Forbidden - Karla Sorensen Page 0,108

no desk sex for him to give me payback.

But he held onto it. All evening.

With the skies dark, and my backpack hooked onto my shoulders, I knocked gently. He ripped the door open, and without a word in greeting, he dipped, scooping me up over his shoulder.

“Aiden,” I laughed breathlessly. “Put me down.”

“Trust me, you don’t want that.” He strode to his bedroom.

“I don’t?”

“Nope, because once your feet hit the ground, you are going to pay for that.”

I grinned, hair hanging down toward the ground as he shut the door behind us. He tossed me, and I bounced off the mattress with a laugh.

And oh, did he get payback.

My clothes, practically torn from my body, ended in a heap on the floor next to his. And he proceeded to torture me, bringing me to the edge but never quite letting me go all the way, over and over, until I was shaking.

Aiden kept me on my stomach, forced me to hold onto the comforter.

By the time he put us out of our misery, I was mindless, arching my hips to seek the explosive end to an entire day of white-knuckled anticipation. He covered me with his big body, holding me into place, moving so slowly that I almost wept.

He held still, dragging his lips over my cheek, only stopping when his mouth was over my ear.

“I love you,” he whispered.

Slow was over.

Gentle was gone.

In its place was fierce and brutal. It took no more than five seconds, the bruising strength of his hands holding mine down, and I was flung helplessly to a place I didn’t actually know existed. He came there with me.

My spine practically cracked from the heat he pulled from inside me, and I managed to hold my sounds into the pillow by my face.

We laid boneless and limp for about ten minutes, just trying to catch our breath.

I wasn’t sure how I ever felt complete before this man, before this love.

He watched me pull on my sleep tank and shorts with heavy-lidded eyes, opening his arms for me to climb into bed next to him.

“This is what I needed,” he said into the top of my head. “Thank you.”

I sighed. “Thank you.”

His chest shook with laughter.

We talked for a while, and as I started drifting off, his finger traced the bottom edge of my lip.

I hummed. “That’s nice.”

“You said that,” he added quietly. “The night you were here.”

Opening my eyes, I studied him in the dark room. “Did I?”

Aiden nodded.

“I’m glad I got a chance to say it again.” I yawned.

“Isabel,” he said, nudging me back awake.

“Hmmm?”

“You know you’re going to have to marry me, right?”

Eyes still closed, my mouth curled into a smile. “As proposals go, I give that a four.”

He laughed quietly. “Just making a general statement. You’ve ruined me from sleeping alone.”

“Good.” I turned to my side, and he folded his body around mine, burying his nose in the back of my neck. “Because yeah, I’m going to have to marry you, Aiden Hennessy.”

We slept like that, soundly and deeply, until I felt a light stroke on my arm.

When I blinked, I saw a small body standing on my side of the bed. My stomach seized instantly at how she might react.

Anya grinned down at me. “I knew it was you,” she whispered.

I sat up, glanced over at a still-sleeping Aiden, sprawled on his back with a hand laying on his chest.

My heart raced as I swung my legs over the side of the bed, and she climbed up into my lap.

“You knew it, huh?” I asked her quietly.

Anya nodded, playing with the end of my braid where it hung over my shoulder.

“Want me to bring you back to bed, sweetheart?”

She nodded again, and without waking Aiden, we walked upstairs, and once in her room, I held back the covers on her bed. She pulled the blankets up to her chin and looked over at the picture of Beth. “It’s behind there,” she said. “You can take it out.”

Carefully, I picked up the frame and studied her face. She was pretty. A big smile and laugh lines that told me she’d done both things often.

“Behind the picture?”

Anya nodded.

I pulled the back of the frame off, and a folded-up piece of paper was wedged behind the image of her mom.

When I opened it, it was hard to make sense of what I was seeing. Anya pointed at the side, letters I couldn’t really make sense of.

“She told me I’d know,” Anya said. “Even if