Page 108 of Engulfing Emma

The door opens a crack, enough so I can see that Emma is in her pajamas.

“Is she asleep?” I ask.

Emma looks over her shoulder. “She crashed an hour ago. I’m surprised she made it that long. Why?”

I raise my eyebrows.

She whispers, “I told you no funny stuff.”

“Just come in for a minute.”

“Brett.” She gives me a scolding look.

“Emma,” I say in return, staring her down. Staring her all the way up and down.

“Just for a sec.” She leaves the door ajar. “What is it?”

I push her against the wall and kiss her. It’s been weeks. I’m instantly hard.

She lets me kiss her, then pulls away. “What are you doing?”

“What do you mean, what am I doing. You called me lieutenant.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“Earlier in the car, you called me lieutenant. You do that when you want to hook up. You know, like how I call you Miss Lockhart. It’s our thing.”

“Our thing?” she says. “I donotdo that.”

“Oh, but you do. Tell me you haven’t missed this. Look at me,” I say. “I just touch you, and I’m hard.” I brush her hair aside so I can speak softly in her ear. “All I have to do is think about you, and I get hard. Do you have any idea how fucking blue my balls are right now?”

She tries to suppress a smile. “I’m not having sex with you when Evelyn is in the next room.”

“You realize how ludicrous that is, right? The population of the Earth would cease to exist if adults didn’t have sex with their kids in the next room.”

“Married adults. I don’t want to give her the wrong idea.”

“Sweetheart, that ship sailed long ago.”

“You shouldn’t call me that,” she says. “And, I’m only trying to repair the damage that’s already been done.”

“You haven’t damaged her, or your relationship, by acting like a normal healthy single woman.”

“Listen, I can’t think about sex or anything else right now. I’ve been lying in bed for hours, wondering what we’re doing here. I’m not sure I really thought this through. What if we find him and everything changes?”

“What do you think would change?”

“What if hedoeswant her, Brett? What if he wants to take her from me?”

She’s making herself crazy, thinking about things that most likely would never happen. I pull out the chair by the desk. “Sit.”

She hesitates.

“It’s a chair, Emma, not a bed.”

She sits. I stand behind her and rub her shoulders. “You’re holding onto a lot of tension. Try and relax. You know as well as I do that if Stefan wanted her, he’d have contacted you long before now.”

“But what if—”

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