Page 82 of Give & Take

I kiss her so thoroughly I actually feel her body melt against mine. The little sound she makes as I gently sweep my tongue against hers makes me forget my own name.

But I don’t forget hers. When she breaks the kiss, I say it on every breath—as my hand fans across her lower back, my other against her thigh. As I glide my hand into her hair, tugging her head back just enough so her face is tilted up to mine.

“This is going to be excruciating,” I say.

“What?”

“Seeing you, and not being able to do this.”

She laughs, and this time even though it’s soft and reserved; even though it’s the one I’m normally gifted, I don’t take it for granted. It still spirals down into every last cell in my body.

“Goodnight, Lana,” I say, before she tells me she has to go.

I usher her into her door and close it behind her, before she can say a word. Because any word she says to me and I’ll never let her go.

Chapter 22

Lana

It takes me far too long to fall asleep that night. I lie awake for hours, long after Raph’s light goes off and the strip of light on the bed—my little piece of him—disappears.

At first, all I can think about is that kiss. Not that last one on the porch, which made me feel like a teenager. And not the first one either.

It was that one in the middle, before he picked up the girls.

Maybe it was because Raph had grown so serious right before, like somehow everything had been stripped away. Whatever it was, every time my mind went there I felt hot inside, like a forge for something I couldn’t visualize.

But it wasn’t just the physical touches we’d shared tonight.

It was the way he’d asked all those questions about my writing. He’d seen right through me. For the first time, I considered what might lay beyond for me.Beyond this extended transition period I can now acknowledge I’ve been sitting in. This limbo between the married career lawyer and wherever my future lies.

And yeah, there was also what he said about fucking me on my kitchen island.

In the end, it’s the physical sensations that I fall asleep with—a heaviness in my lower half; a dull, desperate throbbing I let take me over—because everything else feels too big to even chip away at thinking about.

The next morning, before I even open my eyes, I wake to that same feeling. Only now, it’s intensified. My stomach plunges with adrenaline as I remember what we did last night. How I felt my nanny’s cock in my hand.

Jesus.

A dull pink light filters in through the gap. The light has that quality I know means the sun is still low on the horizon—nestled behind the eastern mountain range Redbeard’s built on the slope of.

It must be early.

Too early to be feeling the kind of need coursing through me.

I sit up to check my phone, disorientated. It’s only just five in the morning. The kids won’t be up for another two hours.

I flop back down, trying to calm my breathing. It’s good nothing more happened last night. I should stop it there, shouldn’t I?

We definitely shouldn’t have sex.

Not like I did in my dreams last night.

I groan, pulling a pillow over my face, remembering.

The dream was a continuation of last night. The timing was different—the kids were still out, and he left after collecting his laundry. I remember feeling so bereft. It was the kind of abandonment I couldn’t accept. So I walked up to his suite and knocked on his door. When he answered, he said he’d been waiting for me. In that ambiguous way dreams move, the next memory was of Raphael driving into me against the wall, telling me how pretty I was going to look when I came.

A sound comes out of me now as I toss the pillow aside. I felt so wild in that dream. Sogood.I slide my hand over the soft cotton of my t-shirt until I feel bare skin, unable to resist touching myself.

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