Page 36 of Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire)
I wasn’t going to try to be something I wasn’t. If I had to compete for Hemi’s love, for his desire? I’d already lost. And then I finally got into bed, opened my book, listened to the rain drumming on the roof, and read the same page over and over again.
When I heard the front door open, I put the book down and got out of bed, trying to calm my heart.
No pressure,I told myself.No fear.
I went out into the hallway, then out to the lounge, walking softly so as not to wake Karen, and found Hemi taking his shoes off by the door. He was in jeans and a dark brown merino T-shirt tonight. Whether that had been to tell me this was casual, or to tell Anika, I didn’t know.
He stood when I walked in. He looked at me, and his eyes…they were empty.
I walked straight into his arms, put my own arms around him, and said, “I’m glad you’re home.”
He didn’t smell like Hemi. He smelled like tropical flowers and oriental spices. He smelled like another woman. Looking up, I saw a trace of red lipstick on his neck, below his earlobe, and then I didn’t look, because he was holding me tight, squeezing so hard it almost hurt, picking me up so my feet left the floor. And I could swear his arms were shaking.
“Shh,” I whispered, barely knowing what I was saying. “Shh. It’s all right. Come to bed. Come with me.”
I held his hand, then, through the dimly lit house. Outside, the wind whistled and howled, and the rain beat against the huge windows as if the night wanted the world to become water. As if it wanted to drown us. It couldn’t, though. It couldn’t get in here.
When we reached the bed, he sat down, started to say something, then stopped and ran a hand over the back of his head. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m all good.”
“Hemi.” I drew my hand over his carved cheekbone, the same way he’d done with me the night before. “No. Please lie down. Please.”
He stared at me for long seconds, and I held my breath. And then he lay down.
I took my clothes off. Slowly, because I knew he liked to watch. I shimmied the soft trousers down my legs, and then I drew the camisole over my head and dropped it at my feet. I didn’t take off the matching pale-pink flower-embroidered thong, though. I knew he’d like to look at it a little longer, to delay the moment when he’d touch me, when he’d feel me. And tonight? It was all about what he liked.
He still hadn’t said anything when I climbed over him and straddled his hips, and he didn’t say anything when I stroked his face and kissed his lips, either. That was fine with me. I didn’t want words, and I didn’t need them. Instead, I tried to tell him everything I needed to say through my hands and my body, through the power of my touch. How much I loved him, and how glad I was that he was mine. HowsureI was that he was mine. And how sure I was that I was his.
I held my breath as I finally, so slowly, pulled his T-shirt up and over his powerful chest, but he sat up and let me do it. And when I kissed his mouth and stroked his sculpted arms, his chest, his firm abdomen, his sides, tight with hard muscle—he didn’t say anything then, either. But he closed his eyes.
I tasted her on him, so I washed him clean. I kissed his neck where her lipstick had stained his skin, and then I licked it away. I kissed my way down his throat, over his chest, finding his sensitive spots and lingering there. Down here, I tasted him, but I didn’t taste her. But then, I’d known I wouldn’t taste her.
When I felt him sinking into the mattress, relaxing under my touch, I pulled off his jeans and briefs, climbed off of him, and drew my thong down my legs. His eyes were open now, and I was suddenly, fiercely glad of it. I wanted to be the face in his vision tonight. I wanted to be the woman in his arms and the peace in his dreams. I wanted to be his everything, the same way he was mine. I wanted him to know it for sure. I wanted him to believe.
For once, he wasn’t trying to be in control. For once, he let me make love to him. He let me kiss him, and touch him, and lick him, and stroke him. And finally, he let me climb on top of him, and he let me please him.
I touched myself, too. I slid my hands over my breasts, my belly, and then on down, bold and fearless, and he lay in the light of this bedside lamp, his breath coming harder now, and watched me do it.
I didn’t want to make him work tonight, but when his hands came up to my breasts, I didn’t object. Instead, I hummed, closed my eyes, rocked him a little better, and said, “Yes.”
He was caressing me, then. His hands felt so much better on me than my own did, and when they held my hips, when he started to move me over him? That felt the best of all.
“Hemi,” I said, continuing to touch myself, doing exactly what I wanted, exactly what I needed as he pulled me over him, onto him, again and again. “I love you. I love you. I…”
After that, though, I couldn’t say anything else. And neither could he.
Hemi
Hope had stolen my heart long ago. Tonight, she locked it away and took the key.
When we were lying together, when my breath had come back and hers had, too, I said, “I didn’t sleep with Anika.”
She had her hand on my chest, two slow fingers tracing the whorls of my tattoo. “I know.”
“How do you know? Why do you trust me? I haven’t been a man any woman could count on. And I came home stinking of her.”
“Hemi.” She propped her chin on my chest, now, and ran a hand over my bicep, then up to my shoulder. “If you had, wouldn’t you have taken a shower?”
I had to laugh, the barest breath. “Yeh.”
