Page 53 of The Billionaire's Second Chance
“You agree?” I said, my stomach churning. Was it relief or disappointment I was feeling?
“Fuck, Samantha,” he said. “Fuck, I thought something was really wrong. God, you scared me.”
“I’m serious, Charlie.”
“You always are,” he said. His soft smile tangled in my chest, somewhere dangerous. He turned to me. “I am, too. Sami,sweetheart…” His hand scrubbed over his face. “Believe me, Iknowyou think this is a terrible idea.”
“So why–” I started, then cut myself off. I knew why.
I’d read all the same romances he had, after all.
His hands closed over my thighs, just above my knees, turning me in my chair to face him. I stared at his fingers, digging into the charcoal gray wool of my suit pants. When I lifted my eyes to his, they were velvety dark green, the color of moss, and it was them that pinned me to my seat as much as his firm grip. I could feel heat build in my stomach.
“You tell me no, Sami, and I stop,” he said. His voice was barely more than a whisper, the low growl of it out of place in the library. “But I don’t think you want to say no, do you?”
I closed my eyes.
I didn’t want to stop. I didn’t want to–to lose him.
But I didn’t have a choice.
“I don’t,” I said. “But–” My voice splintered over the word.
I felt his breath, warm and sweet, a fraction of a second before his lips met mine, hard and insistent. I opened up under him on sheer instinct, and his tongue plunged into my mouth, tasting of coffee andCharliein a way that had become so familiar that my heart wrenched, as if trying to escape the cage of my ribs. Then his hands slid from my knees, up my thighs, my hips, and I found myself on my feet, stumbling backwards as Charlie wrapped his arms around me, walking us deep into the stacks of encyclopedias and dictionaries, the same fucking Faulkner and Hemingway and Shakespeare that we’d both read when we were students here. My back hit the bookshelf, and still, his mouth was on mine, first his teeth nipping at my lips, then his tongue laving over the indents, soothing the rush of blood to the surface. I was breathless, dizzy with it, with the scent of cologne and old books and the taste of Charlie on my tongue and a longing in my chest I hadn’t felt for a dozen years. His thigh slipped between mine, holding me there, one hand on my hip and the other braced against the shelves, but it turned into a whimper as his lips left mine with a soft sound, his forehead coming to rest against mine heavily.
“What do you want, Samantha?” he asked. He hadn’t sounded angry before, when I nearly stood him up. But now, I could hear the strain in his voice, could feel the tension in his body.
“This, Charlie,” I said. “This, I want this.”
“What?” he asked. He kissed me again, harder still, and I ground down against his thigh. “You want me to fuck you, Samantha? Here?Is that the way you want it?” It was the same thing he’d asked me at the Sterling that first night.
“Yes,” I moaned, too loud in the quiet of the stacks. “Fuck, Charlie, yes, I want it,please,please–”
Anything else I wanted to say was swallowed by another fierce kiss, teeth and tongue…
And then the weight and warmth of his body was gone, and I was left slumping against the bookshelf with a gasp.
“Fuck, Samantha,” he said, his voice like a heavy blade, thick with emotion and sharpened to a point. “I don’t–”
His hands came up to his hair, tangling in it, his chest heaving. “Please,” I said, and he took a step back.
“No,” he said. “I can’t do this with you right now. I’m–”
“What?” I asked, my fingers going numb.
“I’m sorry, Sami,” he said, his hands dropping to his sides, but his shoulders still radiating tension. “But this… this isn’t–”
My heart pounded heavily against the inside of my pale blue blouse. This isn’t what?This isn’t working. This isn’t worth it. This isn’t right.
“This isn’t you,” he said at last. “I don’t want you to beg.” He smiled, small and maybe a little sad. “Not like this.”
“But–”
“No. I don’t understand, Samantha.Sweetheart,” he said. “I don’t understand, but you show up late tonight without texting, you tell me we can’t do this anymore, then you–” His stupid romance novel hair tossed back and forth as he shook his head tightly, his green eyes intense on mine. “No.” He pulled out his phone, the gesture familiar now after so many evenings at the Sterling. He was calling his driver. He would leave, and I realized with a sinking feeling that I didn’t want him to.
“My car will be here in a minute; he’ll take you home,” he said.
He wouldn’t be leaving.
