That thought makes one corner of my mouth twitch in a smile. Ha, I’d like to see him try. Sensible, stuffy Lindon couldn’t possibly…
But then I hear footsteps walking away from the door. I jump from the bed and stumble to the door and pull the chair away from it. “Wait, Lindon…” He shouldn’t be doing that in his condition.
When I yank open the door he swings out from beside it, mischievous gold eyes winking at me. He grabs me around the waist and pulls me against him, inhaling deeply.
“I missed you,” he says, running a hand through my curls.
“I look a mess,” I say, blushing as he holds me tight. It feels good, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t want to hope this means something it doesn’t. If I don’t get my hopes up, then I can’t be hurt.
“You look perfect,” he says, placing a kiss to my head. He pulls back and frowns when he looks down at me. “What’s wrong?” he asks.
I shrug, feeling tears prick the corners of my eyes. But I hold them back.
“Misty, what happened? Did I do something? Do I need to use another free pass? Told you I’d need them.”
I swipe at my eyes, making sure they’re dry. “No,” I say. “Just glad you’re okay. That was a close one. It was torture to watch.”
“Yeah, Hawes said you stayed with me all night. Another reason I thought you needed sleep.” He runs his hands over my arms, bringing the blood back into them. “Another sign we’re fated?”
I shake my head at that and take a small step backwards. Puzzlement wrinkles his perfect nose and one eyebrow raises in question.
“I’m hungry,” I say. “Do we have anything to eat?”
“Do we,” he says. “You should see what everyone brought. Come on, let’s go down and feed you.”
I walk forward but stumble on trembling legs.
“Here,” he says, sweeping me up into his arms.
“No,” I stutter. “You aren’t strong enough yet…your wound.”
“Is completely healed. I have good healing ability. Once things started to turn around, they turned around fast.” He ignores my struggles and carries me down the stairs.
“No, stop. I’m too heavy.”
He sighs at me as he takes me to a couch in the living room and gently plops me on it. “Misty?”
“Yes?” I ask bashfully.
“Let me go back to being the hero, all right?” His voice is stern, but his eyes are twinkling, so I humph and turn around on the couch, facing away from him.
I can hear things clinking in the kitchen, water running, the fridge opening and closing.
When he comes back, he’s holding two plates, both piled with fruit, pancakes, and whipped cream. He hands mine to me and then sits on a couch across from me.
He watches me with wicked eyes as he lifts a berry to his mouth and bites slowly into it with perfect, white teeth.
I just stare down at my plate, wondering how I’m going to eat all of this.
“Eat up,” he says, putting the rest of the berry in his mouth and running a pink tongue over his lower lip to catch the juices. “You’re going to need your strength for what I have planned.”
Damn.
I start eating. My heart may be wary about this whole thing, but damn does my body respond to him.
I finish eating in silence, and when I’m happy and full I look up to see him staring at me with intensity in those golden eyes.
What exactly is going on behind all that gilded beauty?
He runs a hand slowly through his clean, tousled blond hair and I lick my lips in response. The air grows thick and heady around us and for once we don’t have to worry about upsetting anyone else in the house.
For better or for worse, it’s just us now.
Lindon swallows, and I watch the muscles in his chest and arms tighten as his gaze lingers on my body.
I put one finger up to my mouth and lick the juice off, slowly sucking the tip in and then releasing it with a little pop. His eyes widen and he pounces forward, lifting me in the air and running for the stairs.
I laugh at how strong he is. I’m not a small woman and he makes me feel like I weigh nothing. So tall and so strong.
“Lindon…” I say, uncertainty rising in me even as excitement is bursting through. “I…”
“What?” He asks, kicking open the door to his room and dropping me on his bed.
He folds his arms and stands there, tall and commanding, waiting for my objections.
I run my tongue over my lips as I look him over from head to toe.
No objections here, your honor.
He’s wearing low-slung sweat pants that reveal perfect, cut ken doll lines and a tank top that leaves a sliver of tanned skin showing at his trim waist line. His powerful pecs and shoulders rise out of the thin tank top, uncontained. His muscles flex as he waits for me to speak.
But I don’t have any words anymore. My tongue feels fuzzy in my mouth, and Lindon’s scent is releasing into the air, making me ache as I’ve never ached before. I need him inside me, now.
He gives me a quiet, knowing smile, and the arousal just spikes higher. I need him. I want him. I love him.
But still I dig my hands into the sheets and tell myself to stay strong. Tell him what’s bothering you, Misty.
But then we might fight, and if we fight, there’s a chance he won’t do me.
And I really want him to do me.
He clucks his tongue as if sensing my hesitation. “You’re impossible, you know that, right? You’ve been chasing me for days and now that I’m here, ready to claim you, you’re hesitating as if someone just offered you a half-eaten banana. What do you want, for me to get on one knee?”
“It wouldn’t hurt,” I joke.
His expression darkens. “We don’t work like that, Misty. But I am going to claim you. You know it and I know it.”
I swallow, still heating up as his scent overwhelms me. I still don’t know how to describe it. It’s like joy, translated into a scent. It just makes my heart full to breathe it in, makes my whole body come alive with wanting, and makes my whole view of the universe center in on this man.
And he hasn’t even touched me yet. Still, there’s a slight hesitation in my heart as I watch him.
He presses his lips together. “I guess I have no choice.” He turns and storms from the room, slamming the door behind him.
Chapter 10
I wince, feeling cold at the loss of him. I’m about to get up and follow him, wanting to beg for forgiveness, to say anything, just so he comes back, when he comes in with a sheaf of papers in his hands. He tosses them toward me. They’re paper-clipped and they land in a thump on the end of the bed. I crawl over and gingerly pick them up, looking at the title.
“Lindon, what is this?” I ask, leafing through the pages, shock rising in me as I start to figure it out, but don’t dare to believe it. “Is this your—”
“It’s a rough draft,” he says, turning around with folded arms. Back straight and rigid, neck turning pink from embarrassment.
Happiness goes through me as I read through it. Probably only fifty pages so far. “So you’ve been writing this since when?” I ask.
“Since we got here. I thought it would be a good distraction from the stress to just start a new project. But I’ve always been a person who stays too caught up in their head and doesn’t listen to their subconscious or their drives. I think that’s why I missed that I’ve been fated for you all along.”
I set the papers aside, desperate to read them, but more desperate to hear what he’s about to say.
“That night, after we fought, I went back to my room to write. I thought you were safe. If I had known…”
“I know,” I say. “Don’t worry, you did enough. You were there in time.”
“Thank heavens, because I probably would have died if I hadn’t. I can’t go through that again,” he says quietly, facing the window now.
“Go through what?” I ask.
“Losing someone
who means everything to me,” he says. “Didn’t you read the book?”
“What there is of it, not that I understand.”
“Hmph. Go to the second to last page. There’s a paragraph there that explains it.”
“Okay,” I say, flipping through it.
“I wrote that when I was trying to figure things out. Trying to come to terms with what I had always thought about Ava not being true. Trying to figure out how much I’d been hiding and missing, and how I really felt about you.”
“Ah,” I say, pausing in turning the pages to listen.
“Anyway, that night, reading what I was writing, it became clear to me. It was like being hit by a sword, straight through the center. All I could see was your face, at various times and various moments, from the first time we met. All I could do was think of the rage I felt when another male was close to you, and how much I wanted to pick you up and take you back to my room and finish what I started.”
He shakes his head. “I was looking for you to tell you that when I found you were gone. It was like the world stopped turning in those minutes. I was so worried I’d be too late.”
“But you weren’t.”
“Ironic, right? That trying to keep myself from being hurt almost led to me being hurt. And worse, you being hurt.”
“Not worse in my mind. There’s nothing I can think of more horrible than sitting there watching you suffer like you did.” I blink back tears at the thought of his pale face. “I couldn’t stand it.”
“Do you really love me?” he asks quietly, still facing away.
I can feel heat move up my neck into my cheeks. “Yes. You heard that?”
He nods. “I heard some things. I couldn’t tell what was real and what was a dream. But when I heard that, I hoped it was real. I felt my heart beat extra hard, almost with an echo, and I think that’s what started me on the way back.” He waves a hand. “But read what I wrote. I think it’ll make more sense after that. Sorry it’s not romance. I’ve been writing thrillers for almost my whole career. I wrote Sylvester’s book ages ago. Though I can write another romance for you, if you like.”
I grin at that, unable to believe how lucky I am to have found him. I flip through the pages until I see the underlined section. It’s marked in red, by hasty hands that are clearly freaking out as they see what I see.
“He couldn’t get her out of his mind. When he was asleep, when he was awake, she tormented him. Like the universe was reminding him of how much he couldn’t have, how much he’d never have again.”
I turn the page, blinking back tears again. I feel so emotional, so fragile lately. But also, more alive than ever before.
“But it was in one of those moments where she was there in his mind that it occurred to him that maybe she wasn’t the taunt of something he’d never have, but a hint of promise for the future.
A haunting beam of light guiding him toward a hope he’d never thought he’d see again.
Maybe she didn’t make him uncomfortable because she reminded him of what he couldn’t have. Maybe she made him uncomfortable because she made him want to reach for something more.
Because he had come to love her.”
A tear falls on the papers and I set them aside and fold my hands in my lap. I’m unable to keep back a little sniffle, and he turns, eyes widened in shock and horror.
“Did I hurt your feelings? Let me explain.”
I wave a hand. “No, I’m just emotional lately. A lot has happened. It’s not a bad thing. Lindon, that’s just so…”
“So…?” He takes another cautious step forward, eyeing me with suspicion, like he thinks I might attack him.
“Beautiful!” I say, throwing my arms around him and pulling him onto the bed on top of me.
“Is that a yes?” he asks, brushing hair back from my face. “Because I do love you, Misty. That’s why I think we’re fated. I wanted to take care of you from the minute I met you. I just think we were meant for each other.”
“Me too,” I say. “Not that that made it easy.”
“True,” he says, kissing my forehead lightly, and then my cheek.
“I thought you were only trying to mate me because you thought we were fated.”
He gives me a wry grin that makes the dimple in his cheek appear. “Come on, Misty. You know I’m too stubborn to let a little thing like fate stop me if I do or don’t want something. It just took me a little while to realize it.”
“Ah.”
“So when I jumped in front of you, it was reflexive, and yes, confirmed what I already knew about being fated with you. But at the same time, the reason I was running up that hill in the first place had nothing to do with fate, and everything to do with being willing to give my life for you. Because I love you.”
“I love you, too,” I say, nuzzling his nose. “Isn’t that crazy?”
“Yes,” he says. “And cheesy. Gosh, I feel like Hawes or something. Can we please get on to the fun stuff?”
“Hey,” I say, “a girl needs romance.”
“I’ll buy you a pack of your favorite donuts after,” he says, giving me a rakish wink.
“I’ll think about it.”
“You…” He growls and tackles me back against the bed, pinning my wrists above my head. The mood in the room changes instantly, and his glowing gold eyes look down into mine for confirmation.
“Yes,” I say simply.
He grins.
He kisses my hands, the tips of my fingers, sucking one into his hot mouth and laving it with his rough tongue. Then he trails down my sensitive wrists and kisses his way down my arms, pausing at the elbows and then making his way down to my shoulders. It’s like he wants to mark every part of me with his mouth. I sigh and writhe against the sensation, so intense I can barely stand it, especially with the feel of his hot thighs pressed against my hips as he straddles me. But his hold on my hands keeps me from writhing away from all of the pleasure he can give me.
When he lets my hands go to cup my face and bring me up for a hard kiss, my hands come up to curl into his short hair and pull him forward as our hot tongues intertwine. Finally we can be as hot for each other as we have been from the moment we first kissed.
Finally he’ll be mine.
I start trying to take his shirt off, anxious to get my hands on those rippling abs and he lets out a low growl and catches both of my wrists in one of his hands. I look up at him guiltily and he waves a stern finger at me.
“I told you, I like control,” he says. “I want you to take all of the pleasure you can, and then some. I want you to not be able to get away as I show you everything I can do to you. With you. For you.” His eyes darken to a lustful dark gold, and he steps off the bed and goes to the closet. When he comes back, I see two designer ties in his hands, and my eyes widen.
I scoot back against the headboard, turned on and also apprehensive about trying this.
At the same time, the image of him crawling over my body, doing whatever he wants to me while I’m totally helpless, is so hot that I can’t even think as he comes closer, a small grin on his perfect face.
“Is that a yes?” he asks, holding up the tie.
I gulp and nod.
His grin widens. “Great. I’ve been wanting to do this since I met you. Tie you up and let that sassy mouth say whatever it wants while I make love to you until you’re senseless.”
I bite my lip. It’s hot and kind of offensive at the same time. But that’s Lindon from the start.
“The safe word is Sylvester,” he says, with a small wink.
I laugh, flushing. “You want me to say your character’s name during sex?”
“It would definitely snap me out of any lust-filled haze if you needed me to, so yeah.”
“Okay,” I say. “Sylvester it is.”
He nods and takes one of my hands. He gently ties the tie around my wrist and loops it around the bedpost on the other side. I pull against it. It’s not super tight or uncomfortable. And oh, the things Lind
on can do to me. He does the same with the other hand. I have some movement. But I can’t run away from him. Not unless I say the safe word.
“Do you always like it like this?” I ask.
“Hon, this is mild bondage. Not that kinky. I’m pretty vanilla. I mean, I don’t need fancy things to make you feel like heaven. But at the same time, this first time, I just need to be able to watch you. Please you. Feel you.” He leans forward and licks a line from my belly button up between my breasts, pushing my shirt out of the way as he goes and drawing a sharp gasp from me.
“Why does it all feel so good?”
“Because I love you,” he says simply. “And you love me.”
I nod. It’s the only explanation, even if it seems crazy after so little time together. Then again, I had years and years to fall for someone else, and I didn’t. Maybe some of us really are meant to be with one person, and we just have to find them.
Or maybe some of us are just broken enough that when we find someone else who is broken, who fits with us to make us whole, our hearts decide in a single moment.
I groan and bite my lip against the pleasure as he removes my bra and takes my nipple in his mouth. He works it gently, his hands running up and down my arms. I wonder if he’s going to do what he did before to me. As if he can read my thoughts, he gives me a confident smirk and pulls off my pants and then my panties.
I let out a heady sigh and his eyes flick to mine.
“Forever, Misty. After this, you’re mine forever,” he says.
“I’m already yours,” I choke out, as he lowers his head between my legs. “Oh Lindon!”
It’s even more intense since I can’t move, and I writhe, leg muscles clenching, trying to stave off the release that is building incredibly quickly as his tongue works expertly over me. “Oh, oh, Lindon…I…” I can’t finish my sentence as my eyes roll back and I swear I can see fireworks behind my eyelids as my body feels showered in sparks and I convulse from the center outward. So much pleasure it’s more than one person can take.
But before I’m even finished, Lindon is going again, and he takes me over the edge before I can take even another breath. I scream this time, happy no one can hear us now that we’re alone. It feels good to scream out against the intensity, kind of like it feels good to scream on the falling part of a roller coaster. It feels so intense you almost need to scream to distract yourself enough to stand it.
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