Page 29 of The Forbidden Secret

“There’s something else I requested that Jaimie bring here before we arrived,” I finally told her.

She looked over at me with a raised brow. “There is?”

I made quick work of leaving the room, and when I came back, I set the large gift in front of her. It had been extravagant, but after everything Evelina had been going through… she deserved at least this.

Her mouth fell open, and she placed a hand over her chest. Then, she released a small laugh. “I don’t even have an easel at home. You and Jaimie didn’t need to do this.”

But I had. Selfishly, I had wanted to watch her paint.

Her dinner was forgotten as she moved toward the easel and opened the drawers, finding small tubes of paints and an assortment of brushes.

She turned toward me and ran. It was unexpected enough that I almost didn’t catch her before she flung herself into my arms, wrapping hers around my neck and squeezing. I couldn’t help the smile that spread across my lips as I wrapped my arms around the small of her back.

“Thank you,” she whispered in my ear.

I tightened my grip on her and closed my eyes as the scent of her hair invaded my nose. Evelina was addicting. She was what I imagined an addict felt when searching for their next fix. I had gotten a taste of her once, but never this much. I had never gotten this close, and I didn’t know if I would be able to stay away. Not after all the time we had spent together.

Not when Evelina was the single most important thing in my life.

How had we gotten here?

“I don’t want to stay away from you,” she whispered into my neck. “I know I have to come to terms with there never being anything emotional between us, and I will… eventually. I understand where you’re coming from, Zeke.”

I pulled back just enough to meet her eyes.

“You do?”

She nodded with enough understanding in her eyes that I wondered if she reallydidknow the reason I wouldn’t allow myself to go further than physical with her.

“I see you, Zeke.”

Her hand rose to my face, and as it ran down my cheek gently, my body began shaking with my pent-up need. The single graze of her fingertips unwound the control I had spent weeks carefully constructing.

Just the graze of a finger from Evelina, and it was over.

“Have you read many interesting parts in that spicy little book over there?”

Her grin widened. “I don’t think you would be comfortable doing the unmentionable things the man in that book does.”

I grabbed her hips and lifted her in an instant. Her legs wound around my hips as she giggled.

“Baby, I don’t think the man in your book would compare to what runs through my head,” I told her as I strode toward the bedroom. “Are you telling me that you want to explore more acquired sexual tastes, Evelina?”

She began trembling in my arms, her chest rising and falling more rapidly.

“I would do anything with you.”

I didn’t think she could have said anything more powerful. Anything more erotic.

She sighed heavily. “If dark, unmentionable acts are what you need, I want to do them with you.”

I wrapped a hand around the back of her head and grabbed a fistful of her hair, pulling her head back in a rapid motion. “I would do anything for you, Evelina.”

I meant every damn word.

My lips grazed the side of her throat, and I sucked in her sweet skin before nipping her neck. She gasped, grinding her hips into mine. The small, breathy plea that came from her lips destroyed me as I lay her on my bed and came down on top of her in an invasion of lips and teeth and pure need.

I had wanted this from the second she came back into my life, and when she clawed at my back and panted my name from a merekiss,I knew we were in similar company. I knew she wanted this as badly as I did.

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