Her eyes well up with tears as she takes a deep, steadying breath. “I don’t want to.”
“Why?”
“Because…I just want to make you happy.”
It hurts to swallow down the lump in my throat. “I’m not your Sir right now. Don’t try to please me, Charlotte. Just be honest.”
She stands up and walks over to me, stopping only a foot away. After another deep breath, she squares her shoulders, and I can’t help but admire her from this angle. The hard-headed, tough, beautiful girl who refuses to believe she’s absolutely perfect.
“You think letting Beau find out about us would make you a bad father, but, Emerson, you’re already sleeping with me. You’ve already done it, but it doesn’t make you a bad father. It makes you human. Neither of us expected this to happen, but it did. And it’s a lot more serious than either of us expected.
“You think you’re a bad father for wanting me but you’re not. You’re actually good to a fault, because you’re willing to forfeit your own happiness to spare your son’s hurt feelings, but you need to let him deal with the hard stuff on his own. He will get over it, but…I don’t know if I ever will.”
“Don’t say that. Of course you will.” My raw, aching heart claws at some sort of relief to offer her. “You’re only twenty-one, Charlotte.”
“I won’t,” she argues, those threatening tears finally spilling over. This is two nights in a row I’ve seen her cry, and I can’t stand it. My arms find her waist, pulling her close as if my touch alone could fix any of these problems.
“I’m forty, baby,” I murmur gently into her hair. “You have no future with me.”
“I don’t care how old you are. It doesn’t matter to me.” She’s sobbing in earnest against my chest now. That nagging anxiety in my gut from before has turned into a gaping, bleeding wound, but it’s better this way. Get the feelings out. No secrets. And we’ll move past them.
I pull her face up so she can see my eyes. “You understand it’s not because I don’t want you. You know that, right?”
“Then tell me you want me,” she cries.
“I want you. Of course, I want you.”
She reaches up, finding my lips for a desperate kiss, and I know I shouldn’t, but I kiss her back. I think we’ve established that I do not make wise decisions where this girl is involved, and I don’t want to.
She wraps her arms around my neck and I pull her up by the thighs, letting her wrap her legs around me. I’m done talking. All we’ve established is that we both can’t have what we want, but at least we can have this. In this house, with no one else around, there’s only us. Her and me and this unexplainable connection. You’re lucky enough to have something like this once in a lifetime, so if this brief, heated phase of our lives is all I’m going to get, then I’m going to squeeze every last drop out of it.
I carry her over to the couch and drop her onto the cushions.
“I need you,” she cries, clawing at my shirt. Sitting up, I pull it off quickly and work on my pants, tearing them off while she squirms out of hers. Once we’re naked, I drape my body over hers, ravaging her precious, pale skin with my mouth, nibbling and kissing every square inch. When I reach the apex of her thighs, she writhes against me, moaning while she pinches her nipples.
It’s not enough. Pulling my mouth away from her perfect pink folds, I grab her by the waist and flip us, so I’m lying down and she’s on top. Then, I grab her by the back of the neck, pulling her in for a bruising kiss, and whisper, “I want you on my face.”
Her eyes widen, and I see her about to protest, but I don’t give her a chance. Hoisting her up by the hips, I position her over my face and pull her down until I have her pussy in my mouth.
She cries out in delight as my tongue slides deep inside her. And I gaze up at her as she finds her pleasure, grinding herself against my lips.
Staring up at her, consuming her while feeling entirely consumed by her, I wonder briefly if this makes me a monster. Corrupting this perfect, young woman, making her mine and ruining her, so she can never feel this way about another man. But I don’t care. If I’m a monster, I’m a monster. I can live with that.
She grinds harder against me, giving up on the hovering and finally settling her weight down on my mouth. I suck eagerly at her clit, and she screams, her knuckles turning white as she grips the couch.
“Oh my God, Emerson. Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop.”