Page 30 of Lover
“Do you want me to answer?”
“Callum, would you just…” She paused, and I pressed farther inside her, sensing what she wanted to say. If she could yell such a thing in anger, she could use it to beg in the height of her lust.
“Just fuck me,” she commanded, “please.”
I did as she asked, with little mercy and no gentleness, giving in to all the brutal need I’d harbored since the moment I laid eyes upon her again, and when she reached her bliss, I followed close behind, the world white with ecstasy.
Not for the first time in our erotic history, she’d made me bleed with her reckless desire. It was something I enjoyed more than a decent man should.
“Come,” I said, when I guessed she could walk without tumbling over. I draped the remnants of her clothes over her shoulders, and as secretively as forbidden lovers, we made our way through the quiet daytime hallways of Willowfield to my quarters, where I meant to make up for lost time.
CHAPTER 17
THE REMAINDER OF the afternoon was a long, sensuous discovering of each other, though for me it was a return of the woman who completed my soul. With Millie I could never be satiated—I craved her soft, keening moans, the heat of her tongue, the tight depths of her womanhood, and how she became rough when driven by the desire we’d built together. I savored the way she grew bolder before orgasm, then shy again when her climax had ebbed, covering her body with sheets or pillows until I coaxed her passion alive once more with erotic suggestions, her favorite among them my request that she watch our reflections as I pleasured her with my mouth. She returned the gift on her knees, and the hours passed in bliss I never dared believe I would feel again.
When the sun set, and we were both spent, we lay in bed, her head upon my chest, and I traced the lines of her face with my fingers, amazed anew that the woman I had so irrevocably lost was in my arms. After the hours spent uncovering the secrets of our flesh, I wondered how close she might be to revealing the challenges she’d faced in the years following her memory loss.
I slipped my fingers into hers then brushed my lips across her temple.
“Tell me your secrets, Miss Foxboro,” I whispered, aching for her to entrust me with everything she’d been through.
She shook her head. “Tell me yours.”
I had so many, and they all belonged to her.
“You asked me about opening the house again,” I said. “I’ve decided to. However, when the cold comes again, I’m going away.”
“Away?” There was a note of panic in her voice I was sorry I inspired.
“I need separation from Willowfield. The winters here are too harsh. If the work still isn’t done, I’ll bring it, and if you would oblige, I’d like for you to come as well.”
“As your assistant?”
Astounded by the lengths her mind would go to exclude her from happiness, I could only stare, then finally gave in to a roar of laughter that shook our bodies and the bed beneath us. It was a reaction I couldn’t help, a response to the absolute absurdity of the thought that I’d find a woman who bewitched me to within an inch of my senses, and then keep her around merely as staff.
When I could breathe enough to speak, I wiped a tear from my eye and said between chuckles, “No, you little fool.”
I loved her all the more for her determined lack of awareness.
“I think it’s unsuitable, with the things I’ve done to you”—I ran my fingers along her side until gooseflesh rose on her naked skin—“for you to continue to refer to yourself as my assistant.”
“Where will we go?” she asked, entertaining my ambitions for the two of us.
“Wherever we’ve any inclination to. Somewhere away from this place until it’s alive again.”
She was quiet, and I hoped she was imagining what our life could be like together. The moment was tender and open, and again I gave her an opportunity to confide in me.
“Now you, my dear,” I said. “What are you thinking? What do you hide from me?”
She bolted upright out of my arms, then stilled like a startled deer, too stunned to flee. She stared into the fire, her eyes distant and misty. I’d made a mistake.
“Millie?”
I rose behind her, trying to disrupt her panic with a loving touch.
“I need to tell you something. It will change your mind about all of this, and I am afraid to say it.”
This was not how I’d meant for her to divulge this information, in pain and petrified. I attempted to lighten her mood with a ludicrous question. “Have you murdered someone?”
