Rose
Something brushes my cheek.
My eyes snap open.
Murph is crouched beside me.
I haven’t seen him since our dinner in the backyard, which was followed by Ben asking Joel to read him a story and Murph to make all the animal sounds to go with it.
Me? I sat my tired ass on his bedroom floor with my head on Win’s shoulder and his arm around me, listening until I fell asleep, right alongside Ben.
Instead of joining Murph, Joel, and Win downstairs for another movie before bed, I thought an early night after a relaxing soak sounded like a good idea. I must have conked out soon after I climbed into my lovely, strawberry-and-coconut foam-smelling bath.
“What time is it?” I ask.
“Ten. I saw the door open when I was coming up to bed, and when I knocked, you didn’t answer. You were in real danger, sweetheart.” His voice is so gruff, it’s almost a growl.
“Of drowning?” I ask as I sit up. He’s probably not wrong about that. Today was jam-packed with excitement, the good and the bad kind. I should’ve brushed my teeth, washed my face, and gone straight to bed.
His gunmetal-gray gaze, which hadn’t moved from my face, dips, and his throat works as he swallows hard. All the light pink foam that obscured my naked body melted away while I slept. Through the water, Murph can see every part of me, from my bare breasts to the dark triangle between my thighs.
He gets to his feet before I can think of covering myself, grabbing a large white towel I left beside the bath. He holds it up. “Up. Water’s cold, sweetheart. You’ll get sick.”
I hesitate, then get to my feet, expecting at least one glance at my body. I’m not sure I’d be able to stop myself from looking at Murph if he were standing naked in front of me.
His jaw hardens further, his eyes on my face as he wraps the towel around me and lifts me out of the bath. I feel utterly weightless in his arms.
I shiver, colder out of the cool water than I was in it. As he steps back, I grip the towel, tying it firmly around myself and brushing away damp strands of hair clinging to my forehead. “Thanks for checking on me.”
He nods. “I didn’t want to wake you, but I couldn’t leave you sitting in cold water.”
I’m not usually this tired. Give me five minutes of quiet, somewhere comfy, and it’s lights out. I let out a sigh and turn to drain the water from the tub. “A bath was a bad idea. Sorry for keeping you from bed. I keep falling asleep everywhere.”
No sooner have I finished and turned around than he’s clasping my hips and urging me against his flannel-covered chest. He presses a soft kiss to my forehead. “Today was stressful, and you’re growing a little human. Rest when you need it. You and Ben will always be safe with us.”
“I know.” My hand rises, my fingers skating over his hard jaw, the slope of his nose…
his fuller lower lip. He leans into my caresses, eyes fluttering shut, thick dark lashes casting shadows on his cheeks.
He lets out a soft, almost anguished groan, closes his hand around my wrist and gently pulls my hand from his face.
As if in pain. As if he can’t take any more of me touching him.
“A kiss is one thing,” he says, his voice a deep rumble that vibrates against my breasts. His hungry eyes fix on my mouth, a man starving. “What comes after won’t be so easy to walk away from.”
He said I was in danger when I woke up in the bath. The intensity of his stare warns that he wasn’t talking about drowning.
The pull between us has never gone away.
Gossamer threads formed of spider silk and the strongest iron wrap around us, pulling us closer, tightening a bond that snapped into existence the moment I caught his scent and he caught mine.
He’s right to warn me that this kiss would lead to something more, with me wrapped in a towel and bare beneath it.
He’s afraid to start this because he knows he won’t be able to walk away.
I’m not sure I could either. Or that I even want to.
Sliding my arms around his shoulders, I rise onto my tiptoes to brush a kiss across his shadowed jaw, the soft bristles tickling my cheek. “I like you with stubble.”
His eyes widen. “You do?”
I nod. “That day on the back porch, when you apologized for not shaving, I wanted to tell you I prefer you with stubble and not clean-shaven.”
He clasps my hips and draws my body closer to his. Hip to hip. “Then this is how I’ll always keep it.”
I told him what I liked, and he said it’s mine to have. I think I like being the center of this man’s world, and he looks at me as if I truly am.
He gives me the confidence to admit to something else I’ve secretly wanted but didn’t believe I could ever say. “You promised that I get to ride whatever I want.”
His fingers spasm on my hips, but he doesn’t say a word. He just stares down at me, his expression unreadable.
I move my arms from his shoulders and back up. “If you’ve changed your—”
I gasp as he yanks me back to him, my breasts colliding with his hard chest.
“Not so fast. I was processing the impossible.” A darkly seductive smile tugs at one corner of his mouth, and I gasp again as he lifts me. “I’m going to need those beautiful legs wrapped around me.”
“What do I get if I do?”
He fists my hair and slants his head, giving me the sexiest, luscious kiss that fries my brain. “The ride of a lifetime.”
I wrap my legs around him, and his lips tilt up, pleased. He turns and starts walking to the bathroom door as my lower belly tightens in anticipation. “Hard or fast?”
He walks into the doorway, his hand on my back, cushioning me from the impact. When he looks down at me, I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing. “Um, sorry.”
His arched eyebrow tells me I need to work on hiding my amusement better.
“Sweetheart, you did that on purpose.”
“I did not.” I lie.
He gives me a probing look, then hums. “I see.”
Confused, I grasp his shoulders as he walks out of the bathroom and switches off the light. “What do you see?”
“I need to be firm with you.”
The dominance rolls off him in waves, thick and delicious. I feel my body softening around his, eager for him to walk just a little faster and give me other orders in that same gravel tone. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“Why my bedroom and not yours?” I ask as he steps inside and turns on the light, pushing the door closed behind us.
His eyes flick to mine after he’s finished his task. “In case Ben needs you and can’t find you.”
He’s the perfect mix of gruff and sweet that I can’t help but kiss him again.
Far too soon, he pulls away with a groan, breathing hard. “Enough of that now.”
I pout. “You don’t like it.”
He cradles the back of my neck and gives me a bruising kiss. “Like it too damn much. That’s the problem. Come on. Let’s get you dry.” He walks over to my bed and stops beside it. “I need you to stand, sweetheart.”
I unwind my legs from his hips and get to my feet. The second I’m standing, he pulls my towel off me, fisting the damp sheet as his eyes roam over me.
Far too late, it hits me: my rounded belly, the stretch marks on my hips, the dimples on my thighs. All the flaws the light is illuminating.
Cheeks hot, I dip my head.
He catches my wrist and gently pulls my hand away from the parts of myself I tried to hide. “Every part of you is so beautiful—so fucking perfect. I ache to be inside you. Don’t hide yourself from me, sweetheart. Not from me.”
With my heart pounding loud and heavy in my chest, I keep my eyes pointed at his ear. “I don’t believe you,” I say, voice low.
He pulls my right wrist toward him, between his thighs, and through thick denim, I swear I feel the hard ridges of his cock against my palm.
My eyes fly from the bulge in his pants to his face, and I swallow hard.
He meets my gaze calmly. “You feel what you do to me?”
Wanting to strip away his pants to see, struggling to believe he can want me that much, I nod. “Yeah.”
He lifts my hand from his cock, lowers my arm to my side, and casually starts drying my body.
My hair was up in a twist, so it didn’t get wet, and the mat caught most of the moisture from my bare feet when I got out of the bath. But Murph takes care to dry every part of me, dropping into a crouch in front of me and gruffly ordering me to lift my right leg, then my left to get my toes.
I stand with my hands on his shoulders for balance, wondering how he can be so slow and methodical in patting dry every inch of my skin after I felt the size of his erection.
Why is he not tackling me to the bed and fucking me already?
“What did you mean when you said that you needed to be firm with me?” I eventually ask, his slow drying warming my skin, and all this waiting heating the blood in my veins.
He rubs the towel over my hips, an area he’s covered before, but clearly feels he needs a little more attention. “What did you think I meant?”
I shrug as if I’m not desperate to know, as if my heart isn’t thudding so loudly in anticipation that I’m surprised he doesn’t hear it. “Um, that you would be firm with me… sexually.”
I startle as he drops the towel onto the floor with a thump.
The molten fire in his eyes as he gets to his feet sets off something hungry inside me. My heart races, and the tension in the room skitters across my bare skin, electric and hot.
“Get on the bed.”
My stomach leaps.
He looks at me, waiting, not saying another word.
I get on the bed, lie back, and wait for any other order he wants to give me.
Approval flicks across his gaze, and with his eyes on me, he reaches for his belt and unfastens it.
The black leather whooshes as he pulls it free from the loops of his pants, dropping it to the floor with a louder thump than the towel.
His hands grip the hem of his shirt, and he lifts it over his head, tossing it aside.
I’ve felt every inch of that hard chest pressed flush against me, but seeing it—chiseled abs, pecs for days, a glorious expanse of tanned skin I want to trace with my tongue—it’s suddenly almost impossible to breathe.
“Cold?”