Page 42 of Rook

There was one moment where we were chest to chest, where his hands had slipped onto my ass.

But the way my belly swooped had me shooting up and looking down at him.

“Better?” I asked as he looked up at me, his eyes unreadable.

“Yeah.” His voice was a low caress, and I just barely managed to keep a shiver from racking my system.

“Good,” I said, attempting an exaggerated nod, but it made my whole body kind of move.

Meaning… move on his lap.

He was clearly no longer in debilitating pain.

In fact, he seemed to be feeling something else entirely.

His cock was thickening under me, a firm pressure against my cleft. And at the feel, my thighs clenched on the sides of his hips as I sucked in my breath.

And then—oh, God—my hips did a tiny wiggle, dragging a little whimpering sound out of me.

Humiliated by my reaction, I flew off his side so quickly that I misjudged how close I was to the side of the bed. And promptly toppled off the bed.

I fell hard on my side, making pain shoot up my hip.

“Jesus,” Rook gasped, trying to fold up to look, but he fell back with another curse. “You okay?”

“Yep. Fine.”

I was not.

I mean, physically, I was just a little bumped. Maybe bruised. Mentally and emotionally, though, were a whole other story.

But I jumped up to my feet, turning away from him to hide my face.

“But now you are in the bed. And I’m on the couch. So, um, I win this round,” I said, shuffling out of the bedroom area and dropping down onto the couch face-first into my pillow.

“Ughhh,” I groaned.

Well, that was… not how I saw the night going.

And now any chance of sleep was crushed. Because I was going to lay there, going over and over the whole thing until I had a stomachache.

Because while, objectively, I knew that Rook was not like the men I’d known in my past life, there was no stopping those automatic worries and fears.

Was he going to be angry?

That I’d disobeyed his order?

That I’d forced him to hurt his back by doing so?

That my decision to move to straddle him had made him get hard?

That I hadn’t relieved him of that frustrated desire?

I tossed and turned, my thigh aching, my stomach twisting into knots, the overthinking bringing on a headache.

I was hyper-aware of Rook in the other room.

For the first hour or so, he was still dealing with pain, judging by his labored breathing and occasional quiet curses as he—I imagined—tried to shift his position.

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