Page 3 of Still Burning

I licked my lips nervously and then sighed, causing my shoulders to rise and fall. “No,” I replied. “It’s just…well, last night, we were in your bed, and it wasn’t so…bright.”

There, I had said it. Or at least kind of said it.

“And?” he drawled, his hand tightening its grip on mine.

God! He was going to force this out of me.

My arms locked, not budging on the grip I had on the towel.

“I’m not nineteen anymore,” I replied.

“So?”

Was he seriously not getting what I was saying?

I rolled my eyes in annoyance. I didn’t want to spell this out for him. It only made it worse.

“My body isn’t…like it was then.”

He smirked, then let go of my hand, only to reach down, grab the bottom of the towel, and jerk it up. I squealed and tried to move away, but he pinned me between his body and the sink. His hand slapped my right butt cheek, and I jumped.

“You’re right. This ass got better, and those tits you have covered up with your death grip on the towel got bigger.” His hand slid up and over my hip to my waist, and then he squeezed it. “Let go of the towel, Angel Face. Whatever shit you got in your head needs to stop. I’ve seen your body. I was up close and personal with all of it last night. You shouldn’t have any doubts about just how much it turns me on.”

He moved his hand up my stomach to cup one of my breasts. I trembled, and my hold weakened.

“How a woman with a face like yours can have any fucking insecurities I can’t figure out,” he said in a gravelly voice, then pressed a kiss to my cheek. “Go ahead and keep your towel on for now. My time is up. But when I get back, we are gonna fix this. I’ll keep you locked up in this room naked for days if that is what it takes for you to get just how much I love your body. Now, turn around and give me your mouth.”

I swallowed hard as he pinched my pebbled nipple before removing his hand from beneath my towel. I did as he’d asked and tilted my head back to look up at him once we were facing each other.

His eyes trailed over my face. “You only got better with age,” he told me, then cupped my cheek with one hand and began to rub the pad of his thumb over the beauty mark.

“You did call me old,” I said, reminding him of his first wordsto me after eighteen years—when I’d come face-to-face with him as I walked out of the restroom at Paradise Brew.

A sexy grin spread over his face. “You gonna ever let that go?”

I shook my head.

“Ah, come on now, Angel Face. I was in shock,” he said, and then his amusement faded. “And I’d noticed the rings on your finger.” He paused. “I’d always figured you’d gotten married. A woman who looks like you doesn’t end up single forever. But seeing it, knowing you were someone else’s”—his jaw tensed, and he shook his head—“I hadn’t been ready for that.”

Had I ever truly been Eamon’s? I wanted to think I had. He’d loved me. He was the one who had saved me. Picked me up and put me back together again. He had deserved to be loved in this life the way he loved. But he knew. I’d tried to hide it from him, but all those years, he had known that he wasn’t the only one in my heart, and he’d loved me anyway.

Rome lowered his head, and his lips met mine. All other thoughts drifted away, and again, he was the only light I saw.

2

Rome

Eighteen Years Ago

If horror could numb you, then that was what I was experiencing. As if the pain went beyond something the physical body understood.

Glancing down, I realized Mindy still had my cock in her mouth, but I felt nothing. Seeing her down there disgusted me. With her hair in my fist, I pulled her off me, and I shoved her away, then went to jerk my jeans up. Every breath I took was excruciating.

Salem’s eyes, her face…

“FUCK!” I roared as the scene replayed in my head.

“What did I do?” Mindy, the secretary at the shop, asked, scrambling backward, her bare tits on display.

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