Page 165 of Between the Lines

His long fingers wipe another tear away. “I do mean it.”

“You don’t do relationships, either,” I whisper.

“No. I haven’t had time.” His lips curve. “But I’m willing to try, Chaos. Work isn’t the only thing that’s important to me. I want more days with you. I want to go surfing and hold you when you sleep. There is more to life than just work.”

I look at the hollow at the base of his throat, where I see his throbbing pulse point. “It’s all I know,” I confess. For years, I’vethrown myself into other people’s stories to avoid dealing with my own.

Aiden’s hand tips my face up, angling it toward his. “You know more than you think,” he murmurs and kisses me. “You know what you mean to me.”

My tears have slowed. Settled into a deeper emotion, flowing through me and into my grip on the fabric of his T-shirt. “I don’t know what we’re doing,” I tell him, “but I know I don’t want to stop.”

“Sweetheart,” he says, and his deep voice is achingly quiet. “Letting you go would kill me. You’re mine now, for as long as you want to be.”

I wrap my arms around his neck. The hollow inside me has transformed along with the sadness, and all I want is to fill it. And only he can do that. “Take me to bed,” I murmur against his lips.

His arms slide down and circle my waist. “You’re sure? You’re sad.”

“I’m emotional,” I whisper. “Not the same thing.”

He lingers for a moment, his touch warm against my skin, before he lifts me off the ground. I wrap my legs around his waist and grip him tight. Aiden walks up the stairs with me clinging to him like that, ignoring my whisperedI can walk.He pushes open the door to his bedroom with his shoulder.

“Aiden,” I say.

He lays me down on top of his duvet and climbs over my sprawling body, settling on top of me. Both of us are still fully clothed.

My heart is beating so fast that I can hear the thunder in my ears.

“Yes?”

I lock my knees around his hips and pull him close until most of his weight rests on me, deliciously crushing me into the mattress. I feel heavy and light at the same time.

Too many emotions are swirling inside me.

I need him. I need him so much that I think it might shatter me, the final blow in a fight I never knew I’d been waging. It cripples the control I’ve so carefully built.

“We’ve always used a condom.”

His mouth hovers over my neck. “Yes. You prefer it, and it’s safer.”

“Yes. But I’m on birth control, and I’m clean. I took a test just a few months ago. And… I’ve never had sex without one.”

Aiden is completely motionless for a good few moments, long enough for me to wonder if I’ve fucked up again.

“We could try it?” I ask. “If you want to?”

He buries his head in the crook of my neck with a groan. “God, Chaos. You’re really trying to kill me. But I’ll die happy.”

I run my hands through his hair and use my nails the way I know he likes. He groans again. “I had a checkup a while back. Haven’t been with anyone since. So yes,” he says and lifts himself onto his elbow, “we cantryfucking without a condom. Although I don’t think there’ll be muchtryinginvolved.”

I love it when he looks like this, hair mussed, olive skin, those brilliant green eyes, and so big and warm above me. Like he belongs to only me. A version of reserved for my eyes only. Aiden, when he’s no one but himself. Not the CEO, not the brother, not the figure in front of a crowd.

I reach for the hem of his T-shirt.

He lets me undress him and uses the moments in between to kiss me. To ease down the zipper of my jeans and to run his big hands over my body until the ache inside me spikes.

When I reach into his pants, he’s already hard. I grip him tight and revel in the sound of his breath hitching.

“Charlotte,” he mutters. “Say again what you told me earlier.”

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