“I’ve spent the past seven months watching myself around you as I fell in love, as I came to trust you. Now, I’ve decided that I love you and want to marry you. I’ve also recently learned that you do happen to be attracted to me. You like me well enough that you want to keep me in your life. Furthermore, I’ve had some glorious moments of clarity between yesterday and this morning, and I’ve come to a realization about your trust issues. They’re a bit more specific than just problemstrusting. You said that the person you trustedleftyou, and you’ve mentioned several times now that you think you aren’t interesting enough to keep me invested for long. That’s not a trust issue. I could even argue that telling me that truth placed an amount of trust in my hands. These, mistress, are abandonment issues.”
She flinches.
“I will always love you. I will never leave you. And, starting now, I’m going to be a little bit more reckless than I have been. I might ruin everything, or this might be exactly what you need. So.” I stand.
She stumbles back a step.
“Here are the rules of the game…” I advance as she retreats, persisting until her back hits the wall of the kitchen and my hand plants flat beside her face. “If it gets to be too much and you decide that you don’t care for me at my worst or want me to continue pursuing you openly, textSTOPto me in all caps.”
Her brows knit, and her lashes flutter. “Wha… Like a freakingautomated text line?”
“Yep. Like a freaking automated text line. That’s how you’ll opt out. Make sense?”
“No.”
“Yeah, it does.” I coil a lock of her hair around my finger. “Terms and conditions…”
Her eyes rocket skyward. “Youcannotbe serious.”
I’m so serious. Obviously. I’ve got her in akabedon, for crying out loud. This is peakmasculine seriousnessif ever I’ve witnessed it. “I’m going to cross lines. I’m going to invade space. I’m going to poke boundaries and likely flat-out bulldoze them. I’m going to give you so much of me, it might make you sick. And…I’m going to take as much of you as I can. I’m going to fill my hands and lungs with you, day in, day out. I’m going to push you to a point where you might wish I’d abandon you as I work to sew us together into a single creature.”
“That’s…”
I tug on her hair, and her eyes close. “That’swhat I’m going to do. I’m going to put you inside my bloodstream and make it painfully clear that leaving you would kill me… Because it’s not atrustissue at all, is it?”
“Of course it is,” she exhales. “I can have both trust issues and abandonment issues. I can at least be that complex.”
“Sure.” I let my free hand taste the shape of her hip, then I move my touch back, to her rump. Sliding my fingers into her back pocket, I get her phone and touch it to her chin. “In that case, what I’m suggesting is a horror film. Text meSTOPbefore you’re running upstairs while a monster chases you and can’t.”
Her glass green eyes hold to me, full of deadly promises.
She, noticeably, does not reach for her phone.
Her lips part. “What is the limit of how far you’ll go in this idiotic scheme of yours?”
Dark pleasure rises as I put her phone back and leave my fingers against it, in her pocket. Dropping nearer, I brace my forearm against the wall by her head, then I offer her the basest truth I can, “I will not—” I swear. “—you.” I let my lips hover near hers, so close it’sagony. “That means, I’m going to be careful with any and alltouching…because I cannot express how badly I would fall into all that is you if given the chance.” I close my eyes, consumed by the scent of her shampoo wafting around us. “Everything else? Mine for the taking…the teasing…thetorturing.”
“You’re touching me right now,” she says, and I revel in the sensation of her breath against my lips.
My fingers twitch against her phone. “I am being very careful.”
“You’re going to hurt me.” She swallows. “You’re going to get bored, or tired, or frustrated, and I’m going to get hurt.”
“I’m going to fall harder than I think is possible right now. I might hurt you, but I can promise it won’t be because I’m leaving, and it definitely won’t be because I’m wanting orlovingyou any less. It’ll be because I’m pressing on a bruise without restraint as I try to reach a deeper understanding of who you are.”
“These are empty promises,” she whispers.
“Then kill them now.”
“This is a bad idea.”
“Then end it.”
“This—”
I touch my mouth to hers, just like I did last night. A mere presence of my lips on hers, then—just like last night—I jerk myself away and end it before I’m liable to grip her so tight my fingers bury themselves in her flesh as I work her mouth open and taste her tongue.
All of her own accord, her mouth opens, a protest on the tongue I have—so graciously—not nipped. I cut whatever she might have said off, “Text me toSTOP.”
