Chapter 25 #2
So instead, I just pressed my lips against his, pouring everything I held for him into it and hoping he felt my love even though I couldn’t say the words.
After Aiden drained the bath and dried us both off, neither of us bothering to redress, he gathered me in his arms and carried me to his bed, despite my protests.
I rolled my eyes, even as I looped my arms around his neck and played with the curling ends of his hair. “This feels excessive. Pretty sure Quinn didn’t say my legs were useless tonight.”
“Humor me.” He set me down on the mattress, then braced his hands on either side of me, his gaze darting all over my face, pausing on the bandage covering my wound. “How’re you feeling? You want some more painkillers?”
“I’m okay.”
He grunted in a way that told me he didn’t believe me. “Tell me what you need.”
Instead of answering him with words, I hooked my legs around him and tugged him between them, shooting him a sly smile. “This is good.”
He scowled down at me, the firmness of the gesture weakened by the fact that I could feel his cock hardening against me. “You’re supposed to be resting.”
“I’m lying down… Doesn’t that count?”
“Not when you’ve locked your ankles around my back and are trying to grind your pussy up against me.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have to work so hard if you’d help me out.”
“Bunny…” he said, his tone a warning.
One I didn’t heed.
“Please, Aiden.” I wrapped my arms around his neck and tugged him down for a kiss, allowing a tenor of vulnerability into my voice that I usually kept buried. “I just want to be with you tonight.”
For long moments, he stayed still as a statue above me.
Just when I thought he’d tell me no, he made a gruff sound in the back of his throat and dropped his face into my neck.
“Fine, but we’re taking it nice and easy.
I’ll make you feel so fucking good, but you’re just going to let it happen. Can you do that for me, bunny?”
“Yes,” I breathed, eyes fluttering closed as he brushed soft kisses across my skin.
Over my collarbone, between my breasts, to my belly, and then lower still.
His beard scratched against my inner thigh as he pressed his lips there, then against the other, then in between, right where I was aching for him.
He spread me open obscenely but licked me soft and sweet, guiding me on a slow, steady climb to my orgasm instead of the forceful shove over the cliff it usually was.
I came with a low whimper, my hips rolling against him and my fingers in his hair as he lapped up everything I gave him, his groan of satisfaction making my stomach flip.
When he moved above me, settling himself between my legs and sinking deep as he kissed me, I wondered if it would ever be like this with anyone else.
If I’d ever feel this connected…this safe…
this loved…with anyone else. Or if Aiden was the single man who owned my heart completely, in this life and the next.
No matter how far I traveled. No matter where I went.
I knew there would never be another love like this.
The buzzing of my phone woke me from where I had my face buried in Aiden’s chest. He reached over and plucked it from the nightstand, glancing at the screen to see who was calling.
“It’s your mom,” he said, his voice low and raspy with sleep.
With a groan, I flopped onto my back. “I swear, she gets halfway around the world, and she forgets what an early morning wake-up call is.”
“She loves you and wants to talk.” He pressed a kiss to my forehead and handed me the phone.
“Wish she would love me a little later,” I grumbled, grabbing the phone from him before swiping to answer. “Mom, you know it’s ass o’clock in the States, right? I get that you’re roaming all over the world, but come on.”
“Oh shit!” she said, and I could picture her smacking a hand to her forehead. “I forgot. I’m sorry, honey. Were you asleep?”
“Yes, I was asleep. It’s really fucking early.”
“I won’t do it again. But since I’ve already got you on the phone… Do you want the good news or bad news first?”
“This again?” I rolled my eyes at Aiden, who lay next to me, his arm bent beneath his head as he kept his eyes trained on me. “Bad first.”
“I’m no longer seeing Stewart.”
“Oh. Well…that’s a bummer?” My statement came out more question than anything, and Aiden raised a brow, clearly wondering what she was saying since he couldn’t hear her end of the conversation.
Figuring it’d save me the time of having to recount it, I pressed the speaker button, and her voice filled the room.
“Not for me, it’s not. He got way too controlling, and his true colors came out. For one thing, he’s a liar. As in, he never got you into that flight training program thing.”
My mouth dropped open as I split my gaze between Aiden and the phone, a mix of emotions erupting inside me faster than I could catalog them. “Are you serious? Mom, I changed everything for this! I quit my job and moved halfway across the country. And now you’re—”
“Time for the good news, I think.”
“If you’re going to tell me you’re shacking up with some other guy and that’s the good news, I’m going to lose it.”
“Well, I am with another man—Claude, who I met in Paris after I kicked Stewart to the curb—but that’s not the good news.”
I blew out an exasperated sigh, my patience gone. “What is it, Mom?”
“Claude wants to hire you immediately!”
“For what?”
“To be a flight attendant!”
“Claude owns an airline?”
“Honey, Claude owns a jet. His flight attendant just broke her leg, though, and he needs a replacement right away. Isn’t that great?
He said the requirements are different for private jets, so you don’t even have to worry about the regular training.
As long as you can take the safety courses, you can start immediately. ”
“What do you mean by immediately?” I asked, a pit forming in my stomach.
“He wants you to start tomorrow…”
I blanched, my gaze snapping to Aiden’s to find him staring at me, all expression wiped from his face.
I’d known my time in Starlight Cove was winding down, even though I’d done my best to ignore it. But I was supposed to have more than two weeks left. Seventeen days, during which I’d gorge myself on Aiden so I could satisfy my need for the next year or twenty.
And now, suddenly, that was gone.
But what other choice did I have? My contract with the resort didn’t extend past Christmas, and I couldn’t just throw my life up to chance like my mom did.
As much as I’d love to live my life the same way, with complete and utter abandon, I was always aware of things like bills and responsibilities.
The longer it took for me to respond, the stiffer Aiden grew, his shoulders squaring off, his mouth firming, eyes shuttering. And I knew what this was. He was shutting down. Blocking me out. Protecting himself.
Part of me wished he’d tell me to stay. Promise that we could keep on doing exactly what we’d been doing and everything would be fine. But the other part of me—the part that’d had this dream since I was twelve years old—wanted to grab hold with both hands and see where it took her.
Turned out it didn’t matter, though, because Aiden didn’t say a word. He might’ve been lying right next to me, his body heat seeping into mine, but he was a world away. In the castle he’d built for himself, never allowing anyone else to enter, and I was staring in from the outside.
So I did the only thing I could.
I swallowed down my fear and uncertainty, my hesitation and doubt. “Just tell me where, and I’ll be there.”