Page 76 of The Troublemaker

Her hands skimmed over his chest, his back, as he licked deeper and deeper into her mouth, as she grew accustomed to that, as it became not enough. Not enough at all.

He pushed his hands beneath her shirt and then his thumbs skimmed her bare breasts, her tightened nipples. So overly sensitized by what had already risen up between them.

All she could do was whimper. Whimper and arch her back, a silent entreaty for more.

He pulled her shirt up over her head and his eyes were like blue fire as he gazed over her curves. He cursed. Short and sharp and harsh, shocking. The need inside her expanding. Growing. Until she thought she might expire of it.

He lowered his head, sucking one tightened bud deep into his mouth, and the sight of him, his dark head lowered over her breasts like that, the feel of his tongue, his lips...

She exploded.

Pleasure moved through her like a wave, and she continued to move her hips against his as she rode it out, desperate cries exiting her lips.

She was shaking. Trembling. When it passed, it left her weak.

“Oh, Charity,” he said, looking at her. “We’re fucked.”

And then he picked her up off the couch and started to carry her back toward her bedroom. She didn’t have the strength to protest. Or the desire.

She clung to him as he made the short trek back there, and when he set her down on the bed, there was one sliver of fear that worked its way beneath her skin.

She could see him. Hard and insistent beneath his jeans. And she knew that there was no going back. If they did this, they would never go back.

You already can’t. You know that.

She wondered if maybe their fate had been sealed that night that Fia had come over for poker, and jealousy had invaded her to such a poisonous degree that she had been shocked and embarrassed. Hadn’t wanted to admit that was what it was.

She had gone out of her way to pretend it couldn’t be that.

All these times she’d had feelings that she refused to name. From the dinner where she had desperately wanted to be the girl he was there for, to the comparison. The relentless comparison between herself and the beautiful Fia Sullivan.

Yeah. She could pretend that she didn’t know why. But she did.

She had been eaten alive with the idea that another woman was going to get to have him for the rest of his life.

That another woman would be the most important one to him. Because that was the thing.

They had never touched each other. They had never done anything like this. But he was singular in her life. She was singular in his. Nobody else commanded his attention on a daily basis the way that she did, and what she had known was that the minute he took a wife, she would be his priority. The most important thing to him, and it shouldn’t bother her. She should be happy. Because she should have been glad that he would be taken care of when she got married, and maybe moved away. But she wasn’t. Because she had wanted to marry Byron, settle into a comfortable, placid existence with him... Keep Lachlan all to herself. Because that was who she was. She was selfish. Utterly and completely selfish, and she was rather ashamed of it now.

Because it was unreasonable. Unfair. Because it was...

Because it was childish. These games that they were playing.Shehad been childish. If she didn’t look at him without a shirt she could pretend that she didn’t want to see him. If she wrinkled her nose she could make the tension in her stomach disappear, and pretend that it wasn’t the tension they’d been avoiding naming all these years.

She could love him without it being futile.

It wasn’t what happened after this that would ruin them.

It had already happened.

She didn’t want to stop.

Charity Wyatt had never been a sensual creature. But right now she felt entirely made of need. Entirely composed of her desire, and it was playing her like a symphony. She didn’t have it in her to turn away.

So she wouldn’t. So she didn’t.

She had a choice to make. So she went with the one that scared her the least. She grabbed hold of her own sweatpants and underwear and slipped them down her body, leaving her naked to his gaze.

She would rather he see her and have an informed decision on whether or not he wanted to go forward.

---