36. Emma
Chapter Thirty-Six
EMMA
S he woke up pinned to the mattress. Drowsy, she wondered what the hell had fallen on her when Garrett’s voice rumbled in her ear.
“I’m not a coatrack.”
Startled, she froze. His arm tightened around her.
“You said ‘When did I get a coatrack’?” He shifted in the bed but still didn’t let her go. “I can only assume you thought one fell on you.”
Emma wiggled, turning on the mattress very slowly.
Her sharply indrawn breath at the sight of a naked Garrett stretched out next to her was involuntary.
His muscle definition was unreal. And did that tan go everywhere ?
“Hi,” she said.
He gave her a sleepy grin. “Hi. And before you freak out, yes, we had sex.”
“I know. I was there.” Emma smacked him on the arm. “Did you think I forgot? Because of my head?”
“No, baby, it’s not that.” Strong arms squeezed her. “I just wanted to be clear. I wanted you. You wanted me. We wanted each other. And we had sex.”
He closed his eyes. “ Finally . ”
Emma laughed, some unnamed tension in her melting away. “So, this was inevitable?”
She expected a glib, jokey answer but Garrett turned, staring into her eyes with intimidating resoluteness.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “Yes, it was. We were always going to end up here.”
The expression on his face was starting to unnerve her.
“In your bed?” she asked tremulously.
“In a relationship.”
“In a—” Emma sat up.
He followed suit, the sheet pooling at his waist. The move inadvertently revealed her breasts. Squealing, she snatched the sheet up.
Garrett reached out, tugging the cloth down a touch. He traced the line of her décolletage with an unfocused look that made her temperature creep up by several degrees.
“We are in a relationship, one that just took the next step into intimacy. And you never have to hide your body from me. I love it. Every inch of it.”
Possessive hands ran down her body, moving the sheet to cup her butt without any barriers.
Emma could feel her tension melting away. Her body was responding, the way it always did around him.
“You know you’re doing this whole playboy bachelor thing wrong,” she informed him. “You’re supposed to be breezy, cracking jokes so I won’t take what happened last night seriously.”
Except he kept calling you his wife. Garrett had also called himself her husband more than once, claiming it like it was some sort of royal title.
He never behaved the way she expected.
“No. That’s not what we’re going to do,” he said, watching her intently to gauge her reaction. “I don’t want to backtrack. Because I’m happy about last night. And I hope you are too.”
Emma flushed, both confused and pleased. “I… I think I am.”
The smile that spread across his face was enough to knock the air from her lungs. Damn it, he was so beautiful.
“Good. That’s good.”
She cast about for what to say or do next but couldn’t think of anything. “So… what do we do now?”
Garrett’s face lit up, the heat in his eyes going from zero to a hundred degrees in the blink of a eye. He was reaching for her when his stomach growled. Very, very loudly.
The hunger transformed into humor. He laughed. “Okay, we’re going to revisit that after breakfast.”
With a wry twist of his lips, he sat up, hopping out of bed completely heedless of his nudity.
“ Oh ! Shit , ” she muttered.
Garrett froze, noting her discomfort.
“Hey, sorry.” He grabbed a pillow, covering his privates. “I shouldn’t have assumed parading around naked was okay. I can put some clothes on.”
“No, that’s not it.” Grimacing, she pointed at his cock. “Look.”
Garrett glanced down and did a double take.
“Shit,” he said, dropping the pillow to examine the rust-colored smears on his cock.
And then his confusion turned to concern. “Fuck. Em, I’m so sorry.”
Emma held up a hand. “No, I’m okay.”
“Are you sure?”
She waved his concern away. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
Garrett kicked the pillow aside, coming to the bedside to crouch next to her. “Let me see, baby.” He pulled the sheet away from her waist.
Okay, what should she freak out about? The fact she was exposing her entire naked body to a billionaire in broad daylight, or that there was dried blood smeared on her thighs?
“Should I call a doctor?”
Emma clapped a hand over her mouth. “No!” she squealed. “This is nothing. I’m fine.”
Garrett’s brow creased, unwilling to let it go. “Are you sure? I couldn’t live with myself if I hurt you last night. ”
He straightened. “Unless you’re on your period?”
She hated to crush the hopeful note in his voice. But there was another, far more embarrassing explanation.
Standing, she pulled the sheets in front of her, stain and all.
“Well, I guess that answers that question,” she muttered, blushing from head to toe before returning to the stains. “A little bleach and they’ll be good as new.”
“Em, I don’t give a shit about the sheets.” Garrett’s hands flexed. “What can I do? Should I run a bath?”
Flushing from head to toe, she clutched the sheet to her. “I was a virgin.”
Garrett’s face transformed, sobering. “No, baby. You weren’t.”
She was about to contradict him, but the inexplicable sadness in his expression stopped her.
“Oh.”
Emma stared at him, a little black hole opening in her stomach and sucking in everything she had believed about herself into it.
Again, someone knew more about her than she did. Although she wasn’t sure how. Had he seen her with Edward?
“I guess my mom was right.”
“About what?” Garrett asked, looking lost.
She closed her eyes, wishing she was dressed for this.
“She hated my college boyfriend. He didn’t come to see me after my accident. He said we’d broken up months before and he didn’t feel right coming because we had never been very close anyway. But we must have been serious at some point.”
In light of today’s revelation, Edward’s actions were cold as hell, but she guessed she couldn’t blame him for not coming. Not that she would have wanted to see him. She’d had bigger things to worry about back then. Like learning to walk again.
Garrett scrubbed his face with his hands. “No, sweetie. It wasn’t him. It wasn’t Edward.”
Emma straightened. “You know my ex-boyfriend’s name.”
He tilted his head a fraction to the left. “I hated his guts. But I never met him.”
“Then how do you know?—”
“I know .” Garrett put his hands on her shoulders, urging her to sit on the bed. Oh shit, this was bad. This was his I have messed up shit to tell you face.
“You didn’t lose your virginity to Edward.”
Emma blinked, sucking in a bracing breath. “I see. Then who was it?”
Had it been the boy her mother had referred to as the mouth breather in the yearbook? Or was it sensitive ponytail guy from her English class, the one who brought her flowers at the hospital and had bolted when the nurse came to change her colostomy bag?
Garrett’s lips parted but he didn’t answer.
She frowned as a new thought occurred to her. “Do you not know because there was more than one guy?”
Maybe she had more in common with her mother than she’d been led to believe.
That’s okay . She would own her sex life as proudly as any other modern woman. The only difference was that she didn’t remember it.
Whatever the case, she could deal with it. “You can tell me.”
“No, Emmy. You don’t understand…” He trailed off, closing his eyes as if he was in pain.
Emma registered the guilt on his face with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. But she tried to play it off.
“No,” she said, laughing. “We didn’t sleep together. We were enemies.”
Garrett held up his hands. They flexed as if they wanted to grab her. But he was careful to keep some buffer distance between them.
“We were enemies. And then we weren’t.”
Garrett put his hand on her knee. “Emmy, you lost your virginity to me .”