He drops to his knees in front of me and uncrosses my legs, splaying my thighs wide so he can crawl between them.
“I more than like you.”
Don’t do it. Don’t say it. I won’t survive it. Not twice.
I shake my head, begging, pleading.
There was a time when I wanted Vander’s love to be my dying breath. Now I wonder if love is something I’ll ever be allowed to have again.
“It’s true, though.” He says it as a whisper. A secret.
I swallow, and it’s as heavy as lead. “Will you make me remember and forget all at once?”
He reaches behind his head to take off his shirt then leans forward until we’re skin to skin. The glass tips back and he takes another sip of alcohol so he can kiss me with it. I swallow it down, drinking him in.
“Baby, tonight you’re not just going to see stars. You’re going to memorize constellations.”
I grab the back of his head and kiss him a little harder than I intend but not caring enough to stop or slow down.
Roughly, his hand grips my jaw, and he pushes me back. “I want to play a bit. Do you think you can handle it?”
My answer is automatic. “Yes.” Because that’s what I want. I want to be so lost in him that I belong to no one else. Because tomorrow when I wake up, it’ll be Sunday and that’s fine. I’ll take Hazel to a puppet show, and maybe if I’m really feeling ambitious, to paint pottery. But Monday we’re back at work, and life starts all over. Once again I’ll be the broke single mom with a deadly secret, mooching off her rich boss, and I can’t handle it. Not yet anyway.
I want tonight.
Selfish or not, I want it. I want the memories, new and old. I just want him.
He starts kissing me again, soft and sweet and a little teasing. Far from intense as his hands find the thin material at my hips and slide it down my legs. My breath catches, and not from the cool leather against my hot skin.
“Open for me,” he breathes into me and pulls back to hold my panties to my mouth.
My heart picks up with anticipation and nerves. Slowly, I open for him, and I know what it is. I’m giving myself over to him. Relinquishing my control but not my power.
He slips my wet panties into my mouth, and immediately, I taste myself. It makes me wetter, and with my panties gone and my thighs spread, he sees it.
“Good, little angel,” he murmurs, staring down at me before glancing back up at my eyes as he slips two fingers straight inside of me. I shift and squirm a little, already breathless. “You’re going to think I’m crazy and obsessed.”
I smirk and moan as he starts pumping in and out of me. “No more than I already do.”
“What?” He smiles and pulls the panties from my mouth.
“No more than I already do.”
The panties fall to my chest, a promise for later. “I put a few things in here this afternoon before we went out with this very scene in my head. It was wishful thinking, but now that I have you here...” He lets that trail off as he pulls his fingers from me and stands. “Stay exactly like that, or I’ll punish you.”
Oh hell.
“I can’t decide what I’m supposed to do. Behave or misbehave.”
He grins. “You’ll please me either way.” He turns and walks across the room to a small wooden chest sitting on a bookshelf. He opens it, and I watch with an equal mixture of apprehension and awe as he pulls items that look like freaking sex toys out of it.
Is he kidding with this? He put sex toys in here with this scene in his head? What on earth do I do about that?
“Vander?”
He glances down at the toys in his hand, and I study him asthe flames from the fire dance across his chest, tattooed arms, and the side of his face.
“Stone and I went to a sex shop a couple of years ago. I bought some things I wanted to use one day. Things I was curious about. I never found someone I wanted to use them on.” He laughs and lifts his chin. “Then again, you’re the first woman I’ve brought to my house.”