Page 70 of The Love Losers

“That would be hard,” I admit. “But not trying would be harder. Being around you and knowing it was fake, and that marrying you was the way I’d lost you, I couldn’t do it.”

She watches me for a long moment, and uncertainty has me in its grip.

“You’re right,” she finally says.

Grinning, happiness tapping an unfamiliar beat inside of me, I lean forward and kiss her. She kisses me back hard, her fingers twining into the back of my hair. Her lips are soft against mine, her taste still strawberry sweet.

I want her to become part of the fabric of who I am. I want her to be woven into me, and me into her.

She told me she was hungry, though, and I won’t let that stand.

I start to pull away, but she tugs me back with my hair, making me laugh into her mouth. She sucks on my lower lip, her face soft against mine, before she lets me pull back.

“You said you were starving,” I say, tracing her lips, suddenly very conscious of the stoic guard sitting by the gate.

“I am,” she agrees, her eyes sparkling. And from the way she says it, I know her hunger is the same as mine.

And in that moment, I have to wonder if I’m going to survive Rosie James—being with her. Losing her.

I doubt it. So I’ll have to make a pretty damn good play to keep her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

ROSIE

“I want to try this with you.”

The words keep beating through my body as if they’re a pinball getting tossed back and forth, shuttled around by my heart, my lungs, my skin. Every nerve ending is lit up and glowing as Anthony leads me inside, his hand wrapped around mine like a promise.

Smith House is a gothic castle of a house—the kind of place someone would get lost in a cautionary fairytale if they weren’t careful. I mean, there’s a damn cupola, and the windows layered over the grand staircase are slanted, the way they are at the Biltmore.

Anthony gives me a sidelong look as I step inside.

“It’s impressive,” I offer.

“I hate this house.” His voice is heavy with truth.

“Why?” I ask, turning him to me in the doorway. “It’s so awesome.” And yet, we’ve only gone one step inside and I can already see the difference in him. I’m surprised I didn’t notice the first time we were in here. It’s like a shadow fell over his face the instant we stepped inside.

“It’s haunted,” he tells me with a half-smile, as if he thinks he’s joking but isn’t quite sure.

“Maybe it is. Places can be haunted, even if you don’t believe in ghosts.”

His father is his ghost.

My uncle, I guess, is mine.

I reach up and trace his eyebrows, his patrician nose, his generous mouth. “But a place doesn’tneedto be haunted. Things only have feelings attached if you let them. It’s your mother’s house now. Hers and yours and your sister’s. It shouldfeelthat way.” Something flickers across his face, and I ask what I want to know. “Your father…what did he do?”

He doesn’t flinch, but he stares at me with heat and says, “He’s the last thing I want to talk about right now.”

“So don’t talk. Your hard dick was pressed against me for over an hour this morning, and if that’s not a tease, I don’t know what is.”

A storm passes over his face, and he tugs me the rest of the way inside and shuts the door. The next second he’s pressing me to the heavy wood, his head bowed over me like he’s about to utter words that are either sacred or profane. “You can feel it anytime you like.”

Profane, thank goodness.

“Right now would be a good start,” I say—or try to say, because before I finish, his lips are on me. The door is at my back, immovable, and Anthony is pressing me into it. I can already feel him, half-hard and big, and my pulse is beating hard in my neck as he hikes one of my thighs up around his waist and leans into me.

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