Page 44 of Unrealistic Expectations

“Because I don’t want your past dissected in the press. I don’t want you to resent me.”

“I could never resent you.” He moved toward her.

She put her hand on his chest. “You say that now, but I saw how you felt after Kennedy made the video. You were wrecked.”

He felt as though steam might come out of his ears, because his gears were grinding so hard trying to figure out how to convince her. Only one option was crystal clear—showing her.

“I’m not sure what I can do to reassure you that I’m in this.” He put his hand over hers, holding it there. “All I know is that you’re the only person I want to be with most of the time. The difference between whatever this reporter is going to say about me and what Kennedy did say about me is that I no longer care if I can’t pick a random girl up at a bar or a party to amuse myself for the night.”

She opened her mouth to speak, but he gave her a stern look and she shut it. Her fingers fluttered against his chest, and he wondered if the thought of him with another girl made her wish she had the dexterity to snap his sternum and rip his heart out. He got a similar compulsion when he thought about how she’d wasted so much time with Luke, but it was Luke’s heart that he wanted to crush in his palm.

“I don’t want to be with anyone else but you.”

Her face softened, and he knew he was getting through. He flipped her hand in his and pulled her through the door. Before she could say anything, he crouched in the entryway and undid the fastenings on her shoes. She’d told him that she rarely wore heels, and he knew they had to be killing her. She’d worn them for him, and he loved that.

When her shoes were off, he stayed on his knees and backed her up against the door with his torso. She might have expected him to push her skirt up and eat her right there, but right now he just needed to get close. He wrapped his arms around her waist and rested his head against her stomach.

Her fingertips fluttered in the air for a few moments before coming to rest against his head. She lightly dug her fingernails into his scalp, and he nearly melted in pleasure. She might not have a long list of lovers, but she’d noticed that it made gooseflesh pop all over his skin when she did that and so she did it all the time. God, she drove him crazy. At the same time, touching her, being with her, gave him a kind of peace he’d never known he could feel.

He couldn’t lose her.

He didn’t know how long they were like that. And he didn’t know what it meant. To an outsider, it might look like he’d thrown himself at her feet and was begging her to stay with him. And maybe that was what it was. He just hoped that he wasn’t an anchor holding her down. She’d spent much too long in the shadow of an asshole, and she deserved to fly.

He looked up at her face and found her staring at him. Without thinking, he ran one hand up her thigh. Her dress had a deep slit, and it was almost like an open door to the center of her. He might not be sure of his merits as a partner in life, but he knew she liked what he had to offer her in terms of pleasure.

When her dress was out of the way, he pressed an open-mouthed kiss to the front of her panties. She gasped and her fingernails dug a little more insistently into his scalp. That was all the prompting he needed to reach around her hips and pull her panties down until they fell to the floor on their own. He made her lift one foot so she could spread her legs.

He felt like a pervert whenever he was about to taste her because he was addicted to the taste and smell of her arousal on him. If he wasn’t hard already, his reaction to the smell of her was always instantaneous. He savored her, taking his time as he parted the center of her and used his tongue and fingers to make her moan and pull his hair. She looked down at him, their gazes locked for a long time. He wanted her to see how much he loved this, how much he worshipped her body. He wanted to prove that he was a better choice than the safe ones she’d made her whole life.

Being with him might not make sense for an authority on loving and healthy relationships, but he wanted to prove her wrong. Sometimes the only way to prove the rule was to be the exception.

Her breath caught when he sucked on her clit. He knew it wouldn’t take long for her to come then. She looked away from him, and he let her that time. The next time he made her come, though, he would hold her jaw so she couldn’t look away. She needed to see while he was inside her how much she absolutely decimated everything inside him that would make him run.

Her body bucked against the door, and she let go of his hair to pull his whole head to the core of her when she came. She was just as undone by him as he was by her. He couldn’t believe that she was actually going to end this.

He stayed kneeling at her feet, wiped his face, and took her in. Somehow the curls of her hair had gotten mussed—probably when she was thrashing at the door. The skin on her chest was flushed, and her breasts jiggled as she took in ragged breaths.

She’d worn a red sequin dress that seemed very out of character but affected him as though he was a bull in the ring. Even though the night had been weird—they didn’t seem to have any nights that weren’t weird—he’d focused on her and that red dress all night.

“That was—”

“Delicious.” Her gaze snapped back to him when he said that, and her blush deepened. She got so flustered when he said dirty things to her that he would have to do it more. “It makes me never want to get off my knees for you.”

She grabbed at the back collar of his shirt and pulled him up until he was standing. “You shouldn’t say those things to me.”

“Why not?” He pulled the rest of her hair out of its updo, and carefully pulled the strands over her shoulders so it wouldn’t get caught in the door. They had a whole room for a whole night, but he was going to have her on every flat surface at least twice before they were done.

“It makes me think of how good you are at this, and how you got good at this...”

He didn’t want her thinking about any of his other lovers. They were all in the past. And besides, not many of them had been like this. There was that old saying that sex was like pizza—always a little good, even if it was bad—and it was sort of true. But he felt as though he’d been eating greasy takeout for decades and all of a sudden had access to slices from Sicily. He could never go back to the stuff he’d eaten before.

“It’s not always this good.”

She snorted a little. “That’s good. I’ve started to feel a little guilty about encouraging my clients to seek out more than chemistry.”

“Even when you have chemistry—and we do—it’s not always like this.”

Her brow furrowed and he kissed her forehead. She took the opportunity to work the knot on his tie loose. He loved the feel of her small, efficient fingers taking him apart.

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