Page 31 of Forbidden Desires

I chalked it up to the heightened emotions that came with our talk from yesterday. When you were vulnerable, you were always more open and susceptible to feelings and I couldn’t allow myself to catch those any more than I already had. There was always an end date to these contracts and arrangements, and as much as I wished differently with Eric, I knew we’d part ways eventually. He’d made it clear from the beginning that he wasn’t a man to commit for the long term, and I’d do well to remember that.

Eventually, Eric began to stir, too.

“It’s morning,” he muttered, his voice groggy and rough, tinged in that sleepy gruffness that was fairly irresistible.

Despite how emotionally draining yesterday had been, he’d slept well, it seemed. “Yes, it is,” I said, lifting my head and propping my chin on his chest to admire his handsome face, complete with that sexy morning stubble. “Sun’s peeking through, trying to wake us up and energize us for the day, but I could lay here for hours and just bask in the left over carb coma that we enjoyed last night.”

Eric groaned at the reminder. “The past two nights are going to set back any and all good eating and workouts that I’ve had for the last few months. You’re a bad influence, but I think it might have been worth it. Nobody makes garlic knots like that back home.”

We laughed, and after a moment Eric rolled over to prop himself on top of me. The mood shifted just as fast, my pulse, and other body parts, quickening in response to his arousing proximity. His face wasn’t as playful now, though there was a sort of peaceful placidness to his expression that I hadn’t seen before. He cupped my cheek, his thumb caressing along the rise of bone beneath my eye. I couldn’t look away from him; I didn’t want to, held there in the magnitude of his gaze.

“Thank you,” he said. “For yesterday, and last night.”

Before I could reply, he dipped his head and pressed his lips to mine, softer and sweeter than any other kiss he’d ever given me before, but that touch of our mouths was like a match to tinder. In that moment I wanted to consume him, and let him consume me, too. Anyway he wanted.

He tangled his hands in my hair, tipped my head back, and delved his tongue into my mouth. I skimmed my fingers along his bare back, melting into the kiss with a groan.

There was no rush as we kissed. No haste like we were used to. Even as he settled his hips between my spread thighs, the tantalizing way we pressed together making his cock grow hard against my core, we leisurely explored. More sensual touches, more seductive kisses, and the soft roll of our bodies against each other elevating our mutual desire. The hard planes of his muscles against the softer curves of my body felt like the perfect fusion of opposites, especially when we moved against each other.

One layer of clothes slowly shed after another, thrown haphazardly aside. My shirt. His boxers. My panties. They mixed with the sheets on the bed, and when we were both naked, he moved over me once again, burying his face against my neck.

He brushed his lips there, then lower, over the pulse at the base of my throat, making me shiver. He lazily licked the curve of my shoulder, then gently bit, forcing an arch into my back andan arousing gasp to escape my lips. My nails found the muscles in his back, clinging and digging there as he suckled at my flesh and shifted to the side so that he could fit his hand between my legs. His fingers pushed inside me gently, like he was strumming softly at the strings of a harp. The pleasure that came from it, such a delicate touch.

A damn near fucking loving touch, and the thought made my heart constrict in my chest. His eyes held mine, and they were desperate and needy and a reflection of everything I felt inside but had been trying to resist.

I should have stopped this.Thiswas far too intimate, even for my job description. Too slow. Too passionate. Too much like a melding of raw and tender feelings and I knew,I knew, it could only be because he was vulnerable right now but…

Fuck, I was too. I always was when I thought about my parents, but I had never, ever, told a client about them. I had never had a man who understood the pain that it was, let alone a man who cared to listen in the first place. Certainly not a client.

This work was about them, after all. Not me.

Yet I felt myself falling into the abyss with Eric anyway, helpless to stop the freefall that I knew would most likely leave me with a broken heart down the road. “Please,” I whispered, my hips undulating against his hand, his fingers. “Eric, please…”

I wanted to give the same way that he was. Give into this stupid, stupid emotion I knew we couldn’t entertain but were going to anyway, because I’d made the mistake of not letting him be the only vulnerable person in this room. I was right there with him.

What a fool I was.

A fool that came apart under Eric’s expert fingers as they moved between my legs and stroked my eager, sensitive flesh. A fool that let him finger fuck me slowly, let him leave his mark of kisses along my throat and my breasts like a trail of stitchesthat were supposed to sew up all my broken parts because I had helped start mending his.

So, I touched him, too. Caressed my own hand along his body as I moaned softly for him, slipping further down between his thighs to wrap my fingers tight around his thick cock.

His groan was music. Deep and drawn out as I stroked him to the languid pace that matched the way he thrust his fingers inside me. It was a tandem motion between the two of us, giving, receiving, giving again. Right until it was too much and he finally pushed my hand away and eased into me, his cock spreading me open, slow and gentle, like I was something precious.

The feel of his flesh cleaving my own was something that felt like it ought to be a religious experience, matched by the mutual gasps of pleasure we let out as he pinned me to the mattress beneath him, just like that.

“You’re so fucking perfect,” he grit out.

He pulled back, only enough so that he could look me in the eyes as he started to move inside me, but not so far that it felt like there was space between us. His forehead pressed to mine, and our eyes remained locked as we lost ourselves in this rhythm of one.

Love making was such a cliché thing to call it. It wasn’t that. It was something far less easily describable. I was seeing him for who he was, striped down bare, and letting him glimpse the parts of myself that I’d always kept under lock and key.

There was nothing more intimate between two people than that.

CHAPTER 14

Jasmine

Four Weeks Later

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