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She backed away when he suddenly advanced, her chest heaving. He looked delicious in that shirt. Delicious. Oh, God. Why did he want to see her wrists?
“Show me yours first,” she countered, sure that he’d removed them, as callously as he had left her behind.
Without preamble, he tossed his cuff links aside and rolled up his shirtsleeves. Whitney’s breath stalled, her gaze snagging on the Celtic marks wrapped around his wrists, her name perfectly delineated on his tanned skin. WHITNEY. A strange, swooping euphoria surged within her when she realized he still wore her mark.
He closed the distance between them. “Now, you. Show me.”
His thick, textured voice did a number on her as he encircled her wrists with long, gentle fingers. Her breasts pricked when he removed her cuff bracelets, first one, then the other.
Helpless not to stare, she caught his expression the very moment he viewed his name on her flesh, and her heart stopped beating. His eyes darkened, his jaw tightened, and then he slammed his eyes shut and he just held her wrists in each of his hands for the longest moment.
Her legs liquefied as rising need rushed through her bloodstream. It took every effort in her body to fight it, to stay on her own two feet without collapsing.
“Well well well,” he murmured, his eyes opening.
He set the butterflies loose in her stomach with that look alone as he lifted each of her hands in his, then linked their fingers, aligning the marks.
“What do we have here . . . ?” he continued, his palms huge and almost engulfing hers, his eyes engulfing her.
Her throat closed as memories threatened to consume her. Days and nights, holding hands like this, marveling about their bond, their ownership. “It means nothing,” she lied thickly.
His eyes were tender, not angry. “It means you’re still mine.”
“We were young, Andrew.”
“Why can’t we move on, then, tell me, Whitney? Why are we still wearing these . . . if they meant nothing?” He raised one of her hands to his lips, and the moist lap of his tongue across her wrist shot ripples of awareness across her being. His eyes smoldered as he watched her reaction, and her entire body began to vibrate.
Her cheeks flared with the heat that spread across her skin like wildfire. “You’re gone for years. Years. I don’t hear from you and then you expect me to jump when you come back. What, beyond death, could’ve taken so long?”
An awful silence stretched between them. The frustration and fear of hundreds and hundreds of endless nights and drawn-out days, the pain of waiting and crying and feeling alone while reliving her dark past with barely a future to look forward to, came crashing down on Whitney in an explosion of pain, and then she did something she needed to.
She slapped him.
*****
Andrew remained deathly still, gazing down at her with a throbbing jaw. Whitney. He took in the silken waves of her red hair, the rapid heaving of her chest, her wide, tear-filled eyes, dark emerald green in color, filled with those gold flecks he wanted to count.
He’d never needed her so much than at this moment, when she hated him. But patience won the race in this case. He couldn’t force himself on her, not with the way she’d been abused before. It took every ounce of effort to keep his hands still as he held her simmering green gaze. “Do it again. But make it hurt this time,” he gritted out.
She slammed her fists into his chest three times, then pulled back, panting. “My heart is mine. You don’t own me anymore! You don’t own me anymore!”
He tangled his fingers in her hair and exhaled a frustrated breath, needing to pounce on her, have her. His woman. Mine mine mine. “Fight it all you want, but I can feel the way you need me, Whitney! I can feel it in my gut . . . it’s always like this between us. You know it. I know it. In less than ten seconds, we’
ll be tearing our clothes off and nothing will even matter anymore . . .”
She made the mistake of letting her eyes linger far too long on his lips. He noticed. His entire body noticed. Hell, his entire body responded to that inviting stare.
Something happened when their eyes locked. They both lost it. He swept down as Whitney grabbed the collar of his shirt and boosted herself up onto her toes, and their lips collided with the force of two enemies in a war zone.
Her warmth, her gasp, her moan, overwhelmed him with a flood of sensations. He tasted peaches, ripe and sweet, calling his tongue to reach in farther, to take in everything he craved. Longing thrummed inside of him, longing to possess her, like he used to, love her, like he used to.
He was thirsty, too thirsty to get enough. He added his teeth, the play of tongues. Anger crackled between them, feeding their lust, their need, until it blazed like an inferno. His tongue flashed into her mouth, coaxing her tongue to follow back into his mouth. Her taste—he felt instantly drugged. High with it. With her scent. The sound of her panting breaths.
Three years of hell . . . and now, at last, he was in heaven.
He slipped his hands around her and crushed her tighter to him, his fingers spreading over the silken smooth flesh revealed by the plunging back of her dress. He ground his body into hers, demanding that she feel how much, how fiercely, he needed her. Wanted her.
“As long as it takes, you said, you’d wait, Whitney, because I gave you my word I’d come back to you,” he rasped against her mouth. “Forever turned out to be much too soon for you.”
