Page 25 of Daring the Bad Boy

She opened her eyes, looking stunned, and exhausted, the blue-green dazed and unfocused. And his heart smacked into his ribcage.

If only he could stay inside her forever.

“Better than like?” he asked, forcing the light tone into his voice. And fighting off the wave of protectiveness. But emotion swelled in his chest when her breath hitched, and he saw the butterfly punch of her heartbeat against her neck. The delicate skin so pale it was almost translucent.

Her sleepy smile – sweet and sexy – squeezed the last of the air out of his lungs. And the feeling of possessiveness was replaced by something even more disturbing.

“Much better than like.” She sighed. “Much, much better than like.”

He’d been thinking about her all day, ever since he’d left her that morning. Wanting to sink inside her again, wanting to taste every part of her. The memory of her shocked arousal earlier the best thing that had happened to him in what felt like forever.

But the kick in his chest now shocked him to his core.

He didn’t believe in love. Or longing. Or relying on another person.

Because they would always let yo

u down. The way his mother had.

The smile spread across her mouth, and he felt dazed.

“That wasn’t oral sex,” she said. “It was more like oral nirvana.”

He eased out of her, and heard the soft plop as her muscles released him.

Rolling away, he sat on the edge of the bed, and dealt with the condom before dragging on his boxers.

What was wrong with him? He’d been without for too damn long if he was getting hung up about a simple booty call.

He shouldn’t feel this much, didn’t want to. Not for Rosie, not for anyone. He certainly never had before… Not since…

He slammed the door closed on the direction of his thoughts, but it prized open anyway, on the sight of his father, so old, so frail, so used up. His face leached of color in the funeral home casket. The bitterness made his throat hurt. And the shocking well of loss and loneliness.

He’d messed up with his old man. Always thinking he could call him later. Visit him another time. He’d seen himself as driven and ambitious because he thought it made him immune from hurt. But he hadn’t been immune three days ago when he’d watched his father’s casket disappear behind the curtains at the crematorium.

Was that why he’d been anticipating Rosie’s arrival tonight so much? Why he’d cooked for her and dug out the blinds he’d had in the closet for over a year? It had to be, because she felt like more than just a convenient distraction now, and yet that was all she could be.

“Is something the matter?” The soft voice behind him whispered over his skin, crawling into all those vacant empty places that he’d denied existed for so long. And threatened to fill them up.

He twisted to look at her, forcing the fears, the loneliness back where they belonged.

“Not a thing,” he said.

The ticking time-bomb in his chest dropped back out of the danger zone the minute the lie was out of his mouth.

Get a clue, Landry.

The surge of emotion, that feeling of connection a moment ago, had been the endorphins still charging through his system after a mind-altering orgasm. And the fact he’d taken some knocks in the last week. Some knocks he hadn’t quite recovered from. This had nothing to do with Rosie and their booty call. He wasn’t lonely, or alone; he liked his life the way it was.

But he found himself sinking again, into those wide knowing eyes, that saw way too much.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“How would you feel about returning the favor?” he replied, grabbing hold of the one thing he knew for sure would get this evening back on track – and give him the distance he needed – because it always had before, when he was a kid and his emotions had threatened to choke him.

Photography was the go-to cure-all for everything. The ability to record, to observe, to catalogue what made the human experience so amazing, had always been the perfect defense against becoming so immersed in himself, that he couldn’t climb out again.

Plus he’d wanted to take Rosie’s picture the minute he’d met her. When would there be a better time to ask her?

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