Page 23 of In Love with My Secret Husband

His name again. She couldn't stop saying it. It was the only word she had, the only word that mattered, and every time she said it, she felt him react. A tightening of his hands. A roughening of his breath. Like her voice was doing something to him that his body couldn't hide.

He kissed the curve of her ribs. Slowly. Deliberately. His hands spread across her waist, holding her still, and his mouth continued its path downward. The soft skin below her navel, where her body jerked and a gasp tore out of her.

Her hand flew to his hair. Gripped. Pulled him back up.

"Please..."

He came back up, his body covering hers, and when his mouth found hers again, the kiss was deeper now, hungrier, his control starting to slip. She could feel it in the way his hands grippedher hips, in the roughness of his breathing, in the way his jaw clenched when she arched against him.

When he finally settled over her, she didn't close her eyes.

Not this time.

She watched him. And he watched her. And the look on his face...

Like she was the only thing in his world that had ever mattered.

He moved, and her back arched off the bed, and a sound came out of her that wasn't a word. His forehead pressed against hers. His breathing shattered. Her nails dug into his shoulders and she held on, held on to this man who had broken her heart and was putting it back together with his hands and his mouth and the weight of his body against hers.

He moved again. Deeper. Slower. And she gasped his name against his throat, barely, like a secret even from herself. His grip tightened. His hips pressed against hers, and the rhythm between them built, slow and devastating, until her entire body was trembling.

"Troy..."

"I know." His voice was rough. Wrecked. "I know, Laina."

His mouth found the spot below her ear. His hand slid down her thigh, pulling her closer, changing the angle, and the sound she made—

It shattered something between them.

His control broke. She felt it like a physical thing, the snap of restraint giving way, and his body moved against hers with anurgency that stole what was left of her breath. Her legs tightened around him. Her fingers dug into his back. And she could feel it building, feel it gathering at the base of her spine, feel the wave rising—

She came apart with her eyes open and his name on her lips. Said once. Said clearly. And the tears that fell weren't from grief.

He followed her with a groan that he buried against her neck, his whole body shuddering, his arms tightening around her like he was holding on to something he'd almost lost.

And after...

They were in their bedroom. The one they had once shared. And he was looming over her, touching her cheek with the backs of his fingers, and his eyes...

They were bright. And wrecked. And absolutely certain.

"I love you, Laina."

Her heart stopped.

"I'm sorry for all the years I never put you first. You have always been everything to me, but I made you feel the opposite. Come back to me. Please. Give me the chance to be the husband—"

"I can't," she choked out in a sob.

He whitened.

"I'm sorry, Troy, but Ican't..."

And she was already crying as she pulled the sheet up to her chest, already crying as she reached for his phone on the nightstand, and she just had to type her name—

Laina Barrymore.

All the videos that came up were from the ambush interview. The one outside her school, on the day everything had gone wrong. The day she had lost her mind.