Paradise Found: Cain (Paradise #2)(68)

“I like having you here. In fact, I think you belong here, but not like this,” I added. “I don’t want you here because of a threat or because you feel you have no other place to go. I want you to want to be here.”

Her lack of response told me everything. She smiled weakly at me, and I took the expression on her face as a dismissal. I nodded “good night” and exited the room. My temper wanted me to slam the door. My rationale told me to act like her rejection meant nothing to me. My heart clenched with an ache I’d never felt before.

She rustled around in the room, and I assumed she was unpacking her things. There was a private bath connected to the space, and I heard water running, then the soft click of a light turning off. I lay on my bed, stone still, taking in every sound of her movement across the hall. My hands were clasped over my chest like a dead man in a casket. I might have been holding my breath. I didn’t want to miss a step she took or a sigh she made. After long minutes of silence, I couldn’t take it. I went to check on her.

“Sofie,” I spoke quietly into the darkened room.

Her body angled toward the window, and she twisted to look at me over her shoulder. We didn’t need to speak. She slid over in the bed and pulled back the duvet in invitation. I stripped my jeans and my shirt before slipping in behind her. My body still pulsed with a need to be closer, but I’d take what she gave me. My arm wrapped over her waist, and she settled into the crook of my body with her back against my chest. I breathed in the scent of her hair, the warmth of skin fresh from a shower, and prayed for the strength to resist devouring my sweet temptation.





I couldn’t sleep with him holding me. As exhausted as I was, my body wasn’t getting the memo to rest. He just felt so good against me. His broad chest hovered over my back. His heavy arm wrapped around my waist. His large hand mere millimeters under my breast. My nipples were erect. My core: a marching band of rhythm. I needed his touch, yet it seemed like that would be too much.

“Sofie,” he muttered into my neck after several minutes passed. “Let it go. You’re safe here. I got you.”

I nodded in the dark, but what kept me awake wasn’t what he thought. It was him, not his father, who filled my mind. Desire surged throughout my body. I fought myself as my hips ached to thrust back and brush against a part of him I’d seen him struggle with throughout the evening. He wanted me, I was certain. But if I was a means to an end, my heart couldn’t handle it. I didn’t want to be the tool he used to taunt his father. Atom threatened me, and Cain was going to retaliate. He took pride in my defiance of his father, but it wasn’t me he wanted. Malinda had served a purpose for him. Perhaps, I was going to serve one, too. That wasn’t settling well for me.

His hand slowly caressed up my arm to my shoulder, in that tender touch he used the night before. His fingers worked magic in many ways but massage was not one I’d experienced before. His lips softly brushed my shoulder and the moan-sigh combination escaped me before I could capture it.

“You like that?” he groaned below my ear, before his nose tickled the delicate skin. I couldn’t speak. My tongue was swollen; my mouth dry. Parched. Forty days and forty nights without him, maybe more at this point. I needed to be restored. I needed a sip to sustain me, like that kiss, which was only a light drizzle of rain to a sun-dried desert.

I twisted enough that his hand skidded over my collarbone and around my throat. His lips followed the path, trailing kisses up my jaw. Hesitantly, his mouth covered mine. I remembered this kiss. He’d given it to me on the day after our first night together. A kiss that asked, can I have another taste? Will one more be enough? It wouldn’t be for me. He’d be a delicacy I would crave all my life.

As our mouths moved in unison, and the kiss took up a dance of its own, I followed his lead like the curious woman that I was. That kiss was a promise. It was encouragement that what I wanted would be fulfilled. I could have what I asked. I could learn what I wanted to know. He would provide it for me, if I gave into him. Cain had never been rough with me, and I didn’t expect things to go that way now. He was a guiding hand, pulling me closer to what I desired, teasing me with tongue and lips that spoke volumes without words. He drew me even closer to what I longed to know: did he love me?

A leg slipped between my thighs, and a gentle press against the pulse between them proved he wanted something from me. The hard length of him was prodding against my hip as half his body covered mine.

“This isn’t going to end well,” I said softly, as I tried to break the attraction of those promising lips.

“This isn’t going to end,” he assured me, before lips drew back to mine, magnetized by the force of being together. His thigh pressed higher, harder, and my body began to dance against his. Hips rolled, forcing the friction my core craved.

He pulled back to skim my body with his hand, while I undulated against him. I closed my eyes and slipped my arm over my face. His attention to me was too much.

“Why did you tell him no? Why did you tell him you wouldn’t divorce me?” he asked softly, so tenderly, so unlike him.

“Because I love you,” I whispered. The words tumbled out of nowhere.

He froze over me. Mid-roll, not quite a full press, he paused. One hand was already braced on the side of me, pushing upward. He was about to tease me one final time with his lower body, but he pulled back completely.