighed as she lolled her head to look at him. “Yes.”
“Me too.”
After telling him about her baby brother, her panic attacks, and the reason she’d wanted to escape Sutton’s Creek, she felt as if a burden she’d forgotten she was carrying had been lifted from her shoulders.
Someone else knew why she’d wanted to leave, why she’d stayed away.
And he didn’t judge her for it. Didn’t think she was ridiculous or dramatic or crazy.
He’d said none of those things. He’d kissed her hand and told her he was glad she was there, glad that he’d met her.
Her baby brother had died, her mother had been depressed, and she’d started having panic attacks. Then she’d bargained with herself in a way that only a kid could that being the best at everything meant she wouldn’t die, too.
Being home from college, or during the holidays when she’d been working, sleeping in her childhood bed, had always blurred the edges of her regimented life in a way that made her apprehensive. She’d known by then she wouldn’t die in her sleep like Jay, but it still brought all that childhood anxiety to the fore.
Moving into the Sutton building the first week she was home had been just what she’d needed.
Blaze had been what she’d needed.
“Would you really want a lot of kids if you got married?” she asked, thinking about his banter with her mother.
His eyes glittered in the candlelight. “Not a lot. One or two. Or none if that’s how it turned out. Not sure I know how to be a dad if I’m honest.”
Her heart ached for him. “I don’t know if that’s entirely true. You have a strong protective instinct, and that’s probably the first thing you need. After that, I think it’s something you figure out.”
“Maybe so.”
She ran a toe along the inside of his leg. “Any man who saves kittens and lets them sleep on his chest all night isn’t going to be a bad father. Pretty sure I’m right about that.”
His grin made her toes curl and her belly tighten.
“Why are you asking?”
She studied the way the candlelight lit his face, the dark hair that had curled at the ends when the bathroom had still been steamy. He made her heart throb and her body tighten in anticipation before melting like hot wax beneath his touch.
“Just making conversation.”
“Okay. How about you? You want kids, or is that your mother’s dream?”
Her throat tightened. “I think it’d be great with the right person. But it’s okay if it doesn’t happen. I’ll be fine with it, but not sure she will.”
“You could adopt. There are kids who need families pretty badly.”
She thought of him as a child being dragged away from the kittens he’d considered his by his mother. She’d never met the woman, didn’t know anything about her other than she was a drug addict, but Emma didn’t like her. At all.
“That’s true.”
His fingers circled her ankle before skimming upward, along her inner thigh, almost to her aching core, before sliding back down again. “There are things I wish I could tell you, Emma. But I can’t. I need you to know that.”
Her heart gave a painful thump in her chest. “I wish you could, too. Does it have anything to do with the other night?”
He didn’t pretend not to know what she was talking about. “It does, and that’s more than I should admit. It’s not my choice, though.”
Emma swallowed. “Is it illegal? What you’re doing?”
“I would never do anything illegal without a damned good reason that had nothing to do with personal gain and everything to do with saving lives. Ever.”
“That’s not really an answer, Blaze.”
“I know, babe. It’s the only one I can give.”
She nibbled the inside of her lip. “That’s an answer a fanatic could give, you know.”
“I do. It’s up to you if that’s good enough for you. If you want to end this, I’d understand.”
The thought of ending what they had made her stomach churn. She didn’t know what he was doing, the things he couldn’t tell her, and yet she knew he was a good man. Believed it with every ounce of her being.
Safe.
Emma pushed up to her knees and went to him, straddling his hips. He was already hard and her insides liquefied just thinking about what they were going to do.
She bent to kiss him, her lips skimming his softly and then harder. He gripped her ass in his hands, fingers splaying over her cheeks, one tracing along the seam of her body and making her gasp.
“Need a condom,” he growled.
There was a fluttering in her belly, and lower. “Simon always used a condom. But I’ve tested clean since I was last with him, and I have an IUD.”
He gazed up at her, his eyes hooded. “I haven’t been with anyone in a very long time, and always with a condom. But damn, I want to be inside you bare. You have no idea. You sure you’re good with it?”
Emma lifted herself up, careful not to put too much pressure on her sore tendon, and reached for his cock, positioned it so she could slide onto him. Their eyes held while she lowered herself until she was full of him.
“More than fine,” she whispered.
“Fucking hell,” he grated, gripping her hips and keeping her still when she would have moved. “You feel like heaven, Emma.”
If her heart beat any harder, she’d pass out. Except there was a large, well-endowed man between her legs and she wanted to feel every moment of what he did to her. She let her gaze slide down his chest, over those washboard abs, down to where his cock disappeared inside her.
Glorious. It was glorious.
“You can move now, babe. Or I will.”
His voice was raspy and raw, and she loved the way it scraped over her nerve endings. She lifted herself with her thighs, sank down to the root of him, over and over again as the sensations inside her grew so big she didn’t know if she could contain them much longer.
“Fuck, you’re gorgeous.”
He splayed a hand over her back, brought a nipple to his mouth, and sucked while she rode him faster. Water splashed around them, splashed over the edge of the tub. It was hot and sexy and incredible. She’d never had such wild, passionate sex, never known how desperately she could want another person.
“Oh God, I’m close,” she gasped. “So close.”
“Come for me, Sunshine.”
Blaze sucked her other nipple, put his hand between them and plucked at her clit until her voice was lost, stuck in her throat as she threw her head back and came in wave after wave of shattering pleasure.
Then she collapsed against his shoulder, her body too heavy to hold up.
But he held her. Held her hard and tight as he thrust upward, deep and sure, slamming into her until he stiffened.
“Fuck, Emma,” he groaned, bowing his body up into hers until he was spent.
They deflated like a balloon as he took them down into the cast iron tub, leaning back to cradle her. He was still inside her, still hard, as she settled against his chest and closed her eyes.
Utterly spent. Utterly happy.
Utterly in love.