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The most noticeable change to everyone else was her weight—which Graham and Deacon were taking credit for. Her face had filled out enough that she almost looked healthy, and while she said she was still two sizes smaller than what she’d been before she’d married Collin, it was a huge difference. She looked more beautiful each day.
For me, it was everything else. It was the way she always found a reason to touch me, the way she no longer had to hold herself together—like she might shatter if she didn’t—and the way it was becoming less often that I had to beg her to come back to me after she woke up screaming in fear. More often than not over the last week, she reached out for me, and brought herself back.
I tilted her head back and passed a brief kiss across her lip
s as she grabbed a shirt out of one of my drawers to put on, then I walked into the bathroom to take a quick shower so she could have a few minutes to herself. I heard her come in at one point to brush her teeth, but she didn’t say anything, so I didn’t, either.
I knew whenever she got done seeing anyone now, whether it was her family or my friends, she needed time to just breathe and unwind since she was still getting used to people talking so freely about how Collin had been. But I’d also learned not to offer to give her the entire night to herself. She said she wanted me near her, and I didn’t want to be anywhere else.
My heart pounded faster when I walked out of the bathroom and saw her sitting on my bed. I didn’t know if I would ever get used to seeing her there, waiting for me, but I knew I didn’t want to. I wanted to always be overwhelmed by how beautiful she was, and always wonder how she could still want me after all the bullshit we’d endured.
Harlow’s head dropped, and she stared at where her hands were twisting together. “You don’t call me yours anymore.”
My lips twitched in amusement, since I’d just been thinking something close to that, but there was no humor in my voice when I declared, “You are mine.”
She lifted her head to look at me thoughtfully. “You said it a lot when I was married. It took me a while to realize it, but you haven’t said it since Collin died.”
“Because it’s not what you need.” I walked over to the bed and sat in front of her, and wrapped an arm around her waist to pull her body closer to mine. “Right now you’re still working through things, and you’re trying to do things your own way for the first time . . . and I need to let you. You don’t need me claiming that you’re mine every day while you’re doing that. And that’s one of the reasons why I haven’t given you my opinion on anything: because I want all these decisions to be only yours. I don’t want you to make them for me or because of me. I know I’ll be in your life, and I’ll fit into whatever you’ve decided to have for yourself, and it will be perfect for us. If I was selfless, I would give you time alone—without me in your life—”
“No!” she whispered, horrified.
“—but I can’t do that. Besides, I think we learned from the first time around that giving you that much space isn’t good for us.” I winked, and she rolled her eyes. “The space I’m giving you is as much as I’m willing to give up after having lost almost five years, but it is only because I think you need it.”
Harlow sighed in relief. After taking a second to gather her thoughts, she argued, “You had an opinion on the money.”
“That’s because you were trying to pay for things for Graham and me, and we didn’t need that. I only fought you when you tried to basically give it, or gift it, to us. And then I only questioned you when you wanted to give it to everyone else because I wanted to make sure you’d thought about it—that’s all.”
She nodded once, silently asking me to continue.
Letting the hand that was wrapped around her waist slowly trail up her side, I leaned closer and whispered, “If I thought you were ready, and I had my way, I wouldn’t let you out of my sight. I would keep you in bed all day, and I would remind you constantly that you are mine.” I placed a soft kiss just below her ear. My lips spread into a smile when Harlow quietly moaned. “I would hold you close every night and would spend every morning worshipping you—just to remind you that we still have sixty years together.”
I leaned over her and gently pushed her back onto the bed, and groaned when I saw she didn’t have anything on underneath my shirt she was wearing. My hand slid between her thighs, parting her, and I captured her mouth when she whimpered as I pressed two fingers inside her.
Her back arched away from the bed, and I swallowed her pleasured moan when she came minutes later. Even through the trembling in her body, she frantically grasped for the towel still hanging on my hips. Once she had it off, I reached over and began digging around in my nightstand without ever breaking from the kiss, and grabbed a condom. Harlow helped me roll it on as I pulled off her shirt, and before I even let her body hit the bed again, I was pushing into her.
“Knox!” she gasped, and gripped at my shoulders as I silently, and physically, claimed what had always been mine. I’d wanted to take this slow, but her moans earlier and the way her nails were digging into my back now were making it impossible.
I gripped her hips as she wrapped her long legs around my back, and a growl rumbled in my chest at her breathy plea for more. I moved quickly but thoroughly inside her as she matched each movement with one of her own, and dropped my head in the crook of her neck as I got closer to my release and felt her tightening around me. My hands moved to grip the comforter, and I bit down at the soft spot at the base of her throat as I tried to hold off my release for her, and the start of her second orgasm sent me into my own.
Harlow held me against her trembling body for minutes after, and I only moved away from her long enough to get rid of the condom in my bathroom before I returned to her side and pulled her into my arms.
We hadn’t used condoms our first two times together, neither of us having thought about it at the time, or even after. Harlow still hadn’t asked me to use one in the handful of times that we’d been together since then, but it was something I knew she needed—just like she needed the time of doing things on her own. While she said she trusted me, I’d still gotten tested again for both our peace of mind. But even though I was clean, it hadn’t gone over well. Harlow’s parents had come back into town and were at her new apartment, and her dad had found my results—which led to him asking why I’d needed to get tested anyway.
I’d had to have another talk with Harlow’s dad because of that. Safe to say I was trying to figure out ways to get back on his good side.
“Knox?” Harlow murmured a few minutes later, and tilted her head back to look into my eyes.
I raised an eyebrow in question, but didn’t speak, just tightened my grip on her and reveled in the fact that there was more of her to grip.
“Thank you . . . for everything. Not just tonight, not for the last month and a half, but for the last seven years. For always being there, for being what I needed at every point in my life, and for knowing what I needed even when I didn’t.” Her eyes filled with tears, and she smiled shakily. “There were times before, when my eighteenth birthday was so close, and it frustrated me that you wouldn’t just let us be what we both wanted. Then with Collin, I was always so scared that he was going to find out about you, and that you were going to get hurt—well, more hurt . . .” She trailed off, and ran her fingers gently over where I’d been shot. “It terrified me that you wouldn’t listen to me, that you kept saying you were going to get me away from him. I thought I knew what was best, that we needed to just act like it wasn’t happening so I could keep everyone safe. Then lately, even though you were usually with me, I could feel that you were holding back. I didn’t know why you were, or what had come between us, and it worried me.”
“Low,” I whispered. My forehead pinched and I pressed my palm to her cheek. If I’d known it had been bothering her, we would’ve talked about it before tonight.
“But at the same time it felt like nothing was between us, and there has never been one moment where I couldn’t see how much you love me. So now that I know what you’re doing, and why you’re doing it, it just makes me appreciate and love you more—like everything else did.” She pressed her hand against where mine was and held my stare for a few seconds before continuing: “I don’t always understand why you do what you do; but I know you always have a reason, and that reason is usually for my best interest. So—just, thank you. I love you, Knox Alexander, and I am so lucky to be loved by you.”
My mouth was on hers before she could finish getting the last word out, and a high-pitched sound of surprise turned into a giggle as she wrapped her arms around me.
“When you say things like that, it makes me want to forget why I’m giving you this time,” I informed her, and she laughe
