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He was staring at her now, a look so undecipherable in his eyes, she knew what he was about to say.
So she said it first.
“I should go back home. I’m sorry. This was a mistake.” She stood to leave, but his hand snatched her wrist.
“No. Don’t.” Finally, something she recognized filled his eyes. Regret. Sadness.
She knew it.
Katie hated this feeling of unworthiness. Before last year, it wasn’t something she was familiar with. She’d been a confident woman who could do anything. But now, she couldn’t even get her man.
“Tell me something.” He tugged her back to her seat and reached up to tuck a tendril of hair behind her ear. It was a sweet, endearing motion, and she felt tears tickle behind her eyes. She blinked to keep them there. “When you tried to kill yourself…” He swallowed, and she stiffened, not expecting him to go there. “Would you—I mean… Was it—?” He took a heavy breath when she didn’t answer. She was still shocked this was what he was talking about. He ran a hand through his hair, tugging slightly before looking at the ceiling. When he looked at her again, he simply said, “I’m so sorry.”
“It was the drugs.” Her stupid reply was too quick, too nonchalant. Even she could hear it.
He gripped her hand in his, her tiny bones almost being crushed by his massive hand.
“You are the center of my world, Cariño. Have been almost since we first started talking online. I would wake up thinking about you. I would avoid looking at the place I was in by daydreaming about you and some life I never thought I could have. I met you, and it changed my life.” His grip on her hand eased, but it moved to cup her cheek. The gesture made her feel cherished. “Then they brought you to me.” His hand shifted to the back of her neck, and he tugged her face closer to his. “El Cuchillo was testing me, and I knew it at the time, but I couldn’t let you go. It was either keep you or kill you, so I did what I could to ensure your survival.” His voice cracked at the end, but he kept going, squeezing the back of her neck when she opened her mouth. “I went into rehab with the dream that we could be together some day, and I started this ranch so I could have something to show you, proof that I was good enough for you. And now you’re here, and I’m so scared I will fuck it up somehow, but I can’t fucking lose you. You can walk away if you want, but a world without you in it isn’t worth living in for me.” His hand on her neck loosened, and both his hands wrapped around her back, clasping behind her. She was close to him, but leaned in closer, his words taking flight inside her. “I need to know that the suicide wasn’t something that could happen again. I’ll fuck up because I am who I am and can’t seem to do anything right. But I don’t want to ever do anything again that would make you take your own life.”
His head dropped, and she took that as a sign he was finished talking.
She was overwhelmed by his words. The emotion behind them was almost too much for her to comprehend.
She was the center of his world?
His words resonated with her, and she’d begun the diatribe, nodding in agreement with him. When they’d met online, he’d been her focus too. He was her reason for getting out of bed some days, and they didn’t even see each other.
In Honduras, he had done what he could to ensure her comfort and survival, feeding her, giving her an actual bed to sleep in, helping her with the drugs in her system.
“I didn’t lie about the drugs. I have no idea what taking those did to my brain, and I wasn’t thinking clearly when I thought that was my only option. Honestly, though, I couldn’t live there like that. I know you were doing what you could, but I had no idea who you were, and I doubted myself for loving you.” His eyes snapped up to hers at those words. “I know now that you’re not a bad person. You’re exactly who I fell in love with; you were just in a terrible, horrific place you couldn’t escape any more than I could.”
The hope in his expression was too much. The tears came, flowing down her cheeks.
“You do?”
She nodded, smiling in spite of her wet cheeks. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.” He leaned toward her, wrapping his arms around her torso, tugging her closer. Not able to be even separated by the air between them, she crawled into his lap, pressing her body flush against his as she straddled his thighs.
He kissed her, his lips soft and warm against hers, but she couldn’t leave it at that. She opened her mouth and their tongues met on a warm slide and she couldn’t get enough. His hands started wandering, from her back to her ass, pressing her closer so she could feel the hard ridge under his jeans.
He devoured her, trailing hot kisses down her neck while one of his hands slid up her shirt to palm a breast.
A long, low moan escaped her as she arched into his touch.
A responding nicker had them both looking at each other, frozen as if caught by parents. Another answering whinny had them laughing as she looked over her shoulder to see they had an audience.
“Let me tend to them. It’ll take about thirty minutes, but can we finish this?”
She nodded, still breathless. “I’ll go see if I can make some breakfast.”
They both stood, and he slapped her ass, hard. She yelped and spun on him.
“That hurt!”
“Something to keep you remembering me while I’m here and you’re there.” His mischievous wink had her clamping her thighs together as he turned around and reached for a shovel before opening a stall door.
She observed him shoveling horse shit for a few minutes, watching the play of his muscles as he made quick work of cleaning a stall and putting fresh hay down.
