“Like… what?” I knew I was leaving myself open to questions about anything. Despite that, I didn’t want to spoil the reconnection we’d made by being too guarded.
His gaze deepened. “Lana D’Angelo, the internet is littered with all these guys on your arm. Can’t help but feel a certain type of way. Maybe it’s my ego. I’m the perpetual alpha who needs a reason to explain why something didn’t work out.”
It didn’t surprise me that he’d seen those pictures of me, but there was that question again. The question of why I left.
Why we didn’t work out.
“When you left how long was it before you started… well, dating again?” He added.
I knew this guy and knew the real question he was asking. He wanted to know how long before I slept with someone else. If anyone else had asked me that I wouldn’t have answered, simply because, with the exception of him, I’d never been with anyone who mattered enough for me to care about that.
There was a time when I was his and he was mine. So I owed him an answer.
“It was five years,” I replied. “Five years until I dated anyone, and then seven years before I slept with anyone.”
I didn’t miss the flash of anger that flickered in his eyes. It felt like I’d just confessed to cheating, although at the time we were years away from being together.
“Seven years?” he asked. His head tilted to the side then straightened up.
“Yeah.” Much as I’d wanted to know how long he’d waited I decided it was best if I didn’t know.
“It was eight for me,” he declared, almost like he could read my mind.
Admittedly, I was shocked, but shamed filled me because I’d slept with someone before he did. Then guilt came because he’d waited so long.
“Eight?” I said that more to myself than him.
“Eight. I looked for you for years. Feels like I’m still looking.”
While he did that habitual smirk without the humor the backs of my eyes stung.
All I could do was stare back at him.
Ryan spent years looking for me…
Years.
How I’d hoped he’d forget me.
“I’m sorry.” I must have sounded like a broken record.
“Yeah… me too,” he answered and I wasn’t sure if that meant he was sorry he wasted his time looking or that it happened.
“You found me.” I pointed out. “It doesn’t feel like it was the other day.” In my brainstorm and thoughts of him that was the conclusion I’d come to. When I’d seen him in L.A, he’d acted like he knew more than he showed. Even though what he’d showed was pretty effective to express how he felt.
“It wasn’t the other day. Found you six years ago… purely by accident. I wasn’t looking. The one time I wasn’t looking and there you were. Thought my mind was screwing with me when I saw you walk past me in the hotel lobby at the Hilton in Santa Monica.”
My lips parted. “Oh my God.”
“It was a fashion show.”
I knew from the mention of six years ago which fashion show it was. It was a Dior show, one of my most successful where I really got to shine. He was there and I couldn’t believe I’d walked past him.
“Why didn’t you say something?” I held his gaze.
He shook his head. “No, I wouldn’t have said anything. You looked happy… It was enough. I didn’t want to be a reminder of what you ran from.”
My gaze dropped to the counter.
This was so awful and I couldn’t have felt more torn than I did from the inner turmoil that roiled within me. The truth struggled to fight through the barriers I’d placed up to keep it hidden.
I couldn’t hold back the wayward tear that ran down my cheek. I wiped it away quickly and willed the rest to stay away. I couldn’t start crying again. Not in front of him.
I looked back to him and saw he was already watching me.
“I didn’t run from you,” I told him.
“It’s okay. Has to be, right?”
“It’s not okay.”
“But it has to be, can’t change the past.” Hurt filled his eyes but he did that thing where he just glossed over it with a grin. “So… back to playing catch up. Did you ever get married? All those guys, one of them must have ticked the box. At first I kind of hoped that was why I couldn’t find you. I told myself that maybe I couldn’t find you because your last name changed. Then I did find you and I realized a version of that did happen.”
“I didn’t get married.” My voice came out in a rasp from the anxiety that swept over me.
“How come?”
“I never got that far with any of them.”
“Not even one?” he quirked his brows. “You dated some pretty powerful men, with deep pockets, hard to believe that not one of them were marriage material.”
“They were not.” We continued to gaze at each other and since we were talking about marriage I obviously wondered what happened to him.
He tore his gaze away from mine, glanced to the countertop surface returned his focus to me. “I’m divorced, but I guess you probably knew that if you hired a private investigator to check me out.”
I nodded slowly. “What happened?”
Selfishness made envy course through me again. The same envy I’d faced as a child when I watched him with one girl after another.
What was his wife like?
Maybe like the girls at school who swooned over him.
The pain and hardness in his eyes removed the envy from me. It suggested he was about to tell me something that truly hurt him.
“It didn’t work out. It’s a …long, long story that ended badly. The kind of shit that made life so much worse than it already was.” The pain reflected in every word he uttered. It reached out to me. Remorse flooded my heart and weighed down my soul.
I left because I thought his life would be better. Hearing it wasn’t, physically sickened me. I set the bowl down on the counter and allowed my brain to truly process what he’d said.
What did Mrs. O’Shea think of that?
She’d been so adamant that her son could do so much better than me and he should.
I hoped he would. I’d hoped he would find someone to love him, even half as much as I did.
If it was half, I would have been satisfied that he’d have a happy life. Even if it was a third of the love, it would have been satisfactory.
Hearing that never happened grieved me in a way I couldn’t explain and to a depth that enraged me.
I walked around to him and for an instant his gaze sharpened. He measured me with a cool appraising look, and gave me a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
“Don’t take pity on me, princess,” he stated. “That ego of mine doesn’t want to be pitied. I got out of the situation.”
“I’m sorry,” I breathed. It wasn’t pity. It truly was deep sorrow. “I didn’t want that for you.”
He gave me a curious look. “What did you want for me?”
“Someone who made you happy. Someone who appreciated you and your weirdness.” I thought some lightheartedness would help.
“You think I’m weird?” He smirked.
“Is that even a rhetorical question?” I smiled back.
“No, of course it’s not. I’m not weird. I’m extraordinary.” Only he could say something like that.
“Yes, exactly.” I continued to stare, bringing back the seriousness to the conversation. “I hoped you’d end up with someone extraordinary too and you’d live in a house where you’d paint every day. Like the landscapes you used to paint. I just wanted you to be with someone who deserved you.”
He stared at me and bit the inside of his lip. “That sounds real nice, and I feel like an ass because I can’t say I wished the same for you, because I wanted to be that guy for you.”
My chest tightened on hearing that and I felt worse than I thought I would.
“You were,” I confessed, my voice was barely above the whisper on which I spoke.
&n
bsp; “Were. That’s the thing, right? I was…I used to be. I’m past tense.”
The right thing to do was lie to him and agree that he was past tense. Georgie’s words came right back to my mind though.
Right there in the moment. She’d said I still loved him.
I did.
Never stopped. Seventeen years passed us by and I’d never stopped. A century could fly by in the same breath and it wouldn’t change what my heart wanted.
“No,” I whispered breathlessly.
He leaned closer. “If that’s true Lana Connell, then how did we get here?”
“It’s complicated.” It was like I was programmed to say that, to give that answer for everything.
“Yes, fucking right.” He nodded firmly, face stern with conviction. He stood up and towered over me with his height. “I think we can agree on that. It’s complicated. It absolutely is. We haven’t been together in seventeen years. You’ve been with other people. I’ve been with other people. I should have moved on. I should be able to sit here and at least try to be your friend. But when I look at you, it’s hard for me to not touch you.”
The sting of his words pierced something. It pierced through that wall I’d placed up to guard my heart and keep myself going.
Nothing was truer than what he just said. I should have moved on too. I thought that I’d taken those first steps many years ago when I stopped checking in on him. I thought I’d done both of us a favor by trying to move on with my life and forget the past.
I didn’t though. I never moved on. I just fooled myself into thinking so. Like patching together a broken vase with tape. It may hold together but it would never be fixed.
Touch…
I released the breath I’d been holding on to and clarity filled my mind.
Clarity and the question of what I wanted.
What I truly wanted.
I was always going to be a fashion designer. My love for that wasn’t the same as wanting something. In my whole life I’d only ever truly wanted one thing and that was him.
Ryan O’Shea.
No one could tell me any different, and there wasn’t a living soul that could stop me now.
Now, here, with him telling me that he found it hard not to touch me.
“Then touch me,” I told him and it was as if the wall I’d placed up crumbled around me to welcome him.
I gazed up at him and savored the way his eyes darkened with desire.
“Touch… you.” His gaze widened slightly then narrowed, like he wrestled with the idea.
“Touch me.”
I moved closer to him and took his hand. His hand in mine was enough to awaken the magic that I only ever shared with this man. The boy I loved so much.
He stared down at my hand over his and his face etched with longing. He then smoothed his hand over mine so that it was him holding my hand, not the other way around.
He continued to look at our hands together. His light sun-kissed skin against the dark brown hue of mine was like art. The blend of color combined. Inspiration and creativity.
Everything we were. All that we ever were and still were.
When his gaze climbed back up to meet mine the desire came back into his eyes and passion swept through me, riding through my veins, heating my blood.
It raced through me when he stepped closer and I moved to him too. It was like a dance I knew the steps to.
He only released my hand to cup my face. I closed my eyes to relish his touch, the touch I’d longed for, for what seemed like forever.
How I used to dream of this.
He ran his fingers over the edge of my jaw and when I opened my eyes he lingered on my chin, tilting it upwards toward him.
“Lana…you still feel like my girl,” he confessed.
He pulled away and gazed back at me with that pain again in his eyes. Pain and hurt that made guilt sweep through me in abundance.
“You still feel like mine too.” The words straight from my heart felt like freedom. Like true freedom from what I’d run from.
The pain subsided when I moved back to him and as he lowered to my lips I welcomed him, wanting nothing more than him.
The man I’d lost.
He captured my lips and gave me an earth-shattering kiss that scorched me clean. The minute he did that all the reasons that had sent me fleeing from this town faded.
His mother threatening to destroy me, her telling me I wasn’t good enough for her son and me believing it.
It all faded away, dissipating from my mind.
Fire swept through my soul the more he kissed me.
The kind of fire that spoke of what was to come.
Not like a prelude. It was more of a promise.
A promise my heart yearned for.
Chapter 12
Lana
Hungry wasn’t enough of a word to describe the intensity of the kiss.
It was however all I could think of as my blood sang through my veins and I craved more.
More of him.
He pulled me flush against him, and angled my face so he could deepen the kiss. When his tongue swept over mine and reached into the recesses of my mouth I knew within moments I’d be lost.
He moved over to the wall with me and pinned me against it with the hardness of his body. Hard and hot.
Equally hot fingers ran over my waist, tugging at my dress, bunching it up so much it rode up to my hips.
A desperate moan fell from my lips.
I had that out of body experience again because I couldn’t believe how desperate I sounded. Desperate for the moment with this man I’d never thought I’d have again. Desperate to fight myself and the will that made me decide I could be without him. How foolish was I?
This was us.
How we used to be in the past. We were two people who were like combustible energy and passion.
We were the same people. Not that different at all, just older and clearly wanting each other with the same passion that had filled our younger selves.
When his lips moved from mine and trailed down my neck, my knees buckled. He moved back just a little to look at me in that fascinated way he used to. I’d never bothered to hide the effect he had on me then and it was useless now. Only one man had been able to weaken my body like that and it was him.
I reached back for him and tugged on his shirt, pulling him back to me.
“Don’t stop touching me,” I told him. It sounded like a plea. It was. Part of my desperation, part of my need to have him.
“Like fuck, I don’t plan to stop.” He promised with that badass easy grin that always melted me, and in the same breath moved the little straps that held up my dress down my shoulders.
Like a puppet on a string I allowed him to do whatever he wanted to me.
Desire, dark and dangerous, darkened the bright blue of his eyes to a deeper blue. Now reminding me of the last traces of the sky before night took over.
My dress floated down to my legs when he undid the zipper on the side. Then his gaze raked over my body followed by hot, lust filled invisible fingers that burned me everywhere his eyes touched.
He took a prolonged moment to look at me and a sudden awareness rushed through my mind at what he might think of me. I was eighteen the last time we were like this, and I looked different.
I was probably what people called the late bloomer. I didn’t really get my full woman-sized body that I took such pride in until I was about twenty. That was what he looked at now, checking out all the changes to me.
He slid his fingers over the flat of my stomach, right over to the edge of my panties and hooked his fingers in between the lace.
“Black lace…” He breathed tugging on the edge, looking at me like he savored me.
Before he could go any further I reached for him again, pulling on the edge of his white t-shirt.
“You, I want to see you too.”
He didn’t need to be told twice. He pulled the t-shirt over his head and whipped it off, unleas
hing the masterpiece of a body he had underneath. My lips parted as I stared. I wasn’t the only one who’d changed. He had too.
Teenaged Ryan was the stuff dreams were made of, but thirty-six old Ryan was a fantasy.
Hard muscle lined the length of his abs. Hard, deep muscle that was separated into peaks and valleys. Peaks and valleys that were inked with more tattoos than when I last saw him like this.
Seventeen years ago he just had the Japanese character for fire on the edge of his hip. Now he had a few more characters and I loved that he’d had them done in such a tasteful way so as not to take away the attention from the rest of his body. The rest of him that I wanted to relish and run my fingers over.
I touched him, running my palms over his chest and down to his happy trail, stopping by his belt buckle and gazing down at the distinct bulge of his cock pressing against the front of his Levi’s.
It was only when he cupped my breasts that I looked up.
Lightly, he ran his fingers over the already diamond-hard peaks of my nipples then with one quick snap, undid the clasp holding my bra together.
As the bra drifted down my shoulders my breasts spilled out, puckered and full as they bobbled toward him.
He took charge again, pinning me up against the wall. I moaned into the mindless pleasure that gripped my being when he bent low and took my left nipple deep into his mouth. Deep, deep, taking the nipple and as much of the flesh as could fit. The sight of him sucking was so hot I became wet in an instant.
He circled his tongue over my nipple and lapped at the tip making it diamond-hard with an aching need I felt straight in the pit of my core. He then sucked hard like he could truly taste me, the luxurious sensation curled my toes and awakened the raging arousal I’d always had for him.
I lost my mind when he started alternating from one breast to the other, giving each the same attention.
Sucking, licking, lapping, tasting.
All like he wanted to devour me whole.
He moved back again with a wicked smile when he saw what he was doing to me, making me come undone against the wall in his arms when we really hadn’t gotten going yet. This was just the start.
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