All Souls' Night - Renee Rose Page 0,135

popped your play cherry, though.” He rolls me on top of him, so I’m staring down into those amazing blue eyes of his, two gorgeous whirlpools of magic and midnight. “Although I’ll be happy to check that off your bucket list tonight, if you’d like. Come home with me, please? I’d rather do that there than here. Then we won’t have to rush and we’ll have all the privacy we want.”

“Yes.” I don’t need to think about it. Maybe that’s stupid, but I don’t care.

“Do you have to go to work tomorrow?” he asks.

“No. I’m off this weekend, for once. I’ll warn you, though. My job requires me to be there early in the morning, usually by three a.m., so I’m not normally a night owl.”

I don’t understand the shadow that flickers across his features. “I’m not worried about that.” He effortlessly rolls me onto my back, surprising me with his strength.

My heart races as I stare up at him, my greatest fantasies come to life, and any thoughts I had about asking him to clarify his comment evaporate.

Nothing exists outside of him and this moment.

He holds up his hands, his meaning clear, and I reach up and press my palms against his, lacing fingers with him. His fingers close around mine and this feels so utterly perfect.

“I want you,” he softly says. “Not just for tonight, either. This is more than a one-night stand for me.”

Did I mention his sexy British accent?

I try to shake myself out of this spell, even though I don’t really want to. “You don’t even know me.”

“I know you’re perfect.”

Heat fills my face. “Don’t lie to me.”

He gently squeezes my hands again, shaking them to get my attention. “I’m not lying to you, and I won’t. You are perfect, in my eyes. And, even better, you’re perfect for me.”

I want to believe him—I really do. Twice in one night, two hotties have expressed an interest in me.

Why did I come here tonight in the first place?

Oh, right.

Maybe that was the best thing to happen to me after all. I never would have worked up the courage to come here tonight otherwise.

Finally, my eyes start to skim his body.

His naked body.

When did he get naked? How did I miss that? My face heats even more. “Did I get… Did I…” I swallow hard. “All over you? Sorry.”

The grin lights his eyes from deep within, with gorgeous blue flames. “You weren’t the only one who enjoyed our scene, baby. Some of that cum’s mine.” He leans in and kisses me, stealing every thought from my brain. “Tell me why you left Utah.”

I think it’s the sudden change in direction that derails my train of thought. He catches me totally off-guard and I find myself spilling my guts about it as he closely watches me.

“I couldn’t keep lying like that anymore. Not to God, and I didn’t want to be married to someone that much older than me. She couldn’t even have children anymore, and there was the fact that I didn’t love her.”

He looks angry, and it warms my heart. “Why were they going to force you to marry her then?”

“Because she was widowed and no one else wanted to marry her. I didn’t realize it at the time, only after I was gone a few months, that it was a pattern of behavior. Younger wives are married off to older men, like my uncles. The prime choices. Like cattle. The older single women are ‘given’ to young guys, like me.”

“The old bastards didn’t want the competition.” Cold steel threads through his tone.

“Yeah, exactly. Unless a younger guy is a favored son of someone important, it is rare they get to marry who they want. It also probably explains why so many guys who weren’t exactly favorite sons ended up leaving suddenly when they were around my age, or younger. Mostly younger. It was expected you do your duty to the community and not think for yourself.”

He kisses me. “You don’t have to worry about them ever again, baby.”

“I hope not.”

“They had no idea you’re gay?”

I shake my head. “I think I knew for a long time, because I never wanted to marry a woman. I didn’t even have a name for it, at first. That worked in my favor, though, because I wasn’t making eyes at any of the eligible girls my own age. No one saw me as competition. I was actually being ‘rewarded,’ in their eyes, by being allowed to get married at