The Interview (The Whittingtons, #1)

by Donna Alam

make her beg for it, beg for me. And then? I suppose we’ll see what truth comes out. For both of us. We’ll see what the future holds, because the way I feel right now, fuck six months. Sixty years won’t give me my fill.

But that’s not all I feel. I won’t say love is a stranger to me because I’ve felt love and I have love for my family. But the romantic kind of love? I’m not entirely sure what that is. And while I won’t say I’m in love now, whatever this is, its will is stronger than my own.

She whimpers, the anticipation of her falling like a tiny explosion of delight deep in my chest. Her honied whispers turn to cries, her knees locking as the waves of her orgasm begin to pull her under. I don’t let up because I can’t touch enough, kiss enough, be enough. I want to taste every inch of her silky skin. Make her see that she was made for me.

Shit. Shit. Oh shit! I lean back on my heels, the thoughts in my head running free now, unable to be ignored. I love her. I love her, and I’m so screwed. What the fuck am I going to do?

“I fucking love—” My heart feels like it’s about to burst, and not just because of the blow job of the year. The way she trusts me. The way she bends. This shit she’s doing

so we can pretend. It’s her—it’s all her. We’re fighting the inevitable, can’t she see that? When will she realise?

“Yes, no. All of it. Whit, you make me want to do things I’ve never even thought of. You turn me on so much. I’m not just aroused with you, but I’m safe. I know I can do or say what I think and feel, and—” He’d pressed his finger to my lips. “Don’t date anyone else,” he’d said softly. “Just be with me. I promise not to fall in love with you.” I fell. That was all it took.

I give in. I surrender to this thing that’s bigger than me. That’s bigger than him. But that doesn’t mean I have to admit to it. As far as Whit is concerned, I’m just making up for lost time. He doesn’t need to know that I’m in love with him. What would that knowledge even do? It might frighten him off. Or worse, it might not.

“It was a rhetorical question, my love. I know you’re always so ready for me. Slide your fingers farther down. Feel how soft you are. How wet. Slide them inside, Amelia. Feel yourself pulse around them.”

On a technicality only. I’d already fallen for her at the point I’d said that. Fallen hook, line, and painful sinker. I can’t think what comes after this. How things will work out beyond her six-month mark. I only know that I have to be with her—to try to make her see there is a chance for us. That love is worthy of that chance. The details, the who will live where and how we’ll navigate the obstacles, can come later.

I give a strangled moan that sounds like her name as heat jets from my cock. It’s a good thing my brain and mouth are uncoordinated as I pitch forward and almost collapse on top of her because all I can think is mine. She’s mine. All mine. She just doesn’t know it.

I love you. I think I’ve always loved you. I think I will always love you.

“I’m not like this with everyone, you know. Women, I mean.” I don’t know how to answer that, selecting and abandoning responses before he speaks again. “I’m not short of partners, but I’ve never met anyone who I want to spend this much time with outside of the bedroom.”

“Mimi,” I say with a chuckle, “hell would freeze over before I could ever hate you.”

With a groan, I suck harder, swirling the hardened nub with my tongue. In my hands, she feels so good. All soft skin and womanly curves, but it’s more than that. I want her with a strength that frightens me. I want to keep her, bind her to me. I want to make her happy. Be her mornings and her evenings. Her friend and her lover, her shield and her confidant. I love her so much I want to keep her forever.

“Fuck, darling. I’ve longed to hear you say that.” My raspy voice brims with all the things that I can’t yet say. How I want her to be by my side always, how my hands can’t touch enough, how my heart can’t love enough as I clasp and knead her body, pulling her closer. I slide my hand to her thigh and lift it to my hip, my cock aching and as hard as a pole between us.

“This,” I say, laying my palm over her heart. “Your heart is mine, Amelia. I know you don’t want to admit it, but I see it in your eyes every time you look at me.”

“I have your heart,” I whisper, pouring it into my words. “I have your heart, and you have mine.” Lifting her thigh, I drive my cock inside her. Her body bows beneath me, shuddering as I withdraw. Crying out as, with my next thrust, I grind against her.

“Give me this chance, darling. I will love you fiercely. Constantly. Inventively.”

“I will give you more love than you’ll ever need. I will worship you eternally.” I begin to thrust into her again and again when she chokes back a strangled cry, her body bowing from the bed. As her orgasm hits, she takes my arse in her hands, pressing me to her as she cries out her love. Cries out my name.

How will I ever survive this? Wanting Whit. Will it ever go away? I don’t think so because haven’t I always loved him? Loved him without realizing, without him knowing what it really meant. It’s like he knows me better than I know myself. My love for him feels clean and untouched by worry and fear. By anxiety. It feels like that stuff is all separate, like it can’t touch me. I don’t know how he does it. I don’t know how he makes me feel so free because most of the time, I’m just pretending. Faking it until I make it. Going through the motions until I have to face the inevitable.

That’s why I lied. Why I said I wasn’t in love with you. Because I am. I really do love you. I love you so much, but I still need to let you go.

I already have, I want to say as I watch him walk away with my love.

Love Whit but don’t tell him. Maybe I’ve always loved him, and have just managed not to admit it. Don’t spoil it, Mimi. He deserves someone better.

“I am an arsehole because I couldn’t see the love of a good woman, though it was parked on the end of my nose.”

“There’s this girl I knew, knock-kneed and pigtailed but so sweet. Her brother asked me to look after her, but I didn’t do it well. So when she turned up on my doorstep, I thought I’d go to hell.”

“She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Though her beauty was the least of her because her heart is generous and her laughter fair, and please don’t get me started on her golden hair.”

“The worst of it is, she doesn’t see herself as others do. But what good people in the world do?” He takes a deep breath as though about to shout, yet his next words leave his mouth so softly. “I really don’t care about matters of maternity because, Amelia Valente, you are the torrid love affair I want to be part of for eternity.”

Tipping onto my toes, I press my hand to his cheek and my lips to his ear. “Don’t give up your day job, Daddy,” I whisper. And then I kiss him.

“The benefits of having a nubile wife,” he asserts smuttily. “You’re such a cliché, marrying your secretary.”

“Please, I need you to fuck me.”