by R. J. Lewis
I sucked a breath in, dizzied by him, overcome with emotion.
I felt everything at once.
Disbelief, awe, pure pleasure.
This was real. He was here. He had come for me, for Penny, for us.
Still reeling from his presence, I couldn’t form words.
“You waited.” His voice sounded pained. He looked at me like he couldn’t believe such a thing. He needed to hear it for himself.
“I promised,” I choked out, my voice hardly above a whisper. “Don’t you remember?”
His eyes shined with unshed tears.
He remembered.
Oh, my heart. It pounded for dear life.
And my soul…it pulsated beneath my flesh in yearning.
I closed the gap between us, taking small steps to him. He watched me carefully, like he couldn’t trust me, like this wasn’t real. He didn’t move, but I felt he might be skittish, so I took my time. He seemed to relax the closer I got, so I dared myself to keep going.
I stood so close to him, staring up at into those haunted blue eyes. He looked down at me, hardly breathing, taking in every single move I made. The confidence from before was absent. The cockiness was gone from his gaze. He seemed…a shell. I felt the difference in him straightaway.
I thought of what Jem said.
He was all kinds of wrong.
I knew this man once. I knew him so well, could tell you everything he was feeling or thinking with just one look.
It was why I was so shaken just then. I felt alarmed because this man wasn’t him. Conor’s tough walls were gone. He was allowing me to see him in all his rawness, in all his hurt. This man’s brokenness ran deep, and I wanted to hold him and feel his touch.
I slowly raised my hand and rested it against his cheek. He blinked slow at my touch, his gaze dimming. He inhaled sharply through his nose, tilting his head so his cheek rubbed against my hand.
“You’re so cold,” I whispered to him. He felt like ice. It was painful even to touch.
“I don’t feel it,” he whispered back, his eyes still roaming my face.
“How long have you been out here, Conor?”
“Long enough.” He swallowed hard as he watched me. “I’ve missed you so much. I had to come. I couldn’t be away from you, Charlotte. You’re burned into my soul. You’re all I think about, and I’ve tried so hard to let you go, but I can’t, dove. I don’t want to live in a world where I’m not with you. That world’s empty, and I’m halfway dead inside as it is.”
Hot tears ran down my cheeks. I let out a soft cry; his words were a healing balm to years of aching. He dropped his head, pressing his forehead to mine. Eyes closed, we breathed each other in. Time, that dreaded thing, slowed right back down again, only this time I embraced it. Minutes, hours, seconds could have passed by, I wouldn’t know it.
All I knew was everything was going to be okay.
Finally pulling back, I looked up at him. He was already watching me, his lost eyes drowning in my image.
“Come inside,” I told him, rubbing my thumb over his cheek, tracing his cheekbones. “We need to get you warm.”
Taking him by the hand, he let me lead him to the house. No words were said as I opened the door and pulled him in. Careful to be quiet, I glanced up at the staircase in case Penny awoke to our sounds, and then I soundlessly shut the door behind us. I peered up at him in the dark entry room. Drops of water fell off him, and he was shaking now. I pulled him to me and wrapped my arms around him, running my hands up and down his body, trying to build some warmth back into his bones.
All the while, he stood still, allowing me to touch him, but never reciprocating. He just watched me. Entranced, he watched my every move.
I caught wafts of his scent. Different from memory. It felt all wrong.
His eyes had aged. They looked ancient and empty, and it scared me as I stared into them in the dark entry room.
Where is my Conor?
Who is this man in front of me now?
I did not anticipate the foreign feeling to come over me. A whisper of something dark hidden beneath his being.
Something happened to him.
“I’m still me,” he whispered just then, catching my hesitation.
My heart raced. He still read me like a book. Those eyes softened for me, consoling me.
I blinked back tears, pulling myself back to the now, to this man who was cold and broken. A man who’d walked through frigid temperatures for this moment.
God, I loved him.
I loved him so much.
I loved even more the stranger in front of me now because he had clung to what we were for all these years, and he was here now.
“Come upstairs with me, Conor,” I told him.
Again, he let me take him up. He didn’t object when I brought him into the master bedroom. I slowly locked the door behind us, and the gentle click of it seemed so loud in the quiet. We stared at each other for a solid moment. The lamp in the corner was still on, giving the room just enough of a glow to see him. The carpet was saturated under his feet, and he was still shuddering like an earthquake.
I roused out of my stillness and had his arm in both my hands. “You need the heat.”
His face was so white, it was scaring me. His teeth shattered in response, and I frantically pulled him in the direction of the bathroom. I turned the light on and dragged him on the white tiles. Letting him go, I rushed to the shower stall and turned the water on, making sure it was steaming by the time I turned back around.
“Strip,” I demanded, worried he was sick.
Not protesting, he grabbed at the hem of his shirt and slowly brought it over his head. His movements were stiff, his muscles obviously tense from the cold. I stood still, breathless at the sight of him. I hadn’t felt much stir before this moment. For years, I’d neglected my pleasure and the drive for it faded.
But now I was all woman again. My blood heated at the sight of his exposed upper body. Conor, who had been big before, who had been in the best shape of his life when I had been intimate with him, paled in comparison to the man in front of me now.
Ripped, Annika had said. Yet the word didn’t do him justice.
This was mammoth big; the kind of big you built a cage around. It was rare to see a body so powerful looking. It was more than just muscle and weight; it was in the skin, in the scars and the bruises, in the veins and tendons. As a whole, it was the way the powerful body moved, beckoning its environment to test him.
I averted my gaze when he managed it off. He let the shirt fall to the ground. He eyed me still as he kicked his shoes off. I wrung my hands together and turned back to the shower stall, opening it and…Well, I was trying to busy myself because I felt unsure.
I heard his clothing fall behind me, plopping loudly on the tiles. I ran my hand under the steaming water, wondering where my eyes should be when I turned. Then I felt him come up from behind me. My belly twisted with anticipation as his lips grazed the back of my head. He ran his nose between my neck and shoulder, breathing me in. I shut my eyes as I felt the front of him press against my back. I sagged back, feeling his ice-cold arms wrap around my waist, keeping me upright against him.
How long had I dreamed of this?
I couldn’t believe it was happening.
He wasn’t aroused. Nothing hard pressed into me. Instead, he held me like that to him, squeezing me gently around my waist, running his lips against my neck. My blood was blazing. Warmth and wetness pooled between my legs. It wasn’t fair I could come undone so fast, and nothing was happening to him.
“Charlotte,” he whispered, like he was tasting my name on his tongue. “Charlotte, Charlotte.”
My heart hammered in my chest, feeling his hot breaths against the side of my neck. His tongue lapped against my skin suddenly, and I swallowed hard, shuddering in his arms.
“Conor,” I panted, squirming in his hold.
He pulled back to let me turn around to face him. His face had dropped
to my level, still pale, but more alert than he’d been out there in the cold. He looked drunk off the sight of me, the blues of his eyes so much brighter than I remembered. Not even photos captured the depth of them. All this time, I’d imagined them all wrong.
We stared at each other, going over every feature, every line. He wouldn’t stop gaping at me. I wondered the changes he saw and if he liked them. I wasn’t nineteen. I was twenty-seven now. A grown woman who’d spent most of her twenties pining for a felon.
And he…he wasn’t a young man anymore. He’d been my age now when they took him away. God, I used to think he was so much older than me, so much wiser, but I still had so much to learn. I understood past Conor more than he could know.
Present Conor was roughened up and more handsome than ever. The years, though spent in a harsh environment, had not harshened his appearance. Instead, there was an edge to him. You could see a story behind his look. He had clearly endured something awful, but you couldn’t know exactly what it was.
He rubbed his nose against mine, our hot breaths mingling. His mouth almost touched mine, and I was desperate for it. I wanted to taste his kiss, his tongue, every inch of his skin.
I inched away and touched him again, running my fingers gently down the side of his face, past his jaw. I trailed my index down his throat before catching the ink along the side of his neck. I turned his face gently to the side so I could see it. My eyes watered again, and I swallowed back the sob climbing up my throat. I read my name elegantly etched into his skin. I traced it with my finger, noticing a vague scar beneath the ink. Just as I peered at it more closely, his hand gently captured my wrist and pulled it down.
I looked up, startled to find his face had changed. He looked distant, cold like the dead. He gently shook his head at me, asking me with a simple look to stop touching that scar.
“Sorry,” I whispered, pulling away from him. He didn’t respond. His jaw ticked, something dark passing over him. Aware the mood had shifted, I said, “I’ll grab you some clothes.”
I went to skirt past him, but his grip on my wrist tightened. I stilled, looking back up at him. He shook his head slightly at me and dropped his head back down to my level, as if wanting to re-establish the moment. I met him halfway, and he inhaled sharply when our foreheads touched again.
We stayed like that for so long, the entire bathroom filled with steam. We swayed together, intimate but not overly. We watched each other, nuzzling our noses to keep that contact alive, but never fusing our mouths together. I gave him the control because he needed it, and because I was terrified of making the wrong move.
My eyes trekked down his body, lingering on his cock, and god, I felt so hot. It wasn’t just the steam making me sweat. I had the most delicious man in front of me and I couldn’t do a thing about it.
Clearing my throat, I took a step back, breaking the moment because I genuinely couldn’t trust to keep my hands to myself.
“Take your time,” I murmured to him, aware my voice sounded breathless. “I’ll be waiting.”
He stiffened a nod, saying nothing. I bolted out of there, but not before noticing the bruises running down the back of his body.
Scars and bruises and more ink I’d never seen before.
Chapter Eight
Charlotte
The scar on his throat had been raised. It looked like it healed from a deep cut, and I couldn’t express the agony my heart endured thinking he’d been hurt like that. I had to take deep breaths and remind myself this man had endured hell.
I needed to tread carefully.
But all I kept thinking of was how bruised and scarred his body was.
I wiped a few stray tears, determined to keep myself together.
He had a very long shower. I was anxious the entire time, trying to busy myself. I’d cleaned the room up three times, clearing off the dresser and wiping down the mirrors. I added some light make-up because eight years in the slammer and I didn’t want him to see me looking like a sad troglodyte. I hung up my cardigan and changed into a different pair of pyjama bottoms. Ones made of silk and made my butt look more flattering.
I didn’t have the body I used to. But I was proud of it, nonetheless.
I had a fresh set of clothes for him on the bed. I sat on the edge of it, hands clasped in my lap, and then it suddenly didn’t feel like the kind of position he should find me in. It was too…expectant, too formal. When I heard the shower go off, I stood up in a panic and tried to find a better spot for him to find me. I took a few steps to the dresser before turning back around. I was on my way back to the bed when the door opened, and he stepped out. I paused mid-step and turned to him, standing in the centre of the room feeling completely out of my depth.
The bathroom was billowing with hot steam. He emerged with a towel wrapped lazily around his hips. There was so much more colour to him now. His cheeks were crimson from the heat, his hair deliciously tousled in all directions. He still dripped water everywhere, but he wasn’t shaking. He immediately found me standing there, and his face softened.
“Do you feel better?” I asked, aware my face was probably pink.
“I do,” he answered, that voice low.
Oh, God, the things that voice did to me. It travelled straight to my sex, and the throb worsened.
I pointed to the bed where his clothes were. “Just there is a change of clothes.”
As he walked past me, I felt my cheeks burn. My heart was battering hard in my chest. This felt so familiar yet unfamiliar at the same time. He looked down at the clothes, pausing for a moment before he glanced back at me with a curious look.
“These are mine,” he stated, sounding pleased.
“Yeah.”
“You kept my clothes.”
“Of course. They’re hanging in the closet.”
His brows furrowed. “But the fire…”
“When we sold your apartment, I had a bunch of your things boxed up and put in your mom’s place, remember? We were renovating the house, and we never got around to picking them back up.”
“You hung them up in the closet after you moved in?”
I nodded, carefully choosing my words. “It felt like you were still around. It made…Penny happy when I did it.” Penny, my sweet darling, had been waiting for him just the same.
Sorrow crossed his face. “How’s our girl, dove?”
I swallowed, suddenly overcome with another wave of emotion. “Good, Conor. She’s good.”
She’s good. And she’s angry. And she wants to hurt people when they make her mad, but she’s so funny and bright, and God, she needs you. There was so much he had to learn about our daughter. The two sides to her, how she genuinely was a beautiful soul despite her impulsive nature.
He forced a nod, turned his back to me and stared down at his clothes. He eyed his frayed shirt – frayed from overuse – tossing back at me, “You didn’t have the house demolished.”
“We had a choice to demolish the rest of it, but…it didn’t seem right with you being in prison. I thought you’d make that choice when you got out. Don’t get me wrong, the council had a lot to say about it.”
“But?”
“But Locke.”
Locke silenced those fuckers.
Conor frowned, seeming bothered. “Jem… saved you.”
“He noticed the smoke before we did and came running in.” Adding so as not to make him feel like we were in any danger, I said, “I would have noticed too.”
I wasn’t sure my words helped. I could tell he felt guilty he wasn’t there to do the saving. Men were possessive like that. They felt responsible for bad events even when it was out of their control.
He just managed another nod before dropping the towel. There it was, a tiny glimpse of the old Conor who didn’t give a shit about his nudity. Jesus, he was solid. And Jesus, he was like a tall glass of water in the desert. I had to gulp and glance away, waiting for him to change.
My mouth was so dry. I was breathing so heavy with my
mouth open. I pressed my lips together, trying to calm my fucking nerves. For a few moments it was completely still. I didn’t hear his movements, didn’t hear the clothes coming on. I shot a quick look in his direction and froze.
He was staring back at me with such a heavy expression, like he too was feeling the same way. I couldn’t breathe, and I didn’t think he did, either. I looked him over very quickly. His naked body sent another throb to the pit of my belly, to the space between my legs. The space he owned and had thoroughly coveted once.
“Are you uncomfortable, dove?” he asked in a low voice.
“No,” I quickly answered, but my face burned hot and I looked away again.
“Is this too fast for you?”
“No.”
“Then look at me.”
My eyes flickered back to him. I trained them on his face, making sure they didn’t wander. It wasn’t cool to be this horny so soon, right? I couldn’t help it, though. For so long, I’d closed my emotions off, and now they were bursting at the seams.
I wanted to jump on him.
I wanted to kiss him.
I wanted to lick every inch of him.
I missed him so much.
“I just missed you,” I squeaked out, feeling the lump in my throat thicken. “I’m kind of freaking out you’re here.”
“I wanted to see you earlier, at the club.”
“I know.”
“But it didn’t feel right doing it there, with all those people…”
“It’s okay,” I assured him. “You’re here now.”
“I am,” he said, nodding as he glanced around the room like he was realizing it. I couldn’t shake the haunted look in his eyes. “I’m here.”
I watched him carefully as his chest rose and fell. At some point he’d held a breath in, letting it out slowly as he examined every inch of the room we were in. When his eyes found mine again, I felt a jolt to my heart. I stood up straightener, trying to smile.