28. I’d Break You

Dom

She stayed on top of me, hard nipples against my bare chest, her head collapsed on my shoulder as we breathed heavily against each other. I’d never quite had sex like it.

All the kissing, the skin, the intimacy.

As she peppered kisses into my neck, I smoothed her thighs. They had shaken so hard we could have fallen off the bed.

“I don’t want to get up,” she said softly. “I want to stay.”

I slapped her ass — the noise cracked through the room and she jolted upright, holding a finger to my mouth and pouting her lips in a ‘sh!’

I smiled against her finger and pressed a kiss into it. “Couldn’t help myself.” This time I only grabbed the fat of her ass cheek, so plump in my hand and said, “Go to the toilet before you get a UTI. I need you in working, pleasurable order for the foreseeable.”

“Am I…” she started, looking at me with hesitation.

“Speak to me.”

“Am I coming back? Or going to Is—”

“You’re coming back.”

She really tried to hide her smile. “Okay.”

Slowly, she pulled up and my cock fell out of her. The sensation had us both moaning.

“You’re hurrying back,” I corrected.

There was no hiding her smile now. I watched her perky ass right out the door.

Her room smelt like her. Vanilla and honey. When I’d been hiding in her wardrobe that morning, it was almost too much. It was the most nostalgic of scents. The same perfume her mother wore. Or, used to. She had clung to it when the services deemed living with her mum no longer suitable.

I’d bought her and her mum a bottle of it every year. Subtly, at Christmas, when we all exchanged gifts. I pretended it was all I would buy Leo because I didn’t know her, because I didn’t care. But the fragrance had been discontinued four years ago and I’d hired a French perfumer to recreate it perfectly.

I was whipped.

Damn, I’d been whipped for some time.

Even back when she hated me.

Maybe she still did.

Really, I knew it was more than that, too. I loved her. I knew it, but it had been years since I had allowed it to be a conscious thought.

Fuck, I was in deep. Loving her was precisely the reason I had to step back.

She couldn’t ever love me. Not truly. Not until she knew.

And she could never know.

She came back in, dressed in those silky pyjamas she’d taken with her. How long I’d let her wear them was up for debate.

She climbed into bed with me and placed her head back on my chest. “I probably can’t stay for long, though.”

“You can stay all night,” I said, stroking her shoulder. I should have said yes, but it was getting harder to deny her. “We’ll just have another mission impossible in the morning.”

She shook her head with a little breathy laugh.

“This is our last night together,” she said again.

There was something in her tone I couldn’t quite place. Was it regret, sorrow?

I lifted her chin to look at me. “It’s not. Rose petals, remember? I’ll leave my spare fob for you.”

She blinked hard. “What? That sounds awfully serious.”

Damn, it did.

Nevertheless, my hand was already rooting through my rucksack at Leonie’s bedside. “I mean, this is strictly for sex. Don’t go letting yourself in to raid my fridge.”

Leonie nodded, watching me as I carefully placed the fob on her bedside table.

“We won’t be dating,” I said softly, still rubbing her arm, conscious that I needed to keep the exact same rhythm despite how my heartbeat picked up. Of course I wanted her on my arm. But if I got any closer to her, I’d tell her the secrets embedded in my soul and she would never want to see me again. Keeping her afar was better than losing her close. “I’d break you, Leo.”

She moved an inch and I wasn’t quite sure if it was a flinch.

“In a romantic sense, I would break you.”

“I didn’t say anything about romance—”

“Good,” I said and hated myself, avoiding looking at her as I stared at the ceiling. “This isn’t a long-term thing. It’s just until we get bored.”

She sat up, anger blazing in her eyes. “Bored?” she blurted and scoffed. “Fucking hell, Dom.”

“You want me to lie to you?” I asked.

I was already lying. Already lying.

And I knew I was hurting her like I had before. But hurting her like this was better than destroying her.

“It might be a touch too romantic for post-sex cuddles,” she snapped. “I don’t know if you could handle it.”

And she left.

I was losing her again.