I slid out of the family room, teary-eyed and with a knot in my throat.

At some point, Cormac, Daria, and Isabel had all left, and while I understood, I wished Cormac had lingered. I wanted to lean against him.

Normally, I would have just gone to my father and let him wrap one of his big arms around me, but I was still uncertain about how I felt regarding all the things he’d been hiding from me.

Plus…I just wanted Cormac.

It was a crazy thought, but I wanted him more and more, and all the time.

I heard some noise coming from the kitchen and walked in there just as Isabel and Daria closed the door that opened out to the backyard. “Is Cormac with you?”

Daria shook her head, grinning wide. “I don’t think his blood is thick enough for this kind of weather, Briar.”

“Mine sure isn’t,” Isabel said with a shiver, rubbing at her arms.

“You’ve been living up here for a couple of years,” Daria teased.

“And you grew up in Russia.” Isabel stuck out her tongue.

I grinned at the two of them then glanced around. “Okay, I guess I’ll go find him. Hope he didn’t get lost in this place.”

“Oh, I imagine he’s fine,” Isabel said, her voice unusually neutral.

I shot a look at her, wondering if she was hinting at something.

But her pretty face was blank.

Shrugging it off, I left the kitchen and started searching the house.

I found him studying a huge brocade display of the family crest outside Dad’s office. He glanced over at me and smiled, but I couldn’t help but notice the line between his eyebrows.

“Are you okay?” I asked him.

“Bit of a headache.” He slid me a droll look. “I told you that mimosa was a bad idea for me.”

He’d given me a bewildered look when I passed him the fruity drink. Maybe I shouldn’t have pushed it on him. Wincing, I reached up and cupped his face in my hands. “I’m sorry.”

He shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal.

I might have even bought it, but his eyes were just…off. Peering into their dark depths, I studied him more closely. There was certainly signs of strain, especially in the lines fanning out from the corners of his eyes, but it wasn’t just that.

“Are you okay?” I asked him again, even more softly this time.

“I’m fine.” He jacked up a shoulder in a shrug that seemed too forced to be natural. He closed his eyes, and when he looked at me, some of the strain was gone from his face. “I…I don’t know, Briar. Maybe it just hit hard, seeing you and your family watching videos of all of you with your mum…” He shrugged and rubbed the back of his neck. “I couldn’t keep watching. You know how long it’s been since I’ve seen my family…” His voice faded into the night, and after a moment, he looked back at me. “It hit harder than I would have thought.”

My heart ached in my chest. I curled my arms around his waist and moved in. “You know, you can always fix that.”

The sun was starting to set when we ended up at my place. The sunset had the soft gold edge to it, and the air was bitter and sharp. Still, I managed to talk Cormac into coming onto my small patio with me where we stacked logs into the metal firepit and then cuddled together on the outdoor couch under a blanket I kept in an all-weather storage bin.

His quiet mood got to me, and I couldn’t quite break through, and while I was tired of trying, I wasn’t quite ready to give up. Pulling my phone from inside my coat, I located one of my favorite playlists.

Putting it on repeat, I set it on the small table next to me and got up, wrapping the blanket around me and tugging on his hand. “Dance with me.”

“It’s fuckin’ cold out here,” he said, but a faint smile curved his lips.

Rising, he moved toward me. I fixed the blanket until it was wrapped around both of us. Cormac hooked a corner of it in one hand, anchoring it, while I did the same on the opposite. We swayed to the music, staring at each other.

A thought, totally out of the blue, occurred to me.

“Did you ever find a decent place to stay?”

He cocked his head, eyes narrowed slightly. “What brought that on?”

“Well…I don’t know.” I pushed a strand of hair behind my ear, feeling a little silly as I did the mental math in my head. No, he hadn’t been in Philadelphia all that long, but certainly, he’d been around long enough to find a place to stay, right? “I guess I just realized I never got around to asking you.”

“I’ve been bouncing around from one place to another,” he said, his eyes holding mine only for a few seconds before he looked away, almost as if he was embarrassed. “I’m staying with friends right now. Just haven’t found any place that’s a good fit.”

The wind whistled through the trees, and I shivered, instinctively moving closer to him. Pressed chest to chest, we were as close as we could get with the layers of clothes separating us.

I licked my lips.

His gaze dropped to my mouth, and my heart skipped a beat. The idea in my head faded, lost in a rush of heat. I pushed it back, focusing back on the matter at hand. All I wanted to do was lean against him, taste his mouth with mine and tug on his hands until he understood that I wanted him touching me.

“And what about your…job?”

His dark eyes shot immediately back up to mine. “My job?”

“Yeah.” I shrugged. “Yeah. Whatever you were doing for the Castellanos.”

Somehow, he’d pulled a mask on, and I hadn’t even realized it. I couldn’t read him now. “It’s over and done. Only took a few weeks.”

“Does that mean you have to go back to Miami now?” I asked. The idea of it filled me with an ache. An unpleasant one.

“Why would it?”

“Well, I mean…” I licked my lips again, uncertain now and not liking it. At all. “I mean, you work for their family, right? Don’t you have to be back down there to do that?”

“Ah…” He smiled. If it wasn’t for the faint glow coming from the frosted light near my back door, I wouldn’t have been able to make out the humor in his eyes. “Thing is…I’m sort of a free agent. Like in football. I bounce around and take jobs from anybody I want.”

“Oh.” I seemed to be saying that a lot tonight. Pursing my lips, I turned this new information over in my head and tried to determine how I felt about it.

I decided I liked it. If he wasn’t some sort of permanent Castellanos employee, it definitely made things easier on me. Maybe it shouldn’t matter, not with my brother being married to Isabel, but in my gut, I knew it did.

“I guess that means you’re planning on staying here a while?”

He hooked his hand around the back of my neck, his thumb sinking into the muscles and rubbing them. “I’m thinking ‘bout it. See, there’s at least one good reason to stay.”

Heat suffused my face as he stared at me.

Some crazy idea formed in the back of my head, and before I could quash it, I found myself opening my mouth. “What about moving in with me until you make up your mind?”

“What?”

I hadn’t seen him surprised too often, but I realized I’d just successfully and completely stunned him.

Cormac stopped dancing so abruptly, I almost tripped over his feet. He steadied me, eyes locked on my face.

“What?” he said again.

“You heard me,” I told him with a nervous laugh. “I mean, there are times when you spent half the day here anyway, easy. So why not just move in?”

“Briar, I…look…I don’t want to take advantage—”

I cut him off with a kiss. “Maybe I want you to. And maybe I want to take advantage of you.”

We ended up sprawled on the couch, leaving the blanket, our coats, and clothes in a trail behind us, one that stretched from the kitchen all the way through the house into the living room.

I had one sock on, and Cormac fought to push his boxers down as I tumbled him down with me onto the couch.

We were both laughing as he settled between my thighs, but the laughter faded as he reached up and cupped my face in his hands.

The look in his eyes stole my breath away. I’d never had anybody look at me the way he did. I’d never realized a man could look at a woman like that—like she was the center of everything.

“Briar,” he murmured, dipping to press his lips to mine.

At the same time, he shifted his weight, and I felt the heavy press of his cock nudging against me.

I arched up, yielding to him with a moan. He came inside me, hard and heavy and thick, filling me and chasing away all the emptiness. I reached up, clinging to his shoulders, my nails sinking into his flesh.

He pressed his brow to mine, and we stared at each other.

My throat tightened, swelled. There were things I wanted to say to him, but I didn’t dare. Holding it inside made the ache worse, and I went to close my eyes.

“Look at me, Briar…” I couldn’t resist that voice and dragged my lids open to stare at him. “Tha’s my girl,” he whispered, his accent thickening.

The words made me shiver. Once more, things unspoken rose up in my throat. Instead of saying them, I kissed him. I poured all those unspoken words, all my feelings into that kiss.

Cormac groaned, and I felt his body shudder. He caught me by the hip and rolled, twisting and shifting until I was draped over him. I rose up, looking down as I started to rock against him.

“I love the look o’ you,” he said.

“Stop talking,” I told him as I started to move against him more feverishly.

He laughed, his hands going to my hips.

I hadn’t meant to amuse him. I just couldn’t keep fighting what I felt inside. Yet, at the same time…I couldn’t entirely trust him either.

Not yet.

He arched up under me, thrusting so deep, so high up into me that it ripped a gasp from my throat.

I cried out.

He did it again, and again, and again…With a broken cry, I came. It was too quick. I didn’t want it to be over, but I couldn’t stop the climax any easier than I could stop the torrent of feelings rising inside me.

Cormac held my hips tight against his as he thrust into me, short, rough jabs that had the climax spinning on and on until he’d drained every last drop of pleasure from me.

I sagged against his chest, felt the wild rhythm of his heart.

He stroked a hand down my hair.

Closing my eyes, I tried to calm my breathing.

He murmured my name and lifted my hand to his lips.

The ache in my chest spread just a little bit more.