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Landry rolls onto her back and rubs her belly. Her shirt rides up over her bump, and my gaze is quickly drawn to her bare flesh. When she notices I’m watching her, Landry smiles softly. Her dark eyes reveal the kind of affection no one’s ever shown me before.
For months, I believed I could love Landry. Right now, as the morning sun creates a golden hue around her smiling face, I know I love this woman. She’s everything I hoped for when I hid in the woods.
Landry is so unguarded when I join her in bed and cover her lips with mine. She seems fragile in a new way as if a cruel word or dismissive glance could break her. I hold Landry’s heart in my hands.
My lips kiss her cheeks and forehead before sucking at her throat. Landry’s moans lure me farther than I should go. I nuzzle her tits hiding under the loose T-shirt she snagged from my closet the night before. Her hard right nipple tempts me. I nip at it through the fabric as Landry’s wiggles with pleasure.
Propped over her, I kiss her lips before allowing my gaze to roam her body. Landry nearly sends me over the edge when she plucks at her nipples through my shirt. I smell the sweet heat from her pussy and imagine my cock sinking between her folds.
I kiss her belly’s tender flesh, making her squirm and moan. Her fingers dig into my hair, sliding across my scalp as she pulls me closer.
Landry craves me. Her gaze is too raw to hide her true feelings. I know she’s horny as hell, which is why her tears startle me.
Still holding onto me, Landry whimpers into the crook of my neck. I freeze at the sound of her sobs. My first thought is I’ve hurt her. My second is she’s so repulsed by me that she can’t pretend anymore.
When I drop next to her and frown, she starts to reach for me again. Stopping herself, she sees my irritation and fights to silence her tears.
“Are you in pain?”
“I want too much.”
“What do you want?”
Landry drags her pain and fear back inside, leaving her only hiccupping. “You make me feel like I’m better than I am. It’s giving me bigger dreams than are acceptable.”
Snarling at her words, I don’t understand them. Between my boner and the early morning, I wasn’t at a hundred percent brain-wise, to begin with. Landry’s tears cloud what’s left of my common sense.
“What does that mean?”
“My life got too good too fast, yet I still want more. I’m jinxing everything.”
“Dumb it down more.”
Landry wants to lie. I see her planning to shut up or give me a fake answer. That’s her go-to move when people push her. She trained herself as a child to forfeit her feelings to please others.
When I was a kid, my parents drove me crazy. Mom nagged nonstop. From the moment I woke up to when I went to bed, she was constantly nitpicking and “reminding” me not to forget shit she just fucking told me. My father was always giving me advice that came down to “you are not right, the world will never accept you, change yourself.”
Even as a tiny kid like Beau, I knew my parents didn’t like me. Though I was excited to go to school to get away from them, I only found more adults to tell me how much I sucked. Day after day, I was dragged down by the burden of being me.
But I refused to break. Though the world’s disappointment in me hurt, I never let it twist me into hating myself. I held on long enough to find people who didn’t loathe the very sight of me.
Once I found my tribe, I learned to silence the assholes who drove me crazy. My mother’s nagging and my father’s advice became background static. I only heard the people who mattered. That’s why I rarely feel my past sneaking up on me.
However, Landrydidbreak, and shedoeshate herself. Despite understanding how the people who hurt her are scum, she can’t wash away the trauma they caused.
For them, she lied and hid in plain sight. Landry lost her value as a person. She became Neal’s maid, broodmare, and punching bag. She was a thing to be used and abused. The Coppers didn’t care that she wasn’t a good liar. Or how her eyes often reveal her pain.
That’s what I noticed early on about Landry. She’s only good at conning people if they’re uninterested in the truth. There’s a profound sadness about this woman. I suspect for most of her thirty years, she’s been walking through life with her broken heart revealed for everyone to see and ignore.
That’s why as she tries to control herself, I notice how much shame she feels over crying. She exposed her pain, only to get scolded again.
“Did you want me to touch you?” I ask, confused yet unwilling to have her hide in her head like she does with others. “Did you want me to stop?”
Landry stares into my eyes, fighting what she wants to say. She fears the power of her words. If she’s honest, I might turn on her. If she says she can’t love me, I’ll steal everything good from her life. If a man like Neal could trap her under his boot, someone like me can destroy her completely.
Realizing she won’t fess up as long as she’s afraid, I run my fingers over her belly and sigh. “Did I take too much too fast? Was my breath not minty fresh?”
Landry watches me with wet eyes before whispering, “I want you to love me.”
