Indy could remember that moment so clearly, which was funny, given she hadn’t thought of those games they’d played in a million years. Eight-year-old Indy had stared back at her older sister, a part of her desperate to leap out into the unknown. To take on a role she’d never played before and decide to be whatever she wanted.
But she hadn’t.
Was it really Bristol deciding to get serious about her studies that had sent Indy down this path? Or had she been the one who’d chosen it all along?
Because she’d chosen the part of princess that day, out there playing make-believe. It had been familiar. It had required nothing of her. She could have played that role in her sleep.
In a way, she’d been playing it ever since.
“My fearlessness?” she echoed now. Then laughed. “I guess I fooled you, then. I don’t think I’m fearless at all.”
“Maybe that’s not the right word,” Bristol conceded. “Maybe it’s that no matter if you’re afraid or not, I’ve never known you to let that keep you from doing something. Even when we were kids. You always jumped in, no matter how deep the water was. No matter if everyone and their mother told you not to do something, you wanted to see yourself. And you did. I admire that, Indy. I always have.”
“I love you, too,” Indy whispered.
And then they’d mutually hung up on each other as quickly as possible, so there would be no sniffling.
But her sister’s words stayed with her when she got up from her white chair in the white room with its powerful splash of red. They haunted her as she wandered through the house, looking for Stefan the way she did more times every day than she would have imagined possible. Given that she’d never been one to look for a man before.
He isn’t just a man, a voice inside her chided her. And you know it.
She knew that he’d come back from his run this morning because he’d woken her up then. He’d flipped her over on her belly and had her digging her fists into the mattress and moaning out her pleasure before she’d even opened her eyes.
Indy had never been the kind of woman to claim she didn’t like morning sex. She’d never understood the complaint, because what wasn’t to love? A hard cock moving deep inside her before she was awake, so she fell out of sleep and into an orgasm without having to do anything at all. It was like a gift.
But she’d never loved it more than she did with Stefan, who made it something far hotter and deeper than any mere gift.
Sometimes he used the gym he’d installed on the lowest level of the house after his run, but he wasn’t there when she looked. She trooped back up to the kitchen, eying the ibrik that sat by the stove—the correct name for the pot he used to make Turkish coffee, as he’d informed her when she’d called it that thingie—and even though he’d showed her how to make it herself, she didn’t. Because she liked it better when he made it for her.
She looked around outside, down by the pool and in the gardens. His laptop sat closed on the table in the shade of the rose trellis, but Stefan himself was nowhere to be found.
Maybe you’ll just have to sit here with your thoughts, she told herself wryly. Instead of hoping he’ll distract you.
Indy sat there at the table, because that felt a lot like a challenge. She frowned out at the view, telling herself that she was fearless. Bristol had said so. And surely, if she thought about that enough and didn’t try to avoid it in the heat of another orgasm, her heart would open up wide and give her a passion.
A purpose.
A life she wanted, not the one she’d chosen when she was a kid who didn’t know any better.
And that was where Stefan found her sometime later. With his usual disconcerting telepathy, he set a cup of Turkish coffee before her, as if he’d been standing about invisibly in the kitchen and had watched her decide not to make her own.
“You look distressed,” he observed, his accent washing over the way it always did, like a caress. “What could possibly have happened since I left you, limp and moaning out my name?”
“Many things, Stefan. Many important and exciting things, none of which I’m going to tell you if you’re going to keep bragging about your sexual prowess. It’s so unattractive.”
His blue eyes gleamed. “Is it?”
She laughed as he sat down beside her.
“I like that,” he said.
“What?” she asked, though she was already distracted by his proximity. Indy had never been into the drugs that, he was right, had been a huge part of a great many of the scenes she’d frequented over the years. Strip clubs and all kinds of other parties, in all different countries.
But Stefan was far more potent than any party.
It was amazing what all this time with him was doing to her. Day after day of this. Of them. It made everything seem to take a different shape. Though the way she wanted him only seemed to increase, it was different now. Because she knew that she would have him.
Sooner or later, she would have him again.
It made the waiting hotter.
It made the wanting deeper.
“When you laughed now, you mean it,” Stefan said quietly. “I like it.”
And he didn’t wait for her to react to that, the way he sometimes did. He didn’t study her, tracking every stray emotion as she had it. This time it was a matter-of-fact statement. Then he picked up his laptop and cracked it open.
Leaving Indy there beside him with the sweet and rich taste of his coffee on her tongue, and a new ache in her heart.
It took her
