Reilly had abandoned the couch in favor of a spot closer to the fireplace. Lucky bastard was snoring peacefully, out for the count. I was restless, tossing on the couch until I’d finally given up altogether. I’d climbed up the stairs half a dozen times, only to turn and head right back down. For a while, I could hear the floorboards creaking over my head and I knew she was still awake. Ember had always paced the floor when she couldn’t sleep, or when she was worried… Every instinct in me demanded that I go to her, that it wasn’t right for us to be apart. It had never been right, especially tonight, with so much still unsaid… and undone, between us. Once I’d even had my hand on the doorknob… but her footsteps had finally stopped and I didn’t have the heart to risk waking her.

So instead I walked through the old house, letting memories flood over me. The kitchen was where we had met for the first time…

Randy and I had just graduated college. My own parents had been in Switzerland, and without the O’Briens’ invitation, I would have been on my own in a house full of servants for the holidays. That night was the night I discovered the difference between a home and family, and a mansion with absentee parents. The old kitchen had been warmed by the glow of the cookstove. It was like the heart of the whole house, the warm and comforting center of a home filled with love and devotion. The O’Briens had their problems, like any family, but it seemed like they could overcome anything. Even when they argued… and even though Sarah lived her life on a tenterhook, at the heart of it all, they were always family. You could see it in their eyes… when they looked at each other.

Ember had been all of twelve, small for her age; a skinny kid with knees like a colt. I could still see the way she had looked up at me with her huge, doe eyes. Randy and I had roomed together at school and were as close as any two real brothers could be. And the second I’d taken Ember’s little hand in mine, I’d adopted her as the kid sister I never had. The three of us had spent almost every holiday together after that one, along with plenty of time in between. Though I’d been eight years older, already a grown man, it felt like those were the years I really matured and began to understand that there was another way to live.

My own parents had been wealthy beyond belief… in everything at least, but the things that really mattered. To them, love was a luxury car, another vacation… a bigger house, another windfall. To Ember’s family, love was every home-cooked meal, every shared laugh, every noisy argument around the table. I’d learned patience from Sarah, from Randy and his dad I’d learned to love the land. Like them, I’d discovered I was willing to lay my life on the line to protect it. But by the time Ember had changed from a freckled kid into a spitfire bombshell, I’d learned the most important thing of all: That my heart was no longer mine.

I walked back toward the stairs again, knowing better, but unable to stop myself. It was almost harder to be this close to her than a hundred miles apart. She was only a dozen steps away… and the memory of her wet, naked skin on mine was working like a drug in my bloodstream. I took the steps two at a time, telling myself it would be enough just to open the door and see her asleep. In the bed we used to share… where I gave her a ring and asked her to…

That’s when I heard her.

And there wasn’t a sound in the world I knew better. She was on the other side of the door and she was right on the edge of orgasm. She was panting… the bedsprings were clicking softly, rhythmically as she moved. I leaned my forehead into the wooden door and heard a throaty moan, full of emotion and need. A hundred images of her were already burned into my brain; her luscious breasts… the sweet curve of her thighs… the way she let her head fall back when she came, exposing her throat. My cock was hard enough to pound the door down, but I stood, feeling the muscles in my jaw straining, and gripped the doorframe with my hands. There was nothing I wanted more than to give in to every reckless desire in me. I wanted to push her hands away and fill her with long, hard cock instead. I wanted to come inside her again and again, until the baby we’d dreamed of was reality. I wanted to give her everything we both wanted. But she was right. We’d already taken it too far, too fast tonight. And no matter how badly I wanted more, I couldn’t risk pushing her by barging into her bedroom…

She knew where I was tonight. If she’d wanted me again, she wouldn’t have shown me the couch…

But no man can listen to the sounds a woman makes when she’s stroking her pussy without reacting. I ran a hand down my bare chest and unzipped my jeans. Once had never been enough for either of us, I thought silently. My hot, insatiable little ember…

I wrapped myself in my hand and leaned my back into the wall. The sounds she was making seemed to go on… and on… I jerked myself hard, in time with her breathing.

For now, just for tonight, I told myself, as my own breathing started coming harder. But not for much longer. We both need a helluva a lot more, babygirl,

And we both need it soon.