Page 74 of Serve ’N’ Protect

Her wish was his command. Keeping his thumb rubbing her slick, sensitive clit, he thrust his middle finger deep inside her channel, pumping slowly in and out.

“Faster. Faster.” She licked her lips, moving her hips to meet his thrusting fingers.

Oh, man. Watching her this way, with her eyes closed and her body shuddering, made him impossibly hard to the point of pain.

Her body started to jerk and her eyes flew open. “Markus, please,” she cried. “Get inside me.”

With his heart pounding, Markus eased the tip of his cock into her, grinding his teeth to keep from coming on the spot. She was tight, gripping and stroking as surely as if her hand were wrapped around the length of him.

Her breath came faster now but she was right there with him, on the brink of combustion as their hips slapped together.

Pressure began building in his balls, rising to the tip of his cock until he could barely hold on. He focused on the beautiful woman beneath him, watching her blue eyes heavy with desire, feeling her body begin to tense with the first tremors of her orgasm.

She dug her fingers into his forearms, then threw back her head, crying out his name as she bucked and writhed. He pumped faster, letting the pressure he’d been holding back explode with his own release.

He didn’t want to move. If he could freeze this moment in time, he would. Knowing that wasn’t possible, he rolled onto his back, taking Cassidy with him so that her head rested on his chest and her hair draped over him in a cascade of blond silk.

“Markus.” She lifted her head, a gentle smile curving her kiss-swollen lips. “I love you.”

Reality struck, sharp and painful like another knife to his back, only this time the pain was dead center in his heart.

He was a dick of the highest order. Sleeping with her again had been selfish. He could have said no, could have walked away and never looked back. But when she looked at him, he caught a fleeting glimpse of that mysterious thing missing in his life, and yet every time he reached out to grab it and hold on for dear life, it moved farther and farther away. As it was doing now.

Emptiness took up residence in the pit of his stomach, and his blood ran ice cold. He could never give Cassidy what she needed because he didn’t know how, wouldn’t know it if it slammed into him.

Love.

Markus’s heart seemed to stop beating and he couldn’t breathe. The same emotion he’d been struck with his entire life when it came to expressing his feelings crashed down on his skull. Fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of facing his emotions without being subjected to the sick terror of disappointment. Fear that he would be hurt if he let his emotions out of the box that was his twisted, damaged brain.

He opened his mouth to say something, but words wouldn’t come. How could they when he had no idea what to say?

The light in Cassidy’s beautiful eyes faded, as did the remnants of her smile. She blinked rapidly and her lips tightened into a grim line. He knew what she’d wanted him to say, that he loved her, too. Did he? Christ. Whatever he felt for her was stronger than any emotion he’d had for a single human being in his entire life. But that wasn’t enough.

“My family throws the L word around all the time. It’s just our way.” She rolled off him, but not before he glimpsed the hurt in her eyes. Hurt he’d put there.

Shit. She was lying. “You meant it differently, didn’t you?”

She sighed, then nodded. “I didn’t mean to say it so soon. It just slipped out, but I won’t take it back.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to.” Part of him didn’t want her to. He forced her to face him again. “I’m sorry, Cassidy. I shouldn’t have let things get this far. I’m not like everyone else. I told you, I don’t feel things the way most people do, the way I should, and I probably never will.”

“I know, and I understand. Really, I do.” Her lips trembled and that tightness in his chest worsened. The look of sadness and pain in her eyes was killing him with every beat of his heart. “When you’re in love, you’ll know it. The person you love is the first thing you think about when you wake up in the morning and the last thing you think of before you go to sleep. Even when they’re not with you, you think about them. They’re always in your thoughts, and it makes you feel good. It makes you feel whole.”

Whole. He was damned good at his job. Personally and emotionally, he was a complete and utter failure and would never be whole.

She touched two fingers to his cheek. When he tried to clasp them, she tugged her hand away, and her voice shook. “It’s okay. Love is a gift, a special gift, but you don’t have to accept it. Expecting something from you that you’re not prepared to give is too much to ask.”

Damn, but she’d just used virtually the same words on him that she’d used on her ex-fiancé, making him no better than that dickwad.

“You should go.”

“I should go.”

They’d spoken at the same time.

Cassidy rolled onto her side, facing away from him. She didn’t make a sound, but her body shuddered, as if she were holding back gut-wrenching sobs.

Goddammit.