Chapter 11

ELEVEN

ROWE

Being naked with Sebastian Dayne was… unbelievable. Unreal. Mind-blowing. Insanely hot. I could hardly breathe with his hands on me. And they were everywhere, touching me as if he wanted to map my skin with his fingertips. By the time we stumbled back into his bedroom, I was rock hard again and willing to sign my freedom away for another orgasm at his hand.

This time, I felt like I knew him a little better, which was devastating. It made me like him more, want him more… and at the same time, it made me know, without a shadow of a doubt, this was going to end soon and hard.

Men like Sebastian Dayne, the crazy-wealthy heir to the Dayne Lumber company with his multiple homes and his adventure trips to Borneo, would never end up with the Burrito Bandito from tiny Linden, Indiana. Real life didn’t work out like that. Cinderella had gotten a deferment—one more night—but that was all.

Earlier, in the shower, that realization had made me pitiful. It wasn’t fair that the first guy in forever who’d made me feel smart and funny and sexy was meant to be the handsome prince in somebody else’s fairy tale. It wasn’t fair that I couldn’t keep him.

But on the other hand, this one night was more—better—than I’d ever expected to have with anyone. And if life had taught me anything, it was to enjoy what you had while you had it.

Tomorrow, I was going to walk away. I wasn’t going to wait for Bash to have to kick me out or do some awkward thing where he promised to call and didn’t. And I sure as heck wasn’t going to ask him for business contacts for my project, either. Two days ago, I wouldn’t have hesitated, just like I wouldn’t have hesitated to blurt out all the details of my project while we were cuddling on the couch and he mentioned ETC. But two days ago, I hadn’t realized that the least remarkable things about Sebastian Dayne were his money and influence. Now I did, so I was going to keep to the boundaries he’d drawn—no business talk, no pitch—and find a different way to get my project funded.

But all of that was a worry for tomorrow. For after the spell wore off and the world stopped being so shiny.

In the meantime…

“Can we have sex?” I asked, pulling back from a brain-melting kiss.

Bash looked at me, then down at our naked bodies, our clothes long abandoned in the living room. He lifted his eyebrow, which was even more compelling up close. “Aren’t we already doing that? I thought—”

I lurched forward and kissed him again for a long moment before pulling back with a gasp. “ Sex , sex. The… sex kind. Of sex.”

I couldn’t bring myself to say anal . In the back of my head, my middle school PE teacher said, If you can’t say it, you shouldn’t be doing it.

I shook my head to rid myself of Mrs. Colling’s voice. “Sex,” I repeated for clarity.

Bash’s smirk was stupidly adorable, and his eyes shined with affectionate amusement. “Say it again? I didn’t quite catch mppfh —”

I tackled him again and kissed his fucking face off through his laughter. When we both had to pull away or suffocate to death, Bash cupped my cheek. “Are you sure? And do you want to be the one who gives this sex or the one who gets this sex?” The smirk was still there.

“Both,” I said honestly. “Both.”

My head was spinning, but I was just so freaking happy I didn’t even care.

Bash’s eyes went from being lit with laughter to dark with desire. “I’d really like to fuck you.”

I sucked in a breath so fast it nearly made me pass out. “Yes.” I also nodded just to make it crystal clear how strong my agreement was.

This time, when he kissed me, it was tender and gentle. “I’ll go slow,” he promised.

I shook my head, breaking the kiss. “Not too slow.”

“You’ve never done this before. I need to prep you—”

I blinked away from his intense eye contact. “I’ve never done this before… with a human ,” I corrected.

His nostrils flared either in amusement or lust. Possibly both since he seemed to keep confusing the two. “Are we talking extraterrestrials or toys?”

“Second one,” I admitted, feeling my face get even hotter. The pulse at Bash’s neck fluttered wildly. I reached out to run my fingertip over it. “A lot. I really like them.”

What happened after that was a cross between being ravaged by a wild beast and being treated like a precious treasure. Bash muttered to himself while prepping me, and I took the opportunity to squeeze the ever-loving fuck out of the base of my dick to keep from spilling into his hair. Just the sight of him between my legs like that, laser focused on me, was such an incredible turn-on I could barely stand it.

“Look away,” I cautioned myself under my breath. “Do not stare at the sexy man and his sinful lips. Do not— ohhhhh, fuck !”

The feel of his fingers moving inside me made me whimper and toss my head on the bed. None of my toys could compare to this warmth and intensity. I needed more.

“Sebastian. Bash . Hurry. Please…”

“Need to make sure you’re prepped.” His voice was rough with need but gentle, too. I could tell he’d rather do anything other than hurt me.

“I’m prepped. I’ve been prepped. In fact, I have spent twenty-four years preparing for— hngmpfh !”

Bash cut off my protest by taking my cock into his mouth and sucking it halfway down his throat, his eyes on mine the entire time. I screamed and arched into him, torn between letting myself come and trying so hard not to.

The scream turned into a whimper as he pulled off quickly and reached for a condom. “Still sure, sweetheart?”

“Super sure,” I breathed.

When Bash began to enter my body, I had to admit I was grateful for the time he’d taken to prep me. He was big—bigger than any of the toys I used regularly—but the burn was oddly satisfying. It was proof I was finally here. Finally experiencing something I’d wanted for so long. I was with someone I trusted not to hurt me, someone I was strongly attracted to.

“You okay?” Bash asked. I could see sweat beading on his forehead as he fought to go slowly.

My knees were bent up by my shoulders, and when Bash turned his face to brush a kiss on the inside of one, I reached out to run my fingers through his hair. “Yeah.”

He continued going slowly until I finally felt comfortable enough to tell him to move. He propped himself up with one arm while his other hand held my face. His thrusts started off gently, but as soon as he brushed against my gland, it lit a spark in both of us.

My dick came roaring back to life, and I let out a sound that expressed just how okay I was with all of this. Bash thrust in and out of me while alternating kisses with curses against my lips. It was hot and fast. My ass stung and my cock throbbed until my senses completely overloaded and shorted out.

“ Fuck ,” I cried, arching into him to take him even deeper. Bash’s fist shuttled over my cock with the perfect amount of pressure and shoved me over the edge into free fall. My entire body sang as the warp stars shot past the edges of my vision. Bash cried out, too, and hearing my name in his broken voice made the whole world contract to the precise size of this bed, then smaller—to every tiny place where his skin touched mine.

After, I didn’t want to move. Even breathing felt overrated. I wanted to stay suspended in that moment with Bash forever.

His lips brushed against my temple. “Careful,” he whispered before pulling out of me.

I sucked in a breath. The loss of him hurt far worse than having him inside me had, and I immediately wanted him back. I wanted another chance to feel him the way I’d felt before, feel the sharpest, edgiest orgasm I’d ever imagined.

“Stay right here,” Bash murmured, moving off me carefully. My eyes roved over his naked body, sweat-damp and flushed. The thick muscles of his pale ass bounced as he walked to the bathroom, and the clench and flex of his thighs as he climbed back onto the bed a moment later was possibly even better.

I closed my eyes with a happy sigh, committing it all to memory. Years from now, when Bash had forgotten all about the time he fucked the Burrito Bandito, I’d still be savoring this moment.

“You have a dopey grin on your face,” he said with a smile in his voice. I opened my eyes to see him return with a wet washcloth. “You look like I feel.”

That was probably the sweetest thing anyone had ever said to me. I winked at him, still too come-drunk to feel shy. “Then you must feel amazing .”

He leaned over and cleaned me off. “Even better than that,” he assured me. He dragged the cloth over my hip, then traced his finger over the damp skin. “Tell me about this?”

I knew without looking down that he was tracing the simple black lines of the tattoo on my hip.

“It’s a caduceus,” I explained. “And at the top of the rod is a…”

“Daisy,” he concluded. “You got this for your sister?”

I nodded. “Funny thing. The caduceus is commonly thought to represent medicine now, but that’s kind of a mistake. For the ancient Greeks, it was a symbol of Hermes, the messenger god, who was also the god of negotiations and commerce and eloquence and…”

“Lies?” Bash said, amused. His fingers playing over my skin made my very satisfied dick want to try for round three.

“Yeah. I mean, that’s not why I got it. The guy at the tattoo shop was the one who told me that,” I confessed sheepishly. “I got it because it symbolizes, uh…”

Shit . Just like before, I wanted to tell Bash about my project—about how I hoped it would change processes in emergency medical response so that people like my sister get more accurate trauma care, and maybe some other brother wouldn’t have to lose his twin. I wanted to share my excitement over everything I’d learned about emergency processes and hospital administration and budget cuts, and to hear Bash’s feedback since I knew he would probably have a thousand intelligent thoughts that would help me refine it.

It felt strange that we’d shared so much, talked about my mortifying toddler pictures, for heaven’s sake, but not discussed this crucial thing that had consumed my life for the past few years. Not talking about it felt almost like another, bigger lie.

But it also seemed wrong to bring that up now, in this bed. Like it was the sort of thing that would steal the light from Bash’s eyes and make him pull away from me.

You only have a little longer , I reminded myself. What’s one more lie ?

“It symbolizes hope,” I said because it was partly true.

“And that’s why you touch it when you’re nervous.” He brushed his thumb over the lines once more, then lowered his head and kissed it so tenderly my breath hitched. When he lifted his head again, his eyes met mine and caught. Held . A tiny frisson of something passed between us but was gone before I could name it.

I froze, my mouth suddenly dry. I had no idea what to say or do. No idea what was happening between us or if Bash felt it, too.

After that one fraught second, Bash cleared his throat, stood up, and returned the washcloth to the bathroom without a word. When he strolled back in, he began rooting around in his open suitcase for his phone charger and plugged it in while giving an exaggerated yawn. “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to sleep like the dead.”

Idiot . You’re starting to believe your own fairy tales, Rowe Prince.

I swallowed down a bubble of disappointment and turned my face into the pillow. “Same. And you promised me we’d have all night. I’m not leaving this bed,” I warned. “If you were planning on sleeping without a leech stuck to your side, you might want to switch bedrooms with me.”

Bash yanked the covers from underneath me, then crawled into bed before settling them over us both. “Fortunately, I have no problem with leeches. They’re fascinating creatures. Remind me sometime to tell you about the time I went kayaking in Patagonia and how you should always listen to the locals, especially when they tell you to put tobacco in your socks.”

Sometime ? There wouldn’t be other times when Bash and I would be together trading stories, unless he actually made that trip to Linden someday. But I wasn’t gonna say that and ruin the mood.

“Ew,” I said with a shudder that made him laugh out loud.

Bash’s laughter was the best sound in the world, and I reveled in it. Another memory from my fairy-tale weekend.

“Now I’m going to have nightmares,” I informed him. “I think you need to clean my brain with a better story.”

Bash gathered me in his arms and pulled me close until my head rested on his chest. His skin smelled familiar to me now, which made me feel relaxed and safe.

“How about I tell you about the time I went to Antarctica?”

“No leeches?”

“Not unless you count a certain minor Danish noble who tried sneaking into my tent to cuddle me for warmth.”

I chuckled and burrowed further into his chest, and with his voice a warm rumble in my ear, I slipped into a delicious, deep sleep.

Which was why, when a phone’s ringtone split the midnight silence in the room a few hours later, I had no idea where the hell I was or whose hairy chest I was lying on.