Page 63 of Say it Ain’t So

I slid in slow, gaze locked on her, on the way her eyes rolled back in sheer pleasure and her mouth dropped open and her jaw trembled. When I could go no further, I stopped, grinning down at her.

She blinked to clear her vision, blinked again as she tried to focus on me. Then she asked in a needy whisper, “Why’d you stop?”

“Not gonna fuck you, gorgeous.”

“What?!”

I slid out of her tight clutch, then pushed my way back in. “Not gonna fuck you, baby. I’m going to make love to you.”

Because I love you.

I bit the words back, biting my tongue to keep them from falling free, especially when Joss’s eyes got all soft and watery. She kissed me again, her lips pursed until I thrust and her mouth fell open, and I licked inside at the same pace as I filled her with my cock.

“Gonna make you feel like a queen,” I whispered as I gathered her in my arms. And when I swirled my hips, dipping deep inside of her, I told her, “Gonna give you everything that you want.”

“I only want you.”

Her words wrecked me, because I couldn’t believe them. I wouldn’t believe anyone who told me that, regardless of whether they’d walked out on me before.

I couldn’t believe what I’d never found to be true.

That anyone would want me around long enough to love me.

I cast those thoughts aside, giving Joss all I could give while trying not to break in two.

I loved her. There was no doubt in my mind. Not as her orgasm took her, not as mine spilled from me in hot spurts that left me weak and sated and more needy than I’d ever been. Not as she curled herself around me, panting breaths slowing as she gripped me tight like she thought I’d leave.

Leaving wasn’t an option. My heart wouldn’t have let me back then, and it certainly wouldn’t let me now.

If only there was a way to ensure she’d stay. That I’d never wake up to an empty bed again. That she’d love me the way I loved her.

If only she would stay.

19

RYLAN

I was dreaming. I had to be. I was back in Vegas, an alarm waking me from a dead sleep, and Joss was gone. Our date had ended the same way as our marriage—with her disappearing from my life. The alarm sounded again—the strangest alarm I’d ever heard—and I jolted awake. Sunlight shone in through the single window with purple curtains, and I blinked hard, trying to chase away the dream. But chase it where?

It took me a moment of blinking and staring at that purple curtain before reality came back to me.

Joss’s apartment. Joss’s bedroom.

Joss’s body curled around me, cradling me as I went against everything I told myself for our date and fell right back under her spell.

And she was gone. Wasn’t she?

No. No, that was the dream. I turned my head. Found a toned and tanned leg stretched out across the bed next to me.

A leg attached to the woman I promised myself I wouldn’t sleep with last night.

I simultaneously wanted to cringe away at what I’d done and jump for joy because she hadn’t left me. This wasn’t three years ago, when I woke up in Vegas alone.

Although…

This was her apartment. Kinda hard to leave me when I was sleeping in her bed.

Shifting my body, I tilted my head up and found Joss sitting against her headboard. She had her other leg pulled up, her fingertip in her mouth as she watched something on her tablet. I reached my hand out and covered her bare thigh. Joss jumped, her attention snapping to me before a wide smile stretched across her face.