Page 122 of The Au Pair Affair

“No.” Slowly, she parted his lips with a lap of her tongue, suctioning him gently, before sinking into a long, wet kiss, their tongues meeting and retreating, going deeper, deeper until he was groaning, slapping her sex with the hard inches of his, stroking himself, his fist knocking into her inner thighs as he moved it, fast and rough. “It was making love and we both knew it,” she breathed against his mouth. “Every time we touched, that’s what it was.”

Burgess made a sound, a shiver wracking his big body. His voice was thick with rust when he spoke. “And now?”

“Now I’m scared to trust what I’m feeling.”

“How do I fix it?” he demanded, pressing the head of his arousal inside of her. Thrusting his hips in an upward drive and seating her in one savage move, leaving them both panting against each other’s mouth. “Tell me how to make you love me again,” he rasped, gripping her butt hard and working her up and down the stiff jut of his erection, his breath pelting her lips. “I will never, ever, hurt you again, Tallulah. I’ll jump off a much higher cliff first.”

He didn’t give her a chance to respond, because his mouth found hers and ruined it forever, kissing her with so much passion, tears formed in her eyes and her hips eagerly demanded more, more, bucking in time with the jerks of his hands, his thickness finding the deepest angles of her core, their wet bodies slip-sliding together, their groans steadily growing louder until the waterfall was no longer drowning them out and he had to keep his mouth stamped over Tallulah’s while he fucked her, rawand hard, while her toes dangled somewhere in the vicinity of his bent knees.

“God, Tallulah, baby, I need to come so bad.”

“I want it. Let me have it.” She rained kisses all over his perfect face, her hips hinging up and back, thighs beginning to tremble, along with the rest of her. From the intensity of the act, the riot of emotions breaking free and running like escaped felons inside of her chest. “Don’t keep it from me again, please.”

“I can’t. I’m not strong enough.” His eyes met hers, glazed, his tongue licking the side of her neck in a wonderfully obscene way, before finding her lips and weaponizing himself against them, lapping the inside of her mouth with a growl. “I’m hungry and your body is the only one that feeds me.”

“Devour me, then.” She constricted her inner walls, watching his face transform with the agony of pleasure, her own following suit with great pulses and the locking of muscles, the rocketing of her hips. “I’m going to eat you up, too. You feel that?”

“Feel it?” Burgess’s pumps grew disordered, his breath turning shallow, fingers digging harder into the flesh of her backside. “You smile at me, Tallulah, and I know I’ll feel it for centuries. You have no idea what this does to me. Fucking you. Making love to you. Watching my cock turn your mind blank. No.Idea.” He growled one final word.“Mine.”

She bit at his mouth. “Mine.”

“Mine.”

The imminency of release was transforming both of their expressions, knowledge that the end, the beginning, the everything had arrived, their mouths surged together and fused, Tallulah’s sex tightening up around his shaft in an almost unbearable, prolonged ripple, and Burgess erupted inside and out, liquid heat flooding inside of her while he pressed a guttural shout into the side of her neck, his hands grinding her down violently and intuitively on his hardness in a way that was necessary and right andalso agonizing, because it prolonged her orgasm until she was slapping his shoulders and writhing on that rigid pike, exciting him further, exciting herself further while stickiness ran down the insides of her thighs and the waterfall made them the sole humans on the face of the earth. In that moment, that’s exactly what she wanted.

To have no choices to make.

No feelings to deal with.

Just to... be. To stay and be and lose herself in what only this man made her feel.

But as soon as they finished crashing, down, down, down and recovering with gulps of air and calming hands, Burgess read her mind before she even had a chance, letting her down carefully and pulling her into his embrace, his lips pressing a kiss to her temples, her cheeks, her eyelids. “Yeah. We belong to each other. Period. No matter what. You just have to decide if you want to be each other’s together or apart, Tallulah.” He studied her face for a long moment, adoration etched into every one of his features, before kissing her mouth long and firm, stroking back her wet hair and pressing their foreheads together one final time, making eye contact that left her knees shaking. “I’ll go find your bathing suit.”

Chapter Thirty

Burgess sat on a bench overlooking the aquamarine water of the Caribbean, shielding his eyes as the sun slowly dipped below the horizon. When it had disappeared completely, he fell back against the wooden backrest, his gaze sweeping left to the trellis adorned in white gauze that would serve as the ceremony site for Wells and Josephine’s wedding the next day. He’d arrived an hour early for the rehearsal, because he flat out had no idea what to do with himself and being confined inside his room had only made him twice as restless.

A brief check of his watch told him ten minutes remained until the wedding party was due to meet Carlos for a quick run-through of the ceremony, after which they would head to the rehearsal dinner. That meant he’d be seeing Tallulah soon.

His pulse beat out of time, like an unwound clock.

He could safely say he’d never felt this way in his life. A strange mixture of clearheaded and broken. High and low. Originally, he’d agreed to zip-line and cliff jump so he could spend time with Tallulah, but hell if something inside of him hadn’t changed today. He’d let go. He’d learned he could still do something outside of his comfort zone and it wouldn’t kill him. No, he’d actually loved the rush of hurling himself toward the water, the sense of satisfaction that spread through his limbs afterward, like he’d satisfied something inside of himself that hadn’t existed in a long time. Maybe his sense of adventure had been lurking under thesurface the whole time, waiting for her to come coax it back to life.

At the very least, Burgess was more than just Sir Savage.

He had a second act in him.

But he couldn’t visualize it just then. Not without her.

Burgess flicked open the top button on his dress shirt, yanking on the knot of his tie to loosen it slightly. Damn the formal dress code for tonight’s dinner. Did Wells and Josephine somehow miss the memo that they were in Central America? He’d sweated more in the last two days than he had during his entire hockey career. Although, the perspiration beginning to form on his upper lip had a lot to do with knowing Tallulah would be there in less than five minutes now.

Yeah, he wasn’t seeing the pristine waters of the Caribbean anymore. He was seeing her completely naked, legs around his hips, begging him not to deprive her of his come. He was seeing the wide, invigorated smile on her face after she’d finished her jump into the lagoon, how his heart had flown up into his mouth in response. Her conflicted expression after they made love behind the waterfall. The pain of that was still with him now, like shrapnel from a bomb that had burrowed beneath his skin and would need a surgeon to take it all out.

He’d fought a war over the last two days... and it was possible he’d lost.

More than possible, really. Hadn’t he lost Tallulah that day in the hospital?

Getting her back might have never been realistic at all.

---