AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“This body is more than right, Paisley.” Those palms went to exploring, riding up my hips and gliding over my bottom, careful as he took a handful of each cheek. “This body is everything. Everything I want to protect. Everything I want to possess. Everything I need.”
“It’s yours.” It was a breath, and he inhaled as he began to slowly sway us in my room.
Night all around, the sounds of the ranch beyond the window whispering at the glass. The play of the branches where the breeze bustled through the leaves of the trees, the bugs humming their night song, peace wrapping the house in a blanket of comfort.
Evelyn was sleeping in the room next to us.
Safe.
Whole.
And Caleb was holding me close.
And I knew that I didn’t want to be anywhere else than right here with this man in that moment.
Right here with this man I’d come to love.
Right here next to the little girl who’d stolen my heart.
Every part of me belonged to them both.
Caleb swayed me in a slow dance, the rhythm our own time, the drone of the stilled night our tempo.
And I gazed up at him while he stared down at me, tenderness thawing the ice of his eyes.
He ran the back of his hand up my jaw before he shifted his hand and weaved his fingers through my hair. Softly. His hand tangled in the locks before he cupped the side of my head. “I need to ask you something, Paisley.”
“Anything.”
He brushed the pad of his thumb along my temple, and his hand began to shake.
“What is it?” I almost begged it, caught in the swell of his uncertainty.
“If something happens to me, I want you to take Evelyn.”
My heart raced, and I curled my fingers in his shirt. “What do you mean?”
Sorrow glanced through his expression before ferocity rushed in to take its place. “I told you before that I would do whatever it took to put that monster in the ground. I don’t know what’s coming. What the cost is going to be. But I have to return to Seattle soon. Find him. End this. And if something happens to me, I want you to take Evelyn. Raise her. Love her the way you do.”
My God. He was asking me to stand for her like a mother. Love her and cherish her and adore her forever. I also understood what he was implying. Where his true fears lie. A fear I couldn’t handle. One I couldn’t imagine.
“Of course, Caleb. Of course.” My fingers curled tighter as the thought of losing him wrapped me in shackles of dread. “But nothing is going to happen to you. I won’t let it.”
Denial of what I said fueled his words. “I’ve done terrible things, Paisley. Things that have earned me pain and grief.”
“Let me hold those mistakes, too.”
He pushed on like he couldn’t accept what I’d offered, grating the plea, his biggest fears and highest hopes and most profound purpose placed on a platter for me. Trusting me with it. “Promise me, Paisley, if something happens, you will be there for her. There is no one who will love her the way you do.”
Agony crested with the affection. “I promise.”
He swallowed hard, his thick throat bobbing around the relief. “I’ll call my attorney tomorrow to get the paperwork drawn up.”
“Okay.”
His nod was slight. “You’re a miracle, Paisley. A chaotic, reckless miracle that Evelyn needed.”
Didn’t he get it? I needed this miracle, too, the same as he needed it.
The three of us tossed together by a tragedy neither of them should have had to endure. But that tragedy had brought us here anyway.
Each of us clinging to the other because we’d found what we’d needed.
What we’d been missing.
He kept swaying me slow as I began to work through the buttons of his shirt, unable to look away from the stony strength of his features as I did. Understanding and wanting him in a way that I’d never thought I would.
Wholly.
Permanently.
Desperately.
He pressed a big hand over both of mine to try to stop me. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“What does it look like? Undressing you.” I whispered it like seduction. I was going to have to play dirty to get this bad boy to give.
That steely jaw clenched. My stomach lit in a bout of giddiness, knowing how ferociously he wanted me, how ferociously he wanted to protect me at the same time. “Not going to happen.”
“Oh, it’s going to happen, Mr. Greyson. I’m not injured, so you can go ahead and stop treating me like glass. And after you promised to ruin me.” I pushed up on my toes and murmured the last at his ear.
His arm tightened around my waist, and he pulled me against him on a groan, his body arching around mine like he might fully consume me.
