AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He doesn’t respond for a moment, but then he lifts his hand to my face and trails his fingers lightly across my features, pausing at my lips. “Before I met you, I’d have always chosen the violin. But there are moments where I believe I’d give up everything I hold sacred if it meant I could truly see your face for just one moment. To be able to look into your eyes and see what you’re thinking...I’d give up anything for that.”
I grab his hand and cup his palm to my cheek and then turn my face slightly to kiss it. I close my eyes, fighting back tears, a painful lump caught in my throat.
He pulls me into a hug, and we just stay that way, wrapped in each other’s arms. I bury my face against his neck, his hair tickling my nose, while he presses his face to my shoulder. Our hearts meet, beating in one rhythm. There’s something so completely fulfilling about this moment, about the sense that he’s taking as much comfort from me as I am from him. To think I’d once felt him unapproachable, untouchable.
In this moment, there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to go back to the real world. I picture Darius swept back into the life of fame and glamor, of women throwing themselves at him, and I’m sure I’ll lose him if that happens.
I also know how we’ll be judged back in society. Because of Darius’s fame, the nature of our relationship would be all over social media and the papers. The news would get out that I was a whore and they were all perverted.
With this in mind, I carefully untangle myself from Darius and turn back to the forest.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
I sniff and nod. “Yeah, I just started thinking what life will be like if we get rescued.”
“You make it sound like you don’t want us to be saved.”
“I do...” I hesitate. “I just don’t want things to change between us all. I want to stay with you. All of you.”
He bites down on a bit of loose skin on his lower lip. “Cade and I were talking about that earlier.”
I twist to face him. “You were?”
“We want to be with you, too, but...”
“Reed,” I finish for him.
He nods. “Without him on board, it makes this whole thing even more complicated.”
I give a small laugh. “Funny how bringing another person into this makes it less complicated rather than more.”
“It’s because he’s already involved. But unless he can start thinking of you as a woman, instead of his stepdaughter, he’s going to fuck things up for all of us.”
I understand what he’s saying.
“Okay.” I lean in and place a kiss to Dax’s mouth and then speak against his lips. “I’ll try harder.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Laney
I WAKE EARLY THE FOLLOWINGmorning with Reed in his customary position, asleep, but wrapped around my body from behind. It’s not quite light outside the window, but the deep indigo of the night sky has lightened to a hazy gray.
Remembering Darius’s words, I push my ass out, making contact with Reed’s pelvis. He has his usual morning wood, and I smile to myself and grind a little more.
Reed stirs. From the change in his breathing, I can tell I’ve woken him.
“What are you doing, Laney?” he whispers.
I feign sleep. The hard line of his cock is pressed to the crease of my butt. I’m only wearing panties and a camisole to sleep in, and the flimsy material does little to cover me. He’s in sweatpants, though, and I wish he wasn’t.
He still hasn’t pulled away from me, and I let out a deep sigh, and push my bottom out more, creating an arch in the small of my spine.
Reed gives a low moan and drops his forehead to rest lightly on my shoulder. He rolls his hips a tiny amount, pressing against me. He’s fully awake and knows exactly what he’s doing. Does he truly believe I’m asleep? I can’t help wondering how far he’ll go if he thinks I’m sleeping and don’t know.
I shift my position, and pretend I’ve got an itch at the spot where the strap of my camisole sits. I scratch the spot, and catch my fingers beneath the strap, pulling it down to expose the vast majority of one breast. Any woman who’s ever slept in a tanktop knows it’s almost impossible to sleep in one of these things without at least one tit escaping overnight.
Reed sucks in a breath and freezes. I keep my eyes shut, my breathing even—though that might prove to be a struggle if this keeps going the way I think it will. I feel the motion of his hand as he lifts it over my body. He hovers it above my exposed breast and then brushes so lightly across the top I almost think I could have imagined it.
