Bowen leans on the railing of his porch, the scent of him reminding me of the danger he just escaped. “I’ve never seen anything like it. There were casualties, but all of our men got out okay. I’m okay. You didn’t need to come here. I don’t need you to take care of me, haven’t I said that? Now, go home.”
And just like that, I’m dismissed. Bowen Nash has no time for me or the feelings that will never leave my heart. It crushes me, my soul literally dropping to its knees. If I’d lost him tonight, not that he was mine to lose, but if he’d …
I don’t know how I could go on living in a world that he wasn’t a part of, no matter how much he didn’t love me back now.
Rising from his porch, I walk off of it, my head hung low with shame.
Bowen doesn’t thank me, or say good night, or even pat me on the back for coming to make sure he was okay. And that angers me. So much so that a few angry drops graze my cheeks on their way down.
Thank God I’m already on the sidewalk, in the dark, where he can’t see me cry.
But the question on the tip of my tongue won’t let me leave. I whip around, squaring my shoulders.
“If I were the one in the burning building, would you even save me?”
I say this to his back, his body already halfway to his own front door. The massive figure of brawn and grace stops, the muscles on his back under his T-shirt rippling with tension.
When Bowen turns, his eyes are feral. “What did you say?”
“You heard me,” I spit back. “I came here, worried out of my mind, to see if you were alive, and you can’t even bother to look at me. If I was gone, would you even notice?”
The last sentence out of my mouth is so raw, so honest, that it burns all the way up my throat. Because that’s the thought I’ve been wondering all these years. If I disappeared tomorrow, would he even care?
I feel him before I see him, that’s how fast he moves. Like a panther catching its prey, one minute Bowen is on the porch, and the next, he’s grabbing me, hoisting me up by the waist.
And crushing his mouth to mine.
Complete shock. Sensory overload. A million memories and a thrilling new secret that is heady and lustful and so many other emotions I can’t process.
The man I have loved for my entire life is kissing me for the first time in ten years, and it takes me a second to realize I need to take this opportunity to kiss him back.
To pour every ounce of pain and admiration I’ve harbored for the last decade into this display of love.
Because even if this all ends in a few minutes, even if he puts me down, lets me go, pretends this never happened …
I can make it through another ten years knowing that we had this. Even if I don’t understand it. Or whether Bowen is doing this out of spite or because he hurts as much as I do.
Right here. Right now. We have this.
18
Lily
“Bow—” I pull back, my lips grazing his, but he doesn’t let me speak.
The way he pulls my mouth back to his, forcefully, with the hand that isn’t looped around my waist and holding me up … it’s possessive. My body is his, it always has been, and he knows it. With one flick of his tongue, he undoes me. Bowen unwinds the barbed wire that has held my heart hostage for ten years. The lock he placed on it springs open.
In the middle of the sidewalk, at God knows what hour of the night, here we stand. Two star-crossed lovers, the man holding the woman up as she clings to him, not able to get close enough to each other as they express wordlessly all that has come between them.
His mouth is hot and unrelenting. We’re making love with our lips, tongues, and teeth. The kisses are sharp, direct, but also fumbling and unpracticed.
Bowen’s body is hard and rough beneath my fingertips, beneath the legs wrapped around his waist. He’s grown from a boy into a man in the time we’ve been apart, and my hands ache to touch all of that bare muscle.
Our mouths still fused; he carries me in long strides to the house. Up the front porch, in through the front door where he wrenches his key in the lock, and into the foyer.
I’ve never been here and can’t tear my attention away from our kisses to take a look at the place Bowen calls home. Maybe at another time, I’d be curious to see how his house is set up. I’d want to digest every detail, right down to the floorboards. Right this moment, it doesn’t matter.
Bowen sets me down, his lips leaving my mouth and trailing down to my jaw. I can barely breathe I’m so turned on. God, how long has it been since I felt this kind of desire? The kind that had me embarrassingly slick in my underwear, moaning loudly into the air with just the contact of his lips on my neck.
Ten years. It has been ten years.
He walks us backward, pulling his soiled shirt off and throwing it somewhere behind us. Muscles, farther than the eye can see, chord from his neck to his happy trail. He’s got more than a smattering of hair now, to demonstrate just how much he’s grown up. Dark, and thicker as it descends, I know that he’ll be all male below that belt. Bowen is rugged, a little dirty, and it’s making me grow wetter by the second.
I’m entranced, my eyes closing of their own volition, as Bowen continues to suck and lick at my neck as his large fingers reach for the hem of my shirt. In an instant, it’s gone, and then so are the bike shorts I pulled on in a frenzy to get over here.
Only when my back hits a wall do I gasp, reality creeping in. I’m half-naked in Bowen Nash’s entryway.
The door to reality is slammed quickly closed though, when I hear the pop of the buttons on his pants, and glance down to watch him drag the zipper open.
“The last thing I thought, as the house collapsed around me, was that I’d never see you again.”
My head snaps up. Those ocean blue eyes, the color of the eye of a storm, pierce me. I’m wordless, dissolving into him.
“For ten years, I’ve felt … empty. Destroyed. I am not me without you. And I was going to burn up in that house without ever telling you that.”
Bowen braces himself against the wall, looming over me, his free hand pulling my wisp of a bralette up and over my head. My hands go to his hips, pushing the rough fabric of his pants down and over them. I know the moment his cock springs free because I feel the weight of it on my arm, but our eyes are still locked on each other.
I tingle everywhere, my skin is on fire. Prickly, hot, uncomfortable, sensational … all rolled into one. I want him inside of me so badly that I could cry right now.
But what’s pulling at every ventricle of the muscle in my chest, are his words. Because I too am destroyed. I too am empty.
“Fill me up,” I whisper.
It’s an invitation, but it’s also a plea. Fill my heart, fill my soul. Use your body to make me whole again.
A low growl emits from Bowen’s throat. He wrenches my plain gray boy shorts down, and I step out of them. I’m completely naked, standing in front of him. He steps back a fraction, those blue eyes turning to melting icebergs as they trace the lines of my body.
I take my time too, staring at the Adonis who’s just toed out of his fire boots and kicked his jeans and boxers across the room. He’s so much bigger … everywhere. I gulp, need swamping me like the best kind of humidity. It sticks to my skin and sends a trickle of sweat down my spine. My eyes lower to the impressive cock bobbing between us, and I have to rub my thighs together to alleviate the friction zipping between my legs.
Bowen moves swiftly, picking me up again and smashing his mouth to mine. God, yes. I’ve been a woman on the verge of dying from thirst, and now I’m drowning. He maneuvers me until my back is pushed up against the wall and his arms are locked under my knees. I’m spread impossibly wide for him, spread eagle against his foyer wall, and some other time I might blush about this, but I’m so aroused that I can’t care.
My arms loop around his neck, my right hand burying in his hair and latching on. He hisses as I tug a little, but the pain sends a flash of heat through his eyes.
“The life you would have with me … it’s not one you’d want. There are … things you don’t know, Lily. Things you’d hate me for.”
“How many times do you have to nearly die for it to get through? I have no life without you,” I whisper, searching his eyes as tears pool in mine.
And that’s when he pushes into me, so painfully good that I moan low in my throat.
Bowen pins me, holds me open for him as he impales me over and over again. Nothing about this is gentle or slow, and I love it. We’re frenzied, having ten years of pent up sexual tension and heartbreak will do that to two people.
With each stroke, each grunt, each loll of my head onto his shoulder, the chokehold on my heart eases.
“Lily …” Bowen’s voice is a plea.
I’m so close, my clit rubbing against the rough hair at the base of his cock. Every time he seats himself fully inside of me, I shudder with the sharp stab of pleasure/pain.
“Bowen.” I could say his name forever if he promises never to let this end.
I don’t want to think about what happens when this ends.
He picks up speed if that’s even possible because he was already jackhammering into me with precision. But now he’s practically making a dent in the wall with my body, and I may bruise tomorrow but right now it feels so exquisite that I don’t care.
“Don’t stop. Never stop,” I chant, my words meant to be about way more than just sex.
Bowen’s lips close around a nipple, pulling the peak with his teeth, and I’m gone.
My thighs tighten in his big hands, and the sensations take over my body. They rob me of all five senses, and I ride the climax greedily. I haven’t felt this euphoric in a decade.
My forehead meets Bowen’s shoulder, and just as my orgasm begins to subside, he sets it off again as he comes with a loud growl that rips through the silence of the night.
He’s like a wild animal, calling his mate with a sound only meant for her ears. It has me choking on words I can’t say.
So instead, I hang on, my arms tightening after we’re done.
I’m not ready to let go again.
19
Bowen
In the moment before I’d kissed her, I knew it was a terrible idea.
I should have never turned around, never run off my front porch, never slammed my mouth down on hers and broken the thread holding my resolve together.
Because now that it was broken, there was no going back.
I’d tasted her, had said things that were now branded onto my heart. I’d looked into her eyes as she came undone and it was like watching my whole purpose come into focus.
Everything made sense when I was with Lily. I had been put on this earth, in Fawn Hill, to fall in love with her.
Less than a month ago, her father had walked into my barbershop and threatened my livelihood and my family if I went anywhere near her. The thought had flitted through my head as I was stomping toward her on the sidewalk, but the bottom had already fallen out. I was already tumbling, unable to stop what was inevitably about to happen.
Last night was a blur. We started in the hallway, smashed against the wall opposite my front door, and didn’t stop until my bed sheets were ripped halfway off the mattress and our bodies were too weak to keep going.
As I blink open my eyes, the harsh sunlight illuminating the reality of what just happened, I survey the damage.
“It looks like a bomb went off in here.” Lily sighs as she turns over, her thin arm draping across my abs.
“You read my mind.” I swallow the lump in my throat, both from sleep and emotion.
“I guess that’s what happens after ten years of waiting.” She chuckles.
Her eyes are still closed, those long dark lashes fanning over her sun-kissed cheeks. Long locks of chocolate-colored hair curl over my pillows, and besides the smile gracing her lips, she wears nothing else.
I can’t help the hands that smooth up and down her back and the thigh thrown over my leg. Last night in the entryway was a bad idea. So was bringing her upstairs. So was the third time I pushed inside of her, around four a.m.
And now here we are, waking up together in my bed, pretending like we don’t have a mountain of issues to sort through.
Even with all of that sitting on my shoulders, my needy dick still stiffens as she trails her fingers over my stomach.
“Hey, none of that.” I squirm when she hits a ticklish spot.
“I forgot how ticklish you are.” She proves this point by moving her devilish fingers up to my armpits.
The sensation is annoying, and to stop her, I flip over onto her and pin her arms. The minute her playful expression beams up at me, our situation slaps me right back down to earth.
The accident. Her father. The secret I’m keeping. The fact that I love her but can’t act on it.
I roll off of Lily and right out of bed, picking up my boxers as I head for the bathroom. I don’t bother to shut the door, and as I take a piss, shout out into the bedroom.
“This was fun, but I have stuff to do today. So I’ll uh, see you around.”
It’s cold and callous, and it feels like a rusty blade thrusts through my heart as I say it. But I have to get her out of here. I’ve already compromised myself too much, and if I go back to that bed, there is a chance I’ll never leave.
I walk back out, averting my eyes from the bed where Lily still sits. Rifling through my drawers, I pick out a T-shirt and pair of shorts.
“Don’t do this.” Her voice sounds so small.
I slam a drawer shut. “No, don’t you do this. It’s not a big thing.”
“It’s the biggest thing. This is monumental, so stop acting like I’m some chick you brought home to fuck and throw out.”
The curse word coming off her lips twists my gut. Indeed, what just happened is huge. Of course, she’s not just some chick.
“I don’t know why you still blame yourself for that night,” she whispers.
Anger, hot and shameful, rages through my veins. And I snap. “You were in a coma for almost a month, Lily! I almost killed you. How the hell do you think I’m not going to blame myself for that?”
I turn, throwing my arms up and screaming at her.
Tears streak her bronzed cheekbones. “You weren’t drinking, Bowen. You had a seatbelt on … it was my own decision to take mine off. We were stupid, we were kids. The road was slick, and the deer jumped out in front of us. That isn’t your fault, it never has been. I’ll never forgive myself for how reckless I was. But I can’t forgive myself even more if you think that you caused that accident. Because it’s just not true.”
So I guess we’re going there.
“You can’t know that.”
“All I know is, I woke up from a coma having lost so much, in such pain with weeks of therapy ahead of me, and the person I loved the most wouldn’t even speak to me. You didn’t even come to see me in the hospital.” The sob she chokes out is the worst sound I’ve ever heard.
It shatters my already dead heart, but her last sentence puts flint in my eyes. “I came to visit you every single day. I left my hospital bed, unplugged myself from the machines when they told me not to, limped across the halls to get to you. I held your hand as much as they would possibly let me. I prayed to God that you would wake up, and we both know I am not religious. Lily, I was there every day. Until—”
My voice cuts off, maybe out of the need to preserve what little I have left. I was dangerously close to revealing the truth, something she can never find out.
“Until what?” Lily looks at me, those deep blue eyes pleading.
I stay silent, and she gets so fed up she actually gets up, walks over, and pushes me in the chest. “Until what, Bowen? Why won’t you ever just really talk to me?”
But, I can’t. If she knew what … what our fathers had done … I could never ruin her world that way. It was better to cut both of our hearts out than put her through that.
So I don’t answer.
My feet prepare to move, to pick up her clothes and toss them on the bed, to shrug into my own shirt.
In the harsh light of day, my mistake doesn’t look like love. It looks like damnation.
“No.” Her voice is sharp.
I turn to see this beautiful creature, naked and standing in the middle of my room, the morning light falling across her gorgeous body in luminescent stripes. All that caramel skin, bare breasts, it’s distracting when I should have a stiff upper lip right now.
“No, what?” I growl, my cock hardening.
“I’m not leaving. Not until we talk. I’m not taking no for an answer this time. And it’ll cause a whole lot of gossip in this town if you toss me outside naked right now. So you have no choice.”
She’s manhandling me. And I don’t like to be told what to do. “Get out.”
“No.” Lily gets right up in my face, confronting the beast without a shred of fear in her eyes.
“Lily …” I warn.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she challenges.
She should be. About the secret I hold.
I advance on her, putting my arms on her waist to give her a nudge out the door. But all that does is fuck me over big time. Because she’s still naked, and damn it does she feel amazing.
“Let’s go downstairs. We’ll have breakfast. I’ll cook. And we’ll talk.” Her suggestion is quiet, a peace offering.
And because my hands are on her bare hips, and I’m a glutton for punishment, I agree.
“Fine. But we’re having sausage, not bacon.”
“Typical.” Lily shakes her head as she smiles.
20
Lily
Standing in a kitchen, barefoot in sweats after a night of sleeping in the same bed as Bowen Nash.
My sixteen-year-old self is living out her biggest fantasy right now.
I was totally that girl who doodled Mrs. Lily Nash in her notebooks and listened to sappy teen love songs while imagining a time when Bowen and I could live together without curfews or adult supervision.
Forgiven: The Nash Brothers, Book Two Page 9