Every Breath
Page 22
I slip it on and step in front of the little mirror on the back of the closet door, and I smile. Dear God, I’m a knockout. I never really dress up and put makeup on like this, so I would’ve never expected I’d look this damn good. The fact that I even think so makes me laugh out loud, which turns into a fit of giggles, which turns into my mascara running, which then makes me realize I’m insanely nervous. He hasn’t actually called it that, but I think I’m going on a date.
“Makenna, are you dressed?” Sawyer calls out from the hallway. I was so busy laughing at myself that I didn’t hear him come in.
Oh, shit. “Umm, I’ll be out in just a sec.”
“Okay, darlin’, take your time. I’ll just wait in the living room.”
I jog back into the closet and slip my feet into some black pumps, and I sprint back over to the mirror to fluff my hair and dab on some perfume and lip gloss, which is not an easy thing to do when your hands won’t be still.
As soon as I finally force myself to step out of his room, I spot him standing by the front door, looking all kinds of delicious in black slacks and a crisp white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the middle of his forearms.
“Wow. Just . . . wow.” Sawyer comes up to me and slips his arms around my waist. “There’s not a single word in my vocabulary that could do you justice.”
“I could say the same about you. I think I have a newfound respect for white dress shirts. As my mom would say, you’re smokin’ hot.”
He rolls his eyes, but his mouth curls up in the lopsided grin that I adore before he kisses my cheek. “You have no idea.”
“Huh? I have no idea what?”
He winks. “Nothin’, darlin’. Let’s go eat before we miss our reservation.”
He takes me to a little place just outside of town called Giano’s. The older man that greets us at the door practically drags Sawyer inside and bear hugs him, saying something in Italian and patting his cheek.
He turns to me and takes my hand, kissing the top of it gently. “Ah, molto bella. I have the best table for you two. Follow me.”
“What did he just say to me?” I whisper as we walk to the back of the restaurant.
“The truest words I’ve heard spoken all day. He said that you’re very beautiful.”
Our table is situated in a private corner of the room. The only light comes from some twinkling strands of lights wrapped around the greenery in the corners and the soft glow of candlelight on the table. It’s perfectly romantic and unexpected.
Once he pulls my chair out for me, Sawyer takes the seat across from me, reaching across the table to take both of my hands in his. “Merry Christmas, Makenna.” He looks up from our hands, and my response catches in my throat. The way the candlelight glimmers in his eyes reminds me of the first time I dreamed about him and the way his luminous, golden eyes smoldered as I pulled him down to kiss me. That dream will haunt me forever. I won’t ever forget it.
We chat for a while before the food comes out, and I find myself completely lost in him, an instant addiction that I can’t seem to satisfy. I can’t get enough of his sweet baritone voice or the feel of his rough fingers on my skin. I could drown myself in his eyes, his scent. Even though I’m sitting right here with him, it’s just not enough. I want more.
But what that entails, I’m not entirely sure.
After I nearly stuff myself with the most amazing spinach ravioli I’ve ever eaten, in addition to bruschetta and far too much wine, Giano comes back to our table to ask how I liked the food. Before he walks away, he leans down to Sawyer’s ear and speaks in Italian again. A thoughtful smile curls up the corners of Sawyer’s mouth for a moment, and he finally nods.
“You know Italian?” I ask when Giano shuffles away, clapping his hands.
“I’ve picked a lot of it up, yes. I’ve always been fascinated with the language.”
He never ceases to surprise me. “Well, what did he just say to you that was such a big secret?”
“I’ll tell you soon enough. I promise.”
By the time we make it to my house, I’m nervous and excited, but at the same time, I’m a little sad. I’ve loved waking up in Sawyer’s house the last few days, so I’m not exactly looking forward to being home again.
Sawyer leads me up to the house with one hand at the small of my back, and when we reach the porch, he slips a set of keys out of his pocket and drops them into my hands. “These are the keys to all of the new locks. I thought it would be a good idea in case the person that broke in happened to snag a spare while they were here.”
“Oh. Yeah, I didn’t think of that. Thank you.” I don’t know what to expect when I swing the door open, but I do know that I didn’t expect to see Darcy pacing in the entryway.
“I called Dr. Luciano before we went over there this morning, and she told me that she could come home today if she takes it easy and comes back for a checkup next week. I asked her not to mention it to you, so I could make it all part of the surprise.”
As soon as I pick Darcy up, she nudges her nose against my chin, and I throw my free arm around Sawyer, kissing him on the cheek. “Thank you.” And that’s when the little traitor jumps from my arms and into Sawyer’s and does the same to him.
With Darcy at our heels, Sawyer shows me everything he’s done in the house, including the new alarm system he had installed. And he didn’t just repair what was broken. He cleaned everything up and made it look like my home again. Of course, nothing is where I normally keep it, but it’s still perfect. I think it actually looks better than it did before. The strong smell of fresh paint and all the new furniture is a nice reminder that even something so broken can be renewed with a little work, time, and care. Just like me.
When we make it back to the living room, he shows me my new laptop sitting on the little desk he built to replace the one that was damaged. Something different about the fireplace mantle catches my eye, so I study it closely. All of the picture frames that were broken were replaced, so all of my pictures of Shane and me are back where they belong. But joining them, right in the center, is the picture Sawyer took of us in his car. For some reason, having that picture in my house makes him truly seem like a part of me now.
“Thank you for fixing the pictures, too. I know that must have been strange for you.”
He shrugs. “No. Not really. If you love him, he deserves to be remembered. He’s a part of who you are now.”
“He certainly is.” I nod, swallowing down the lump in my throat. Not because I’m sad, but because it’s a relief that he understands. And I’m sure my parents and Callie would, too, if I gave them the chance.
Sawyer takes my hand, leading me to the couch that now faces the bay window. I hadn’t ever considered doing that before, but it’s nice to be able to sit back and look at the stars reflecting off the little pond and the moon peeking through the clouds. Sawyer has helped me to see so many things differently.
I curl up into his side and kick off my heels, bringing my feet up underneath me. “You’re an amazing person, you know that?”
“That’s debatable,” he says, kissing the top of my head. “But your opinion is the only one that matters to me.”
“Good answer.”
We sit there in silence that becomes increasingly more uncomfortable as each second passes. I peek up at him and catch him looking at me, so I flash a polite smile and look back down. I feel him flinch, and I realize I’m unconsciously grazing my fingers up and down his side, which is only fair since he’s rubbing slow, torturous circles on my bare shoulder. Then, I notice his foot that has been tapping the entire time has picked up its rhythm significantly, effectively shaking the whole couch. With every moment that passes, with every single breath we take, the air in the room gets thicker and thicker.
No, not the air. The tension.
Finally, I can’t take it any longer. I jerk myself upright with what I can only imagine to be a completely psychotic look on my face. I’m breathless, and my mouth is opening and c
losing while I try to come up with something remotely intelligible to say.
“What’s wrong?” He almost looks hurt.
I jump up from the couch and start pacing around the room, glancing up at Shane’s pictures every couple of steps. I haven’t figured out how to verbalize it just yet, but I know what’s wrong. I know what I want. I’m just scared to admit it. Am I ready to go through with it? Am I ready to give away that one piece of myself that only belonged to Shane? Would he hate me for it?
I feel two strong hands at the tops of my shoulders. “You don’t need to have his permission to be happy, Makenna. He clearly loved you. Think about it for a second. If he was here right now, what would he tell you?”
“He would tell me to follow my gut.”
Sawyer spins me around to face him and caresses my cheek. “Okay, so don’t think about what he would want. Don’t think about what I want. Not your family. Not your friends. Just you, Makenna. What do you want?”
When you strip it down to the very core of what I feel deep down, I know exactly what it is. He’s right. Shane would want me to do whatever makes me happy, and I’ve known that all along. This was just my own self-doubt making one last attempt at sucking me in. I’ve made my peace with it already. I’m a different person now. Not completely mended, but I’m well on my way.
And for the first time, I not only know what it is that I want, I’m going after it.
I look up at Sawyer’s concerned face. And in that moment, it’s like my heart finally lets go of the last of the chains surrounding it and opens wide, allowing me to see that he’s the person who’s capable of rebuilding those missing pieces of me.
He stands perfectly still as I reach out and rub my hands across his broad chest, feeling every hard line stretching up over his shoulders. And while I trail the fingertips of one hand up the side of his neck, I flick open the buttons of his shirt with the other and tug it loose from his pants. Shoving it off his shoulders, I let it fall to the floor in a faint “whoosh.” The smoldering heat from his skin is radiating through the soft t-shirt he’s wearing, and I can’t help but rub my face against his warm chest and inhaling his intoxicating scent.
Still pressed against him, I reach around his waist to pull the shirt free, and that finally gets a reaction from him.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asks, gently grasping my wrists.
“Never been more certain about anything in my life.”
He releases his hold, and his fingertips trail from my arms up to my neck, where he places a hand on each side and caresses my jaw with his thumbs. “First, I want to explain what you asked me about earlier. About what Giano asked me.”
I giggle. “I’m trying to take your shirt off, and you want to translate Italian for me?”
“I think it’s something you should hear before we go any further. I want to tell you. After you hear it, you may change your mind. You may want to slow things down once I tell you. I just want you to have all of the information before we take this step. There’s no turning back after this, so I want you to be sure.”
This doesn’t sound good. This sounds serious. “Okay. I’m listening.”
“Giano . . . he’s known me for many years, so when I called him to arrange our dinner tonight, he was more than a little surprised. Dating, as a rule, is an extremely rare occurrence for me. Practically non-existent. So, to him, that was red flag number one. The second red flag was when I wanted to talk to his wife, Nina, to get recommendations of dress shops. And I’m pretty sure the last, and final, one was the fact that I couldn’t keep my eyes, or hands, off you the entire time we were there.”
I’m not sure where he’s going with this, but he’s scaring me a little bit. He looks so anxious and vulnerable, and I haven’t seen him look at me like that since our video chats when he was overseas.
He takes a deep breath and blows it out slowly before continuing. “When he came to the table that last time, he asked me if you were ‘l’amore della mia vita,’ meaning ‘the love of my life.’ Do you remember what my response was to that question?”
Oh my. I do remember. He nodded. “Y-you said ‘yes.’”
“And I said that because you are, Makenna. I’ve never met anyone like you. I’ve never cared before what a woman thought of me. I never wanted to better myself just to be worthy of someone’s friendship. And I’ve sure as hell never caught myself daydreaming about a future with anyone before. Not until you. You’ve broken some walls down that I didn’t even know existed. It’s only been a couple of months since I met you, but I can’t imagine a single day that doesn’t have you in it.”
The entire world around us has fallen away, and I feel like all that’s left is him and me, suspended in time. I don’t know how to respond, and at the same time, I don’t know how not to. There’s so much I want to say, but the words don’t exist. Nothing can describe what he’s done for me, what he means to me. And most importantly, what his love means to me.
He blanches when I don’t say anything. “I just need you to know how I feel before we cross a line. That way, if you don’t feel the same, we can end it before it ever starts. If you just want to be my friend, I respect that.”
Since words still don’t come, I do the only thing I can think of that will show him that I feel the same as he does. I take hold of his face and press my mouth to his, kissing him with such force, such fervent desire, that I know there’s no way he wouldn’t know how much I care for him.
He’s almost statuesque for a few seconds, almost like he’s truly shocked that I want more. But it doesn’t take long for his hands to find their way around my back, stroking the skin left bare by the low cut dress. His tongue finally slips between my tingling lips to seek out mine, twisting, tangling, melding us together to become one.
To finish what I started earlier, I pull his t-shirt up until the hem is free, my hands diving beneath it to finally feel the skin I’ve ached for so long. He takes my cue and reaches over his head, pulling it off and tossing it in the floor. The soft glow of the lamp shines on his bronze skin, so I can see the tattoos he’s been hiding underneath there all this time. His chest, his ribcage, his back . . . he’s covered in ink.
Over his heart is a scroll that says “I will always place the mission first. I will never accept defeat. I will never quit. I will never leave a fallen comrade.” The words “Si vis pacem, para bellum” stretch from shoulder to shoulder, across his collarbone. “Gone but Never Forgotten” is tattooed down his left side, as are several dog tags with various names and dates. And there are various other symbols that I don’t understand and several scenes depicting soldiers, flags, and memorials.
Once I stop trying to read into the tattoos, though, I realize what a beautiful man he is. Ridges of taut muscle and the valleys between them, covered in tattoos and scars. Top it all off with those amber honey eyes staring down at me, full of love and understanding. He’s nothing short of perfection. And he’s mine.
I reach around to the zipper on my dress and fumble with it, not remembering the simple act of undressing myself ever being so hard before. But those calloused fingers I love replace mine and take over for me. When I reach for my dress to slip it off, though, he stops me and leads me toward the couch and sits down, dragging me down to straddle him. Once I’m in his lap, his searing mouth goes straight for my lips, then my neck, while his hands slide up the tops of my thighs.
I feel my fingertips digging into the firm flesh of his shoulders, but I couldn’t stop it if I tried. With his mouth on me, sucking and nipping at my collarbone, I’m lost in him and completely controlled by some type of carnal instinct, a merciless spell created just for us. All sense of reason is gone when I feel his hands slide up over my hips and grab the bottom of my dress now bunched up to my stomach. In a gentle, easy motion, it’s gone, laying in the floor next to his shirts.
He drinks in the sight of my breasts nearly falling out of the black lace bra cups and groans. “You’re so damn beautiful.”
It feels like a delicious wildfire has taken over my body. Starting low in my belly, it’s now spreading out of control, and I’ll be damned if someone puts it out now. I want it to consume me, every ounce of my being, and I’ll do almost anything to amp up the heat. And I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one. We’ve become almost frantic. Kissing. Sucking. Clawing. Biting. Grinding. It’s heaven.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa . . . we need to breathe a minute.” Sawyer nudges me, his chest heaving, begging for air.
My teeth graze the outside edge of his ear. “I know you’re in better shape than that,” I whisper.
“That’s not what I mean.” He cranes his head around to face me. “I meant we need to slow down. As much as I’d like to, I’m not going to do this on the couch. Not this time. I want to take you upstairs and lie with you in bed, so I can properly worship that gorgeous body of yours. And so I can make love to you like you deserve. Are you okay with that?”
I barely manage half a nod before I’m kissing him again. Sawyer gets to his feet with me still clinging to him, and he wraps my legs around him more tightly and firmly grasps the back of my thighs. If he has any trouble ascending the stairs, I certainly can’t tell it, but that’s probably because I don’t even know my own name at this point. Once at the top, he presses me against the wall, relieving enough of my weight that he’s able to free one of his hands to cup my breast. I jump at the contact, which causes my head to bounce off the wall, and we both erupt in laughter.