Page 49 of The Contractor's Rose
Her voice was quiet but solidly certain.
I nudged her legs apart enough so that I could kneel between what had become my favorite place to worship.
“Then I’m not stopping.”
Not tonight.
TWENTY-SIX
ROSEMARIE
He moved between my knees,and I almost forgot how to breathe.
This green dress now felt like a curse and a promise all at once. The satin stuck to my skin that was now flushed with heat, rising and falling with each of my shallow breaths. My thighs trembled beneath his touch, not from fear, but anticipation.
Gavin knelt like a man about to say a prayer.
How was this man fifty-two and looking likethat? Tall and broad with muscles. His dark hair was peppered with streaks of grey, and the short beard edging his jaw only sharpened the brutal handsomeness carved into every line of his face. His hands—large, calloused, work-worn—slid slowly up the inside of my legs like he was studying the blueprints of his next project. The contrast between his rough palms and the softness of my skin made my heart take flight.
He didn’t speak right away. Just lingered there, palms splayed wide on my thighs, eyes locked on mine. His stareburned—steady, intense, assessing. Like he was contemplating saying something.
His voice, when it came, was low and thick, all gravel and thunder and smoke. “We need to discuss something first.”
He dipped forward. Kissed the inside of my knee, then rested his cheek there, the scratch of his stubble biting into my skin and leaving a burning feeling that settled deep into my bones.
“I’m not soft,” he warned. “Not in the way some might be.”
I blinked, chest rising with a shaky breath. “You think I haven’t caught onto that by now?”
He huffed through his nose. Not a laugh. Something darker. “You’ve seen who I am out there—calm, patient. Measured. But in here …” His hand slid higher, fingertips ghosting along the most sensitive part of my thigh, calluses catching on my skin. “In the bedroom, I’m controlling. I don’t want to be patient. I want to own you.”
This man was going to wreck me. And I could not wait for it.
“I want to teach you every way it can feel. Every place I can take you. All of it. Every inch. Every hole. Every position. Everything I’ve ever thought of doing to you—I want to make it real.”
The heat that surged through me was a wildfire. A trembling, electric shock that started between my legs and traveled up to my chest.
“Gavin …”
He moved his focus to my other thigh, placing kisses there too—soft, then firmer. His voice dipped into something rougher, something primal. “I’ll protect you, Rose. I’ll take care of you. That doesn’t change. But when I’m inside you? Iwon’t be gentle. I’m going to fuck you like I’ve imagined it every goddamn night since I walked into that flooded store and realized the years I spent pushing you out of my mind were a goddamn waste.”
My eyes stung with unshed tears, not from pain or fear—but from the realization of just how much I wanted it. How much I wantedhim.
“I need to know you can handle it,” he said, voice quieter now, but no less intense. “That you can handle me.”
He looked up at me, those dark, stormy eyes filled with something bordering on desperation. Need. Possession. And I saw it so clearly: this man could shatter me. Or make me whole in a way I never expected. Maybe he was already doing both.
I tipped my head, and a slow smirk curled at the corner of my lips. “You think I can’t take it?”
His expression hardened. Sharpened. “That’s not what I said.”
“Then stop warning me,” I whispered, breathless, daring. “Start proving it.”
He growled. The sound was feral—low and dangerous, dragged from the deepest part of him.
The air shifted between us, growing heavier. Hotter. My whole body pulsed with need as his palm slid along my thigh, slow and claiming. His presence was all-consuming. I propped myself up on my elbows, heart slamming against my ribs as he stared up at me like I was the only thing left in the world that mattered.
And since I was realizing I liked the burn of adding a little gasoline to his flames, I couldn’t help but whisper, “Please, Daddy.”
