If only I could rip my chest open and show her my heart.
The wild, drumming throb of my pulse.
The invisible fire that was never there, never my whole life, not before I tasted a girl I learned to love indescribably more than I ever hated her.
This is painful for her, though, and it’s my fucking fault.
I press my forehead to hers.
“Listen. The sex was so good because you intoxicate me, woman. Can’t keep my hands off you, and even when we’re kissing and touching, I always need more. I don’t regret a damn thing. Do you?”
She shakes her head so intently her hair tumbles down her shoulders in a beautiful gold cascade.
“After the way it went down, I wanted to, but I couldn’t. You’ll always be a Wardhole, but hate you? No. I just hated that I wasn’t enough to be your everything. I...I didn’t want to be pushed away again.”
The tears in her eyes dismember me.
“Pushing you away—I was trying to protect you from ending up hurt by me or my bastard parents. Paige, you are everything. You’re breath for my soul. You helped finally fix things. I put my parents in their place and I came clean with Winthrope, and even if that was for me, for the company, it was always for you.”
“Yeah, Beatrice told me. I kinda hoped she was just buying you sympathy since that’s the whole reason we went through all of this.”
I shake my head.
“He would have found out sooner or later. I couldn’t lie any longer. Not after what I did to you. I let him know it didn’t matter because I’d already lost the most important thing in my life.”
“What’s that?” she asks playfully, a sass I’ll always adore behind her tears.
“Do you have to ask?” I answer her with my starving lips.
Fuck, I’ve missed her, every seething second we’re joined like twin fires. Her tongue brushes the seam between my lips, and her mouth opens for me. I caress the inside of her mouth.
She even tastes like home. Everything I’ve ever been seeking. The stuff of right and wrong and forever.
Her leg curls around my thigh, and I’m so hard I could be arrested for packing heat in the building.
My kiss deepens, trying to brand her.
It’s all I can do not to take her right here on the table. I place my palm under her leg and hike her other leg up around me. She tightens one arm behind my neck, running her other hand through my hair frantically without ever breaking the kiss.
I walk to my desk with the little devil’s mouth pressed to mine and warmth pressed to my hardness. I land in my office chair, barely pulling away from her, gasping for dear life.
She lays her head down on my shoulder, joining me on the chair, and I run my fingers through her silky hair.
“You still haven’t said it.” She takes a couple of ragged breaths.
“Never said what?”
She glares at me.
Oh. I’m such a dumbass.
I’m in my office with a beautiful woman I hurt in my lap, and she has to remind me what I owe her.
Is there any help for me?
I hope so, because I can’t fucking stand losing her again.
I tighten my arms around her until I can’t without hurting one of us. We lock eyes. I watch how the light fills her gaze, but only I can make her glow.
“Paige Holly. I love you so much it hurts to breathe,” I grind out, one heaving word at a time, my whole heart pushing it out. “I know what I am without you—an intolerable curmudgeon, haunting this place and making everyone miserable. The three weeks you were gone felt like three years on a bed of rusty nails—you can imagine how that makes me Mr. Congeniality—and it showed me I can live, but I can’t live well.”
She laughs with this hitched, adorable flutter of her chest.
“Bad news, Wardhole. I can’t live without you.”
My hand races to her cheek, tracing her face. I want every inch of her pressed to mine. I’m greedy as hell and I need her closer.
“Yes, you can. You’ve been doing it,” I say.
Sensing my need, she matches my urgency, sliding her perfection against my skin.
“Not really. Today’s the first time I left my apartment since—”
“God, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she whispers.
But it’s not. I demolished her and I might spend the rest of my life making up for it.
We spend twenty breathless minutes fused together, locked in depths so