Page 106 of Sugar Baby Mine

A laugh wells out of me. “You’re an idiot.” I reach out a trembling hand to lay on his chest over his heart, and I can feel the thump beneath the press of my palm. “I want everything with you. Don’t make me beg for it.”

“Not for this,” he says softly, and it’s like a slow caress over my skin. “There is no one I’d rather spend the rest of my days loving than you.”

Something yanks on my heart—his words, the way he gazes at me, and I know I have to tell him. Every single bit of it.

I scramble off his lap, running down the hallway, nearly slamming my shoulder into the wall with the way I can’t even walk a straight line. Because he has to know. I have to tell him. Show him. So that he knows that this iseverythingto me.

“Emmeline?” he calls, his voice floating closer. And I hear the echo of his footsteps as I pivot back and forth in the living room, debating between turning back to him or carrying on to the kitchen. I search the counter for my tote bag, groaning when all that’s there is my overnight bag. I glance over the couch, the coffee table—before I remember it was on the hook by the door, right next to my purse.

I stumble over to it, just as Ben reaches out for me, his fingers grazing my side and tugging on the hem of my shirt. He stepswith me, breath skimming my scalp.

“Emmeline?”

“Just—fuck—hold on.” A frustrated groan slips up my throat, hissing through my clenched teeth. I tear the zipper on the tote open as I spin on my heel and turn it upside down, holding it open wide to shake the contents out onto the floor. A lip gloss tube clatters onto the tile. An earbuds case. A pen. Two tampons. And the money—every bit of cash he ever handed me.

I drop the bag on top of the scattering of bills, thousands of dollars at my feet.

“I need you to know I never touched it, not one fucking dollar.”

He looks down, and my toes curl as I balance on my heels because I still want to kick the money away, so I can be sure there’s nothing left between us.

“Why not?”

I recoil, but he reaches out to soothe the jerk of my shoulders.

“It was a gift,” he adds.

“Because despite the fact that money was supposed to be a large component of our arrangement and I really, really”—my eyes drop closed, and I suck in breath—“need it, I didn’t want it to influence the way I felt about you. Not one way or the other.”

“You haven’t spentanyof it? Not one dollar I’ve given you in almost three months?”

“No.”

“Emmeline.” He sighs, hands coasting down my arms to tug on my wrists as he pulls me over to the couch.

I slid into his lap and scoot up his thighs until my knees are tucked into the back of the couch.

“I want you to use the money. Pay off your loan. Your bills. Something.” He brushes my hair out of my eyes when my chin dips.

“Are you mad at me?”

He shakes his head, and relief courses through my blood likefresh oxygen.

“I love you,” I say, because I do. I love him so fucking much. I’ve never given my heart away like this, but with the tender way he smiles at my words, I don’t feel like running anymore.

“Good, because I love you, too.”

I lean in to kiss him again, and it feels like champagne bubbles popping under my skin; the hot and cold that raises goosebumps over my arms and neck as he threads a hand through my hair and tugs until I’m squirming in his lap.

I pant out a breath when he pulls away from licking into my mouth, his breath blowing over my ear as he slides his hand to curve around my ass.

“Promise me.”

“Anything,” I answer, and I realize he is so fucking dangerous.

“Use that money, or I’ll just do it for you.”

“Do what?”

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