up from the inside out because she felt truly beautiful in his arms.
She felt…cherished.
He moaned against her lips, his hips moving back and forth in deep, fluid strokes. Cupping his face, she pulled him to her and kissed him with everything she had. His lips probed hers, tongue delving into her mouth. Bodies fused together, finding a rhythm. His pelvis brushed hers with each stroke, fueling the fire he’d begun with his hands not long ago.
Everything else evaporated. Her past pains and insecurities stripped away as if nothing existed but right now. No past, no future. Only the glorious present.
“Trent, I’m close.” She rocked her hips up to meet his, her body quaking again.
Her hands fisted in the sheets and she arched, shattering with him inside her. Her cries echoed off the walls of his room, and a second later Trent followed, his face pressed hard against the side of her neck as he roared in release.
As she lay there, heart full and body sated, she couldn’t help but feel that she wouldn’t be leaving Australia the same person as when she arrived.
Chapter Fourteen
Later that night, after they’d stopped for refueling and then gotten lost in each other again, Cora was curled up in Trent’s bed, drowsy and watching the storm through the bedroom window.
It was quieter now—the rain slowing to a steady pitter-patter against the glass and the lightning flaring across the indigo sky at infrequent intervals. They’d opened a window, and the scent of rain and wet grass and eucalyptus floated into the room, cutting through the haziness of their lust.
From his vantage point in the bedroom doorway, Trent was struck with how similar this image was. Cora’s sun-streaked hair was a tangled mess on the pillow, and she lay on her side, her arms curling the blanket up under her chin. She’d dragged his pillow to her side, as if she were building her own squishy fort. He could see her profile—the long, straight nose and shadow created by her high cheekbones and the fan of her thick, dark lashes.
She looked so much like his ex, it was almost like unpicking the stitches he’d thought had long healed on his heart, reminding him that to trust someone was to put yourself in the firing line. To sign up for being betrayed.
This is nothing to do with trust. It’s sex. Good sex, but that’s it.
If he were the type to read into situations a little more closely, Trent might have wondered if this was the universe trying to tell him he was stagnant…but he wasn’t that kind of guy. He didn’t believe in signs or horoscopes or fate or crystals or any of that bullshit.
Cora and Rochelle were two different people, and even if their outsides looked a bit—okay, a lot—similar, there was no comparison when it came to the inside. Cora was kind and sweet and open and funny. And he didn’t need to trust her, because it wasn’t like she was going to be sticking around.
Even if she was, he’d never put himself in a position to be hurt ever again.
“Are you going to keep standing there and staring?” she asked, cutting into his thoughts. She raised her head and looked at him with hooded eyes and a smile that was an invitation to sin. “It’s awful lonely in this big bed all by myself.”
“Maybe I should get you a teddy bear,” he drawled, teasing her. Cora laughed and he stood, feet rooted to the ground like something was holding him there.
Get out of your own head. This isn’t going anywhere.
But Trent couldn’t quite shake the feeling that Cora’s being here had a greater significance than some hotter-than-normal sexual attraction. It was like something in the air had shifted, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what, exactly, it was. All Trent knew was that he didn’t want anything to change in his life—he liked being single and free, liked the ability to change direction as he pleased.
And most of all, he liked knowing that nobody could get to him.
…
The following afternoon, Cora had been hard at work on the scrapbook until she’d hit a speed bump. They were missing photos. Likely, in the chaos of cleaning up after the “glitter incident,” some of their photocopies had been accidentally thrown out. And, given Trent’s parents were due to return from their trip that evening and he’d already returned the albums after their last scrapbooking session, they had to be quick about replacing them.