Red Nights - Shari J. Ryan Page 0,41

NINE

I TRY NOT TO LOOK shocked as I lean over the bureau, looking at the pictures. She’s cute. Springy blond pigtails, large green eyes—and those dimples…his dimples.

I turn to look at him, finding him staring at the pictures too, admiring her. A lump forms in my throat, making it hard to swallow. He has a daughter. “What’s her name?”

A smile twitches at his lips when he says, “Her name was Ella.”

Was. Meaning: in the past. Meaning…

My heart falls into my stomach. “What…?” is all I can manage to say.

“She died.” There’s no emotion on his face. Like it isn’t new.

He pulls me over to the bed to sit down beside him. “I’m fine. I don’t want you to worry about it. Okay?” I want to ask when she died, how it happened, and how he’s even surviving right now. But he would have offered up that information if he wanted me to know.

“I’m so sorry.” With each new bit of information, I feel like I’m looking further into Pandora’s box.

“Want to run away yet?” he asks.

“I want to stay.” But I need to put this out of my mind somehow.

“I want you to stay too. And I want to drop this and pretend it didn’t come up.” That sounds easy to do, but I’m not sure I can just forget about this. “Felicity,” he wraps his hand around my shoulder, pulling me into his side, “you have to understand what you do to me—for me. You make the pain go away. You’re the first person to make me feel something else. I like it. A lot. I want more of it. More of you. It’s like you’re giving me air to breathe after being suffocated for so long.” His words are like little electrical currents zapping my nerves. He just described exactly what he does for me.

I make him forget, the same way he makes me forget.

“I don’t want to talk any more,” he says.

“Me neither,” I say, almost whispering. I want to forget. I want to forget my pain—and his.

His knee bounces for a few seconds, and then I’m thrown backward onto his bed, his arm scooped behind my back, dragging me up to his pillow. In two blinks, I’m beneath him, his eyes boring into mine. My heart is in my throat, and eagerness boils through my blood. “I told you seven dates,” he says in a growl from his throat.

I can’t respond. I can only nod. But I don’t agree. Can he see it on my face?

He sighs with disdain, “Rules can’t be broken.”

Then, his mouth is all over mine.

If rules can’t be broken, why is he kissing me like this? His lips caressing mine as his teeth graze my lips like the tip of a feather. Electrifying.

His hand closes around my leg, slowly moving it up toward my hip. His fingertips slip under the hem of my shirt. The contact of his skin against mine pulsates through my core. We’re fully clothed, yet I feel naked, exposed and needy. His hand continues up to my breast, leaving a trail of heated sensations as it goes. His other hand pushes my shirt up to my neck as he lowers his lips to my stomach, the tip of his tongue drawing a line up to the seam of my bra. Both hands grip my waist now, making me feel so small. He breathes hot air against my neck; his hands slide up and press my arms above my head as his knee fits between my legs. He leans only half of his weight into me, but I want to feel him. All of him.

I pull my arms out of his grip, reaching down until my fingertips graze the waist of his jeans.

And then everything stops.

He pulls his lips from my neck and stares down at me with a drunken look in his eyes. “If those hands of yours touch me, I will lose all restraint.”

“Then lose it,” I say, breathless.

“No. I need you to digest everything before we go further,” he says, bringing me back to reality and the shitty hands we were both dealt. Does he think I won’t last for seven dates? Is that what this is about?

I sit up, straightening my shirt and brushing the loose strands of hair out of my face. “You make it sound like there won’t be a seventh date.”

He works his fingers through his hair, ruffling it up, which of course only makes him look hotter. And like he just