Page 61 of A Reckless Memory

After my teeth were brushed, I dug for a hairbrush. A quick bun would do. The style was the best way to keep it out of my face and prevent me from looking like I’d been lost in the wild for a few months.

I grabbed my tinted moisturizer to cover my freckles.

“What does that do?”

I jumped and nearly dropped the vial. “Jesus, Ansen. Give a girl a heart attack.”

“If I give you a heart attack, it’ll be pleasure-induced.” Ansen leaned against the doorframe. He was wearing his boxers and nothing else. The doorway was a marquee for the broad expanse of his chest. He hadn’t bothered to tackle his hair, but where mine would embarrass a feral animal, his looked magazine ready. Some guys paid good money for the tousled look, and all Ansen needed was a night of fucking.

Heat swamped my body. Wind blew snow against the windows. It sounded cold, but I was ready to finish stripping out of my nightshirt and underwear. “It smooths out my complexion.”

His frown was sexy and adorable at the same time. “You don’t need that.”

“You know how much more seriously I got taken at work when I covered my freckles?”

“That’s bullshit.”

“No, it was really apparent—”

“I mean, it’s bullshit you were treated differently in the first place.”

I agreed, but I lifted a shoulder. “I caught on quickly that I was treated better if I looked better.”

He took the bottle from my hand and stepped behind me. His body outlined mine. The man had always made me feel dainty.

Putting his hands on my hips, he caught my gaze in the mirror as he leaned down to whisper into my ear, “I want to treat you really naughty right now.”

“You did that all night.”

He circled around me and put a hand on my stomach. “I’m going to do it again. Don’t cover those freckles. Fuck everyone.”

“Ansen—”

He slipped his hand under the material of my underwear, then he dragged them down. As I stepped out of them, he lifted my nightshirt over my head.

Naked in front of the mirror, on full display for his perusal, I’d never felt more exposed. I couldn’t touch him back. If I lifted my arms to bring his head down for a kiss, my boobs would be at full attention. I’d look like I was auditioning for a centerfold. Would posing be better? A kick of the hip, an arch of the back? How would that look?

This man made me feel vulnerable in a way no one ever could. He stripped me down literally and figuratively, burrowing in like he had to understand and read me as well as he did every other creature he worked with. But at the same time, he built me up. He made me feel like Agatha Christie Knight again.

I planted my hands on the counter, deciding not to care about what the hell I looked like. My gaze was riveted on the way the tanned skin of his arm stood out against my abdomen as he stroked his fingers through my wetness and hit my ultrasensitive clit. My body filled with crackling lightning.

Once he earned a groan from me, he used his free hand to pull down his boxer briefs.

How could he have so much sex and he was already rock hard and pushing into me?

He locked eyes with me again in the glass and took the holder out of my hair. “There,” he murmured, lazily thrusting while he stroked casual circles over my swollen clit. “Properly soaked and getting fucked.”

“What do you have against hair and makeup being done?” I could barely gasp the words out.

“Nothing as long as I get all of you. Everyone else can have what you want to give them, but I want all of you, Aggie.”

“Why?” The stark question dulled the sensations rolling through me.

His expression shuttered for a moment as if he didn’t know the answer, and it was like the window opened and blew frigid air on me. The moment didn’t last. He kept up the steady thrusts and increased the pressure of his fingers. “Because you’ve gotten all of me—the good and the bad, and you’re still here.”

I didn’t know what to make of his answer, but his words and the vulnerability I heard were enough for me to sink into the movement of his hand and the way he filled me.

We made an erotic picture in the mirror. I’d had a few images saved in my brain from our previous time together, and they’d gotten me through some lonely stretches, but we were making new ones. Just us. No family pressure. No money. No plans for the future.

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