Page 49 of The Forbidden Bride He Stole

He hadn’t realized. Because he had not truly understood all that sex could be. The purpose of it. The point of it. No. He had never truly understood. Until now. Because it mattered that it was Hannah. And it mattered that he was Apollo. Because it was more important than the final climax. Because sex was more than bodies. Because it involved your soul. And he had kept his own back for so long that he understood isolation more than connection. But here he let it all be free.

When he slid inside of her tight wet heat and she called out his name, it was a healing prayer. And they blended together. Into one. One flesh. One heart. He let his mind go blank. He let himself feel. All of it. Everything. A white-hot blaze of glory that left him burned from the inside out.

Because this was altering. This had changed him. He would never be the same after this. After her.

He welcomed it.

Because she liked him. Because she wanted him.

And because he had been alone for a very long time.

She arched beneath him, her breasts pressed against his chest, her hands moving over his back. He brought her to climax, touching her, tasting her, moving within her, whispering dirty promises against her mouth. And then she brought him over with her.

For one blessed moment, all was still within him. He was with her. Their bodies were pressed together, their hearts beating in time. But there was no thought. There was nothing before, and nothing after. There was only them. And he was not alone.

He knew then that he needed to tell her.

CHAPTER TEN

“IWILLGETyou an extra blanket if you want,” he said softly, the aftermath of their lovemaking still evident. They were breathing hard, his own heart beating erratically within his chest.

“No,” she said, moving against him, pressing her breasts to his back. “I’m fine.”

“Good.”

“Are you okay?” she asked.

He laughed. “I suppose I am the one who should ask you that. Given that you were the one who only just had sex for the second time.”

“I’m not the one who looked like they were drowning inside of themselves only a few moments ago.”

“Is that what it looks like?”

“Yes. It is,” she said softly, and yet it was ruinous. Because it was only the truth, and he couldn’t deny it.

He still felt raw. From the way that they had just... From the heat of it all. The connection of it all. It was far beyond his own experience. And there was no physical act that he could not claim expertise in. But this had been unique. Because it had not been about skill. But about something much deeper.

“You know,” he said. “I think to understand much of what happened today, and much of what you’ve seen from me, and even the reasons that your father chose me to be your guardian, there is something you need to know. I have been in business with Cameron since I was about fifteen.”

“You have?” There was a question in her voice, but he could feel the weight of it. She wasn’t naive. Not really. And he knew that she had already worked out he’d undergone a fair amount of trauma. Hell, he told her some of it. But he knew she hadn’t quite figured this out, even if she was skirting the edges of it.

“Yes. We... That is to say, there was a certain point where we realized we could make a fair amount of money selling ourselves.”

“Are you saying what I think you are? That you... That people used you for sex?”

She didn’t sound shocked. Or perhaps that was a gift. She was gentle, it didn’t sound angry. She sounded... Sad, perhaps, but resigned. Maybe that was what happened when your parents died when you were sixteen, and you saw the harder truth in the world. Maybe you could expand to accommodate many such truths.

“Yes,” he said. “We both... We both came from difficult circumstances. I was dodging predators already for half my life. I felt like it was only a matter of time before it was all taken from me by force anyway. I decided... I decided to get ahead of it. We were petty thieves before that. I looked young for a long time. Cameron was tall. It was often my job to charm. To make people pity me. While Cameron would rob them. But... As I said. I was quite pretty. And I did look young. And I hate to tell you this, but that is an asset.”

“God,” she said, the word torn from her. “That’s... It’s awful.”

“It is. But if I had the choice between being a victim and making money off what I had available to me then I was going to make money. We protected each other. Made a network. Eventually, we graduated from seedier sorts of dalliances to wealthy clientele. Hard-earned connection after hard-earned connection. I was with a wealthy client the first time I came to New York. A woman. Her name was Sandra Fielding. She liked a little bit of company along with sex. She wanted me to be a bit more cultured.”

“And she... Treated you like a pet, didn’t she? Something to make her loneliness more bearable?”

“Yes,” he said. “And if I have one strength it’s that I am very good at taking a step back from a situation I don’t want to be in and making myself distant. So when things became too difficult for me, I would simply go somewhere else. But I stopped knowing how not to do that, Hannah. Whenever I have sex it’s like I’m standing at a great distance from my partner. Until you. And everything in me craves the connection, and yet it’s deeply uncomfortable for me.”

“I wish I would’ve known. I... I would’ve been more... I would’ve taken it slower.”

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