Chapter 18
ADRIANA
Lochlan lifts me into his arms, carrying me toward the bedroom like I weigh nothing. I wrap my legs tight around him. His mouth clings to mine, wild and desperate. His fingertips dig into my spine, making my hips buck against him and the hard, thick bulge in his sweatpants.
“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God! What am I doing? What are we doing?” my brain screams in protest.
But my body is on another page in a completely different book, singing with glee as we knock into walls, immersed in each other.
“Freaking finally!”
He kicks the bedroom door shut behind us.
“Stop thinking.” His voice is low against my ear. He drags my lobe through his teeth, and it makes me damn near swoon. “I can hear your brain spinning from here.”
He's right. I'm already calculating what this means, what happens after, how to maintain some kind of control over a situation that feels like it's spiraling. Deliciously so, but spiraling just the same.
“Tonight, you don't have to be in charge.” He sets me down but doesn't let go when my feet hit the floor. His hands stay firm on my waist, holding me steady as if he knows my knees have turned into limp spaghetti noodles in the time it’s taken him to guide me in here.
“You don't have to hold anything together. You just have to let me take care of you.”
I stare up at him. Twenty-eight years old. Twelve years younger than me. In any other scenario, I'd feel ridiculous. Like some desperate cougar chasing some long-lost youth I can't get back.
But when he looks at me like this? Like he’s in awe, like I’m something precious to be treasured? I don't feel old. I don't feel desperate.
I feel seen. For the first time in my life.
“Okay,” I whisper.
I raise my arms and he pulls my hoodie off. His fingers trace the sides of my torso as they slide toward the hem of my tank top. He pulls that off next and drops it on the floor, his eyes never leaving mine.
“You're shaking,” he says.
“It's been a while.”
“How long?”
I hesitate, biting the inside of my mouth. This is embarrassing. "Maybe… a year.”
His eyes darken, the icy blue morphing into cobalt. They sear through my walls, penetrating my soul. “That's criminal.”
“None of the other guys from my past were worth my time. And besides, I was busy building a company and running things. I didn't have time for—”
“Adriana.” He loops his fingers into the waistband of my leggings and pushes them down.
Then he slides himself down to my ankles, pulling the leggings off one leg at a time. “Stop making excuses for dumbass guys who didn't deserve you in the first place.”
He straightens up, his rough hands on me causing goosebumps to pebble my skin in anticipation of what comes next. He runs them over the swell of my breasts, then reaches around my back to unhook the bra as his lips tease the side of my neck. My pulse jumps so high, it nearly chokes me.
I’m not ready for this, to be completely exposed in front of him… figuratively and literally.
“You're beautiful,” he says, his gravelly voice making my body hum.
“You don't have to—” I start to say when he cuts me off.
“I know I don't have to.” His eyes hold mine for a heart-stopping minute. “I want to. And I'm going to keep saying it until you believe it. Because you are the most fucking beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
My mouth falls open, waiting for words I can’t string together for the life of me because I am so shocked by him.
Yet again. And it’s not just what he says, it’s how he says it.
How he shows me with his actions and body language that he actually means every single incredible, beautiful syllable that slips out of those perfect lips.
With a flick of his fingers, my sports bra falls away. I fight the urge to cover myself. Goddamn gravity.
But when I start to cross my arms, he takes me by the wrist and stops me from blocking his view.
“Don't you dare hide from me.”
Heat floods my cheeks. I look down, hating that I feel so empowered while in the middle of a conference room full of men, but so self-conscious behind closed doors.
I know I have a good body. I eat well and workout.
But the kind of women he’s used to are just…
different. Perkier, tighter. Things I’m just not.
And I’ve been okay with that, at least until the day I saw my husband without a shirt on and began fantasizing about less of the celibate marriage I’d been resigned to. “I'm not twenty-five anymore, Lochlan.”
“I don't want twenty-five.” He leans close, his lips brushing my ear. “I want you.”
He walks me backward until my legs hit the bed, then he slowly lowers me down to the mattress.
My heart thrashes as he runs his fingers down the front of my torso, a shiver skittering across my bare skin.
His gaze never wavers. It grounds me, gives me something to cling to despite the rush of frenzied thoughts bouncing between my ears.
The weight of his stare is like a lifeline I never knew I needed. But right now, it’s an offer to let go, to be free, to trust that he will always bring me back from the edge.
I’ve never felt so protected. So cherished. And so insanely hot for a man.
The butterflies I’ve become well-acquainted with over the past weeks have taken flight, swarming in my belly like I’m a googly-eyed teenager staring at my first crush; and even though my body is on the brink of spontaneous combustion under his demanding touch, I’m safe. With him.
I've spent my entire adult life making sure I never needed or depended on anyone. I built a company from the ground up because I refused to rely on my father's money or connections. I dated men I could manage, men who wanted what I could give them, men I never let get close enough to matter.
Control was safety. Control was survival.
But right now, pinned beneath Lochlan Molloy, I don't want control. I want to let go. And that terrifies me almost as much as it thrills me.
His breath is warm against my skin, his hungry lips scorching a path over my collarbone and down to my breasts.
He captures one nipple between his tongue and teeth, suckling gently.
He doesn’t rush. He takes his time to see and feel where I'm sensitive, what makes me gasp, and what makes my hands fly to his hair and grip hard because he’s unleashed sensations I never knew I could experience.
“That's it.” His voice vibrates against my skin. “Let me hear you.”
I've always been quiet in bed. Controlled… shocker. I never wanted to seem needy or feel self-conscious that I was “doing it wrong.” I’d cringe at the thought of dirty talk. Even the idea of it made me feel silly, definitely not sexy.
But Lochlan is determined to pull every sound out of me. And I'm too far gone to stop him.
He hooks his fingers into the sides of my panties and drags them to my ankles. I pull my legs out of them one at a time. Then he sits back and just... looks at me.
I'm completely naked. He's still dressed in his pants. The power imbalance should make me feel uncomfortable.
It doesn’t.
“Jesus.” He shakes his head slowly. “You have no idea, do you?”
“No idea of what?” I whisper.
“How fucking gorgeous you are.” He leans down and presses a kiss to my hip. “All those men who never told you. Never showed you. Never came back for more.”
Another kiss, lower. “They were idiots. Every single one of them.”
Kiss. “Idiots.”
Kiss. “And now you're mine.”
The possessiveness should annoy me. I'm not a thing. I'm not something to be claimed.
But the way he says it, mine, like it's a privilege, not a right...
Fuck, I just melt.
He settles himself between my thighs. I start to protest, my legs closing. “You don't have to—"
“Stop telling me what I don't have to do.” His eyes meet mine and the words die on my tongue. “I want to taste you. I've been thinking about it for days. So just lie back and let me.”
He grips my legs, lowering his head. I cry out at the first touch of his tongue as it sweeps over my slit.
My hips drive up off the mattress, thrusting toward his hungry mouth, beckoning him.
His tongue flicks my clit, suckling it gently at first. Then he launches a full-on assault until it pulses and throbs, short-circuiting my brain for a few blissful seconds.
“That's it. So good. Just like that,” he murmurs in between the bursts of euphoria that consume me.
The words wind through me, stoking the flames. No one has ever talked to me like this. No one has ever made me feel like my pleasure was the only thing that mattered.
“Lochlan,” My voice is wrecked. “I'm going to—”
“I know. Let go. I've got you.”
The orgasm tears through me. I come apart in his hands, in his mouth, shaking, gasping, completely out of control for the first time in longer than I can remember.
When was the last time I let go like this? When was the last time I trusted someone enough to be this vulnerable?
Never. The answer is never.
“Beautiful,” he says once my body settles. He kisses his way back up the length of my torso, and there's a glimmer of something in his eyes that makes my chest ache. And not just lust. Something deeper. Something that scares the hell out of me.
He strips off his pants and boxer briefs. And God help me, he's... a lot. Built like he was designed to make women lose their minds. Hard everywhere.
"See something you like?" The bastard has the nerve to smirk at me, and I have to bite back my own smile.
“Maybe,” I say coyly.
“Maybe.” He reaches for the nightstand, pulls out a condom, and tears the packet open with his teeth. “I'll take that.” He leans forward, the head of his thick cock grazing my pussy lips. “Now, tell me what you want.”
My breath hitches as I gaze up at him, sparks of lust flaring bright in his eyes. He slips his fingers into my pussy, dragging them against my clit. I choke on a gasp as he hooks his fingers, driving them deep. My hips jerk wildly against his hand, my walls clenching tight.
“Tell me,” he says again.
My eyes roll back in my head, the erotic sensations shooting to the tips of my fingers and toes. “I want you inside me. I need you to feel you. Please. I need… I need…”
“What do you need?” he murmurs against my ear. “I want to hear you say it.”
My eyes fly open. “I need you.”
He snakes his arm around my back and holds me close as he pushes into me.
I bite back a cry at the delicious intrusion.
He stretches me wide, the burn almost too much and yet not enough.
I pull his head down, capturing his mouth with my own as my body molds around him, my muscles tightening, pulling him deeper.
“Fuck, you feel incredible,” he grits out, moving slowly.
“Stop holding back,” I whisper. “Let me feel all of you.”
“I don't want to hurt you.”
“You won't,” I rasp, digging my nails into his shoulders. “I won't break.”
With that admission, his control slips, and he lets go.
He drives into me harder, faster. Each thrust punching a sound out of me that I don't even recognize. His hand fists in my hair, tilts my head back. His mouth finds my throat, devouring me like I’m dinner.
“So tight. So fucking perfect.”
I'm losing myself. Drowning in sensation. His body, his voice, his hands… everything is him.
I can't think. Can't analyze. Can't do anything except feel.
And it’s so amazing. More than I dared to imagine it could be.
This is what I've been afraid of for so long. This loss of control. This vulnerability. Letting someone see me completely unravel.
But with Lochlan, it doesn't feel like weakness. It feels like freedom.
“I want you to come for me.” His voice is rough in my ear. “Let me feel what I do to you.”
A strangled cry catches in my throat. I writhe against him, pressing him into me so his cock drives against the spot that makes me see stars.
White noise assaults my ears, bright lights exploding behind my eyelids as the second orgasm erupts deep inside my core.
My whole body locks up and then shatters, and I gasp his name with my last jagged breath.
After a few more thrusts, he lets out a low roar before burying himself deep. He drops his head to my shoulder, his cock pulsing inside me.
We stay like that for what feels like forever. And I have no desire to move. Our breaths are ragged, limbs entwined. He rests himself on his arms, caging me in, as if I would even think of trying to escape him.
The thought almost makes me laugh because in a shocking turn of events, I’ve discovered that being here with him is the only thing that makes me feel… happy.
"You okay?" he asks, cracking the silence.
"I think you broke me."
“You told me you wouldn’t break,” he says, smoothing a strand of hair away from my face.
“I guess I lied,” I say with a breathless chuckle.
His lips lift into his signature sexy grin. “At least tell me I broke you in a good way.”
I run my hand over his shoulders and lean into him. “Oh, definitely in the best way.”
He rolls off of me and pulls me into his side so that my head rests on his chest. His heartbeat races, thrumming against his chest so hard, I can feel it, too.
His fingers trace lazy patterns on my shoulder. Neither of us speaks for a long moment.
I should say something. We should talk about what this means. Where we go from here. I should start planning and analyzing, figuring out the next move.
That's what I do. That's who I am.
But lying here in the dark, with his heart humming against my ear and his arm wrapped around me like he's afraid I'll disappear, I don't want to be that person. Not tonight.
Tonight, I just want to be the woman who let herself fall apart and didn't shatter.
“Stop,” he murmurs.
“Stop what?”
“Thinking. I can feel your brain churning through scenarios.”
I cough out a laugh. “How?”
“You get tense. Right here.” He runs his hand down my spine. “Your whole body goes rigid when your brain starts spinning. I’ve seen it. Now I feel it.”
He knows me. Somehow, in the space of a few weeks, this man has learned to read me better than people I've known for years.
That should scare me.
It does scare me.
But it also feels a little like relief.
“I don't know how to turn it off,” I admit, tracing the swirl of black ink over his perfect pec.
“You don't have to. Not forever.” He presses a kiss to my hair. “Just for tonight.”
I'm so tired. And he's so warm.
Somehow, for the first time in weeks, maybe months, my brain is finally and blissfully quiet.
“Sleep,” he says, like he can read my mind. “We'll figure out the rest tomorrow.”
I want to argue. I want to plan. There is so much to think about and consider.
But screw all of that. It’ll be there when I wake up. So I close my eyes.
And for the first time in as long as I can remember, I let someone else hold me together.