Page 99 of The Rented Bride

Trent went silent and she realized he was crying.

“Oh, Trent.”

Cassie tossed her clothes onto the dresser and hurried to the bed. She crawled onto the mattress, wound her arms around him and pulled him close. He hugged her tight and she stroked his hair as his shoulders shook in silent tears. She could no longer stop her own tears.

“What am I going to do without him?” Trent asked in a husky voice.

“Take each day as it comes,” she hiccupped on a sob. “I can’t believe he’s gone.”

Trent drew back and pulled her against his chest. “He fell in love with you the moment he saw you.”

“I’m supposed to be comforting you,” she said.

He grunted. “We make a helluva pair.”

She nodded and buried her face in his shirt. His heart thumped a steady, strong beat and the comforting warmth of his body seeped through his shirt into her cheek.

This was wrong, so wrong. He needed her, but she couldn’t hold her emotions together long enough to help ease his pain. His fingers absently caressed her arm. Cassie curled closer and he rested his chin on the top of her head. Lying next to him, sharing their grief—god, she hadn’t expected to need his comfort as much as he needed hers.

He pressed a soft kiss to her temple. She returned the kiss by nuzzling his neck. Tears bathed her face and it seemed a great weight bore down on her heart as if to crush the life from her. Trent had asked how he would go on without his grandfather and the truth was, she didn’t know. Just as she didn’t know how she would blithely go her own way knowing that Trent lived in pain. He’d lost James. But she’d lost both of them.

His traced the curve of her spine. Gooseflesh raced up her arms. Cassie shivered and he hugged her closer. A cocoon of intimacy surrounded them. Trent shifted his head so that his breath fanned her ear. Her mind tangled with grief, need…desire.

“Cassie.” Her name almost sounded like a plea.

Touching her tongue to his flesh, she tasted the saltiness of his skin.

Trent placed a finger beneath her chin and tilted her face upward, then grazed his thumb along her cheek. “I need you.”

“I’m yours,” she whispered.

Trent kissed her, tenderly at first, then moved his mouth over hers with an urgency that heated her to the core. God forgive her, she did need him. Cassie threw her arms around his neck. Trent splayed a hand on her lower back and rolled onto her, pressing her into the bed.

“Don’t tell me to stop,” he said.

She choked back more tears. “I’m begging you not to stop.”

Hands on his shoulders, she parted her thighs. Slowly, she followed the contours of his torso to the pleat of his shirt, then fumbled with his buttons and, at last, loosened the last one. Finally, she touched his hot, bare flesh. Tomorrow, the pain of loss would crush her, but right now she needed this man—flesh to flesh, heartbeat to heartbeat, his body joined with hers.

Cassie pushed him off her, then lifted the hem of her shirt and pulled it over her head. Trent grazed the swell of her breasts with his knuckles. Her areola tightened and sent a frisson of desire into her sex. She unfastened the front clasp of her bra, tossed it aside, then lay back on the mattress. Trent braced on his arms and closed his mouth over her nipple. She groaned and arched her breast deeper into his mouth. He shifted to the other breast, rolling the pebbled tip between his lips.

Cassie raked her nails over his shoulders, pushing at his shirt. Trent reared back into a sitting position and stripped off the shirt. As he removed his clothes, she tugged down the zipper of her slacks, shoved them and pushed her panties past her hips, then sloughed them off with her feet. Trent stretched out alongside her, dragged his fingers across her arm, and kissed along her flesh until his warm mouth closed over the sensitive spot where neck met shoulder.

Cassie pulled him down on top of her. His mouth crushed hers and she breathed him in when his erection rode hard against her sex. Her heart raced. Yes. By all that was unholy, she’d never needed this—Trent, sex, comfort—so badly. She widened her thighs, gripped his ass, and arched into his cock. Trent growled. The sound vibrated through her. She needed him now. Forget tender touches and long, drugging kisses. She wanted him hard, forceful and out-of-control. The same way she felt inside in this whole crazy mess…and she wanted them both to forget, if only for a little while.

Cassie reached between them and curled her fingers around his erection. His kiss faltered then deepened when she lifted her hips and fit the crown of his cock to her entrance. He thrust hard, filling her and grinding into her depths.

Cassie cried out.

Trent froze. “Did I hurt you?”

“No,” she said on a breathy exhale. She dug her heels into his ass. “Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.”

He gave a strangled laugh and thrust again. And again. Cassie wrapped her legs around his waist as he continued to drive deep into her. She shivered, riding the precipice of release with each plunge of his cock. Dropping her legs, she braced her feet on the mattress and lifted her hips to meet his thrusts.

“Trent,” she whispered.

Cassie fisted the sheet. Shudders of pleasure rippled through her and she shattered. Bright light blinded behind her closed eyelids. Her orgasm stole her breath. Her only thought was of the man in her arms, the man who’d found a way into her heart.