RainaBy the time we made it back to his place, I was ready to strip out of my clothes all by myself. But luckily, I didn’t have to bother with making that choice myself.“Fuck, you’re so beautiful,” he growled into my ear as he kissed me in the car, his hand tucked behind my head and his mouth starving for me.I knew that he had been thinking about this all night long, and it was such a turn-on knowing that he had been waiting all this time just to get his hands on me. I loved the thought of him running through this in his head over and over again, until he could hardly take it any longer, until he was practically acting out in public to force a reaction from me.Being wanted this much was a spell, a treat, a charm, one that I was sure I was never going to grow tired of.He pulled me into the house and undressed me like he couldn’t wait to see me. The dress was cast off in the hallway, and he scooped me into his arms and carried me up the stairs to the bedroom, tossing me down on the
RainaI felt his head pushing me open, and then his whole length sliding up and into me, filling me, just the way I needed.“Ah,” he groaned, and I could feel the vibration of the noise against my neck, where he had pressed his mouth like he was trying to taste the pulse of my blood beneath my skin. I knew just how he felt.It was as though I couldn’t get enough of him. I wanted to connect with him in a way I had never connected with anyone before in my life.Did he know that? Could he feel it too? When he touched me, did he feel that same raging rise of bloodlust that made everything else fall away completely?He thrust deep inside of me, driving himself all the way up to the hilt into my pussy, and I groaned and grasped hold of his back and lost myself to the way that it felt, to the way that it made me feel. I knew that it was a cliché, but it was true—being with him like this made me feel like a woman, a full-grown woman, not just a girl walking around in this adult body and hopin
HarryI came to the next morning, and I reached over to her side of the bed, intent on pulling her in close to me so that I could feel the soft, warm comfort of her body right next to mine first thing in the morning. But to my surprise, I found the bed empty.I opened my eyes and looked around to try and find out where Raina had gone. I didn’t like the idea of having her so far from me, even if she had just gone to the bathroom. Sitting up in bed, I looked around, trying to work out where the heck she had gotten to.And then I heard her moving around downstairs, and I smiled and let myself sink back into the pillow for a moment. Of course. She had just gone to get us something to eat.Damn, she was seriously the perfect woman. I could never have asked for someone better, brighter, more brilliant than she was. Though in all honesty, after what we had gotten up to the night before, I would have been more than happy feasting on her for breakfast instead.I dragged my ass out of bed and h
HarryIt wasn’t Yara. I barely said a word as I listened to George on the other end of the line. He was speaking quickly and sounded upset, as though he could hardly believe what he was telling me. In truth, I couldn’t believe it, either. Not at first. But as he kept going, it became clear to me that this was more than just a joke. This was real.This was real. “Harry, are you there?” George asked when he was done.I was standing there, frozen to the spot in the middle of the hallway. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t say anything to him.“I have to...” I managed to mutter at last, and I hung up the phone, as though that would somehow eclipse the reality of what he had just said to me.But it didn’t. It had still happened, just as much as it ever had. I wanted to bury my head in my hands and yell, but I had to speak to her. She had to know. I couldn’t just walk back in there and pretend like none of this had happened, not when my very world had shifted right out from underneath me.I walk
HarryI slumped into the seat as soon as I had dropped Winnie off at school. The last few days had been unfairly hard, and I was still trying to wrap my head around the reality of everything that I had just found out.Raina had been there when the news had broken, and she had been nothing but good with me—or at least, that was what she had tried to do anyway. I could tell that she was as flabbergasted as I was, and I could hardly blame her. I couldn’t believe what I was dealing with.Just when everything had been going the way it was meant to, just when I had been allowing myself to really love someone again, this had come busting in to make sure that I didn’t get anything close to comfortable.“You’ll need time,” Raina told me, her voice as steady as it could be given the revelation that we’d just had dropped on the both of us. “I’m not going to push you. Don’t worry. I understand. You need to explain this to Winnie and everything.”Even though she was saying all the right things, I
HarryWinston Roper, the lawyer we were meeting with that day, was waiting by the door when we walked in. He extended his hand toward me, and I took it. I wasn’t sure what I had been expecting—some smarmy, obviously evil cartoon lawyer type with dollar signs pulsing in his eyes maybe—but this guy seemed pretty standard issue, and I tried my best not to let my attitude get in the way.“I’m glad that you could make it,” Winston told us as we entered his small office. It wasn’t much, but it was clear he took great pride in it.“My client, Allison Bachman, was unable to attend this meeting due to personal matters,” he explained calmly. “But she offers her apologies and her gratefulness that you were willing to meet with me today.”“Yes, yes,” Michael agreed, waving his hand. “Can we get to the point of this, please? I want to hear exactly what we’re doing here and exactly what Ms. Bachman expects out of getting in touch with my client again.”I was glad that I had Michael there to advocat
RainaI made it into work about ten seconds before I would have become officially late, and I stumbled through the door just in time. I felt like I was the living dead that morning, and there was a damn good reason for that.I had lain awake all night the night before, tossing and turning and trying to make the slightest bit of sense of any of it. It hadn’t worked so well.I had slept through coffee with Reed. I had begged off, claiming illness, because the thought of coming out and telling him that the man I had fallen in love with had just turned up with a baby that he claimed he didn’t know about? Fuck that.I was just about to dive into my work for the day when there came a knock at the door. I looked up, and Rita was standing there, her head cocked to one side, eyeing me like she could tell there was something up.“Hey,” I greeted her, hoping that the smile I swiftly plastered on my face was enough to convince her that I was doing just fine.“Hey,” she replied. “You all right? Yo
RainaI sat back in my seat. I supposed I hadn’t even really thought about anything like that. I had been too much in shock to really consider anything beyond my own head right now, and frankly, all that was in there was the intense fear that I was about to get booted out of his life.But perhaps Harry was just as worried about the same happening with me. Maybe he thought that I was out of there, leaving nothing behind but a cartoon dust cloud where I had been standing.I had been so shocked that I hadn’t considered that he might need me to come through for him now—that he might need me to tell him, without a doubt, that I still wanted to be close to him. That I couldn’t imagine being apart from him, even now, even with the weight of all of this piling down on us both.“You should drop him a message,” she suggested. “If you still think you want to deal with any of this, that is. I know it must be heavy, but if you like this guy, if you really like him—”“I love him,” I replied without
HarryI hadn’t known until I’d met Raina how much I was hiding from, but now that I could see it, it made my heart ache to think about everything that I had been missing. I thought I had been protecting myself, but in reality, it had just been isolation.Yara had seen that. I was pretty sure, in fact, that she had seen that before I had. I had been ducking and diving from the truth, and she had seen through me, seen me for what I was, seen all the pain I had been carrying with me all this time. And that was why she had set me up on a date.It was crazy, really, thinking that all of this had started with something that I had been so averse to in the first place. I had pushed back against the very idea of going on that date, sure that it was just going to end with me making a fool of myself and looking like an idiot in the process.Of course, if I had known where all of this was going to lead me, I would have gone back in time and told myself to go with it, that it was going to be bette
Harry“All right, all right, if I could borrow your attention for a moment.” I stood up from the chair I had been sitting on and waved a hand in the air so that I could draw the attention of my staff and friends around me.Yara had done a hell of a job putting all of this together. It had only been a couple of weeks ago that I had brought up the idea of the party to her, and she had sprung into full-force action at once, running off this way and that to make sure everything got dealt with as best she could manage it.She told me she was just happy to finally have some kind of party she could organize—and said I could do with throwing a few more like it, actually, though I decided it was for the best that I ignored that little comment. I had been so busy these last few months, I couldn’t imagine finding any more time in my packed-out schedule for fun little gatherings like this.It had helped, of course, that George had been willing to put up his house and grounds to hold the party. We
RainaHe wrapped his arms around me and pushed into me deep, filling me all the way up to the hilt, taking me like there was nothing in the world he would rather have been doing in that moment. I sank my nails into his back and let my body sink into the sheets below me, the softness absorbing me, at odds with his hardness.He didn’t hold back. He didn’t seem to see a need to, and I was grateful for it. After everything that had been happening lately, I felt like I needed this connection with him to remind myself where this all came from.Not that he was so good in bed that I would have gone through anything for him—though, that was a part of it—but it was a raw thing that existed between just us. Nobody could take it away from us, no matter how much they might have wanted to. This was ours and only ours, and we had made it together, and that meant nothing could change it.I could already feel myself getting close. It was the feel of his breath on my neck that did it for me, his essent
RainaI had no idea why he was so eager for me to cancel on Reed that morning, but as soon as I had heard the tone in his voice, I’d known that it wasn’t up for debate. Harry had a damn good reason to want to see me, and I certainly wasn’t going to argue with it.As soon as he opened the door to his place, I knew what was running through his head. I grinned as he pulled me into his arms and kissed me deeply, like he was making the very most of the fact that I was here.“Thanks for coming,” he murmured, and he pushed the door shut behind me.“You going to make it worth my while?” I replied playfully.He scooped me off the ground and into his arms. I burst out laughing and hung on to him as he carried me up the stairs and toward the bedroom.He tossed me down on the bed, and it didn’t take long before our clothes went flying. I was wearing the scrubs that I would have to take into the office soon enough, so hardly my sexiest look, but he didn’t seem to care much.He stripped me off like
Harry“I was thinking more along the lines of a party than a bonus,” I replied to Yara. “Dogs allowed, of course.”“Well, when you put it like that…” She laughed. “Where were you thinking?”I scanned my brain for a moment and then landed on the perfect place.“Let me get in touch with George,” I replied. “I bet he’d love to have an excuse to do up his mansion.”“You really think he’d be willing to hand all that over for a company party?” she asked.I nodded. “You’d be surprised at how mellow he can be,” I replied. “Besides, think of all the women he’ll get to flirt with. It’ll be a dream come true for him.”“I guess so,” she agreed, shaking her head fondly at the thought. “You give him a call, and I’ll see what else I can pull in, all right? But I’m sure everyone would appreciate the chance to have some fun. Especially if our dogs are allowed to be there too.”I texted George as soon as she was gone, and he replied with an almost instant affirmation that promised me use of the house w
HarryI reached under the table and patted Tink where he was asleep at my feet. He might not have known it, but he was the reason that all of this weekend had been such a huge success.Without him, I would never have come across the shelter, and without that, I wouldn’t have been able to put together the awesome event that we had thrown the day before. It had been hectic as hell, but totally worth it, and I was proud to say that we had helped find homes for more than seventy animals over the course of the day.By the time it was over, Winnie was dead asleep in the back of the car with Tink, and George had to be dragged away from Nico, who he just couldn’t get enough of. But the day had been a wild success, and I knew that it wouldn’t be the only one that we had with the shelter.But for now, I was back at work, and I had to focus on catching up on everything that I had missed the last few weeks. Fuck, it had been so busy, I had hardly had time to remember that I so much as had a job.
Raina“Thank you for getting all of this set up,” I told Harry. “You have no idea how much this is going to help get people to start taking notice of the shelter.”“Well, it’s what you deserve,” he replied. “You’ve worked so hard here for so long. I wanted to do what I could to make it easier on you.”I kissed him again. “You know, you’re way sweeter than you have any right to be,” I murmured.He grinned. “Is that an insult or a compliment? I can’t tell.”“You decide,” I replied, and it was right then that I saw Rita and her son coming through the door. She had promised to put in an appearance, and she beamed as soon as she saw me.“Oh, how’s my favorite baby?” I greeted him with a coo, and I came over to hold him in my arms for just a moment.Rita handed him over to me at once, apparently glad to have a chance to put him down, if only for a moment. “Oh my goodness, I think I’m in a lot of danger being here,” she remarked as Marjorie emerged from the back room with a couple of lively
Raina“All right, do you have all the forms ready?” I asked Marjorie as the two of us practically sprinted around the shelter, trying to get everything ready for the adopt-a-thon that was meant to be happening today.She nodded. “I think so,” she replied, but she was clearly nervous.I put my hand on her shoulder. “Hey,” I soothed her. “Everything’s going to be fine. Everyone who’s coming today has already been vetted, you remember? So anyone who goes home with a pet, they’re going to be a good home for them.”“I know that,” Marjorie said. “I’m just... I don’t know if I’m ready to say goodbye to all these little guys after all this time.”“Don’t get all misty on me now,” I warned her. “We have to make space for other animals, remember? I want to make sure that we get as many of these guys off to new homes as we can. Think how good it’ll be to have the space so that you don’t have to worry about turning down anyone who needs a home, right?”“Right,” she agreed, and she nodded and tappe
Harry“I had my lawyer draw up these agreements,” she explained.Michael lifted his head from the papers that he had been going over. He nodded, looking satisfied with what he had seen.“Everything seems like it’s in order to me,” he remarked. “Harry, if you want to take a little more time to go over these and think about the decision, we can hang on to them for you—”“No, I’m ready,” I replied. I was dead certain. Nothing was going to change my mind. Nothing at all. I was happier than I’d been in such a long time. We had the house, I had Raina, and now, it looked like I was going to have my precious, perfect son on top of all of it. I couldn’t have asked for anything more. Not one little thing.“Thank you for this, Allison,” I said. “Thank you for trusting me with him.”“Thank you for letting us into your life after all this time,” she replied. “I know it’s more than I deserve. I know you’re being kinder than you should ever be with me—”“You never have to think like that,” I told he