Bachelor Untamed - Brenda Jackson [65]
He would not dwell on what he’d been doing for the past three weeks, the summer fling he thoroughly enjoyed. Why would he? It had been nothing more than an affair, and affairs were insignificant. After one ended, you rested up, gave yourself breathing room and prepared for the next one. Life moved on.
Then why did he suddenly feel like his was standing still?
Why did the thought of leaving here, not seeing Ellie, not spending time with her, not making love to her, leave an emptiness in his stomach, a vacant spot in his chest surrounding his heart?
An unfamiliar feeling stirred in his gut, and he tried shoving it away. Instead, it moved to his shoulder blades and then to the lower part of his back. Agonized, he closed his eyes, and the only image that could form behind his closed eyelids was Ellie. He saw her as she’d looked that night she had stood at her window, stripping for him, giving him her decision to have an affair with him in a style that even now left him breathless.
And then Ellie as she had looked later when he had entered her, felt her tightness squeeze him, and her wetness surround him, flesh-to-flesh, skin-to-skin.
He saw too the Ellie who had spent the past three weeks with him, making him enjoy a woman’s company in a way he’d never done before. Sharing breakfast with her, going fishing with her, going skinny-dipping with her, watching movies till dawn with her, making impromptu love to her, anytime and anyplace—tasting her with a hunger and need that he hadn’t experienced with any woman. And having unprotected sex with her and enjoying shooting his seed into her, while actually imagining the baby they could be making together.
He thought of Ellie, and those times she held him within her body, clenched him with a need that could make him come. How she would stroke him, take him into her mouth and love him that way, and how he would doze off to sleep, wanting her near him, with his hands between her legs to keep her there. Before now he refused to believe there was a difference in passion. Now he knew there was lovemaking passion and sex passion. The passion that flowed through his body whenever he was inside of Ellie was lovemaking passion.
He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling again, as his heart began to pound deep in his chest and every bone in his body began to quiver. There could be only one reason for him feeling as he did. One reason he needed to finally face up to.
He then recalled Donovan’s words of just a few days ago: “If you ever meet the woman who is wearing your name somewhere on her heart—you will know.”
He knew. He knew at that very moment that it was Ellie’s name scrawled on his heart. Damn. He eased out of bed, thinking he needed a beer, then deciding a shot of whiskey—preferably Jack Daniel’s—would do better. How had he allowed himself to fall in love, after what his mother had done to his father? Was he a glutton for the same type of experience?
He knew that the only thing he was a glutton for was Ellie. She was not like his mother. He would be able to put all his love and trust in her and not be betrayed.
He rubbed his hand over his face. His shower could wait. He needed to see Ellie, and he needed to see her now.
Ellie released a long sigh and wondered why she had called Darcy, when she knew what her best friend would say. “I hear what you’re saying, Darcy, but a part of me feels I should come clean and tell Uriel the truth. And if you think it won’t matter, then fine. I just don’t want him to think these past three weeks meant nothing to me.”
“Okay, El, if you think that’s what you should do, then fine, do it. But if he’s like most men, all that matters with an affair is the outcome, and the outcome was three weeks in his bed. I doubt he would have given that up for anything.”
“Maybe not, Darcy, but