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‘I don’t want someone else.’ He kissed me softly before leaning his forehead against mine and closing his eyes. ‘I want you. I want to be the man you come home to, who looks after you and listens to you talk about your day. I want to be the man who kisses away your tears and makes you laugh. I want it all, Esther.
My heart was in ribbons, laying broken in my chest. Tears gathered at the edge of my eyes as I kissed him back, both of us knowing that this thing between us had to end. Hell, we never should have started it.
‘I want it too,’ I whispered. ‘But we know I can’t.’
I was going to kill Harold with my own fucking hands if I had to.
THIRTY-TWO
ALEC
Esther’s lashes lay heavy against her cheek as I watched her sleeping, her cheek pressed tightly against my chest. Her body was like a little radiator - too hot for comfortable sleeping, but neither did I want to move away from her.
The entire night had been far more sombre than I’d meant for it to be. After she refused my somewhat harried proposal, the reality of what was to come weighed heavily on us both. Food tasted like ash on my tongue despite it being cooked by excellent chefs, and the sunset had dulled to grey by the melancholy which stuck to me like tar. The moment the question had fallen from my lips, I had set the dream in stone. It was fast and foolish, but I wanted Esther to be mine.
Then she’d said no.
It should have soothed me, it wasn’t because of me, but because of the situation, but I’d opened myself up to rejection for the first time in a long time and it cut deep. For the longest time I’d kept guarded, but she’d wormed her way in and left an Esther-shaped hole inside of me I feared would never be filled. She told me I’d find someone else, but they’d never fit in her gap, no matter how hard I tried to force it to work.
She shifted against me, her lips parting slightly and her hair tickling against my shoulder. Fuck, she was beautiful. I wanted to keep her there until I memorised every freckle on her face, until I knew every curve, until the smell of her was so ingrained into my nostrils that I’d know it the second she walked into a room.
How had she done it? I’d had sex before, and it had never left me so ripped open and raw. It couldn’t be that. Was it her letting me see the real her, the one behind the perfect mafia kid facade? Was it her tenacity and her fight? Whatever it was, I had fallen hard.
It wasn’t fair.
Why did she have to be the one for me? When I couldn’t have her?
I’d kill Harold myself, the absolute arsehole that just kept ruining people’s lives.
I closed my eyes, tipping my head to breathe in the smell of Esther’s hair. Was I no better than Harold? I’d ruined plenty of lives doing my job. Never for any good reason, or never any good reason of my own. I’d lived my life as a puppet, enjoying having my strings coordinated and the false sense of being needed by Logan and Malcolm.
My eyes were wet when I opened them. Painful memories bombarded me from the recesses of my mind where I’d stuffed them. The outline of my mother and father, so fucking distant and blurry with all the years that had gone by. That whisper of love that I remembered, the feeling of being wanted. Secure. Then the stacks of memories from my time after them, stuck in a system that gave little regard for me. The social workers had usually meant well, but once they’d labelled me difficult, it was my word against the foster carers. They were adults. They knew how to manipulate and lie far better than I knew how to stand up for myself. The slippery slope to where I became a man to fear, a man who didn’t flinch when he removed fingers or scored threats into people with a knife. Where I’d grown so hardened that nothing mattered. The fight to have my place, something that was finally mine to keep, that no-one would take away. I’d give it all up for even a whiff of a chance with Esther. To be the man she comes home to, the man who soothes her pain and brings her joy.
‘Hey,’ her groggy voice broke through my thoughts, her fingers wiping away the tears as I stared at the ceiling. ‘It’s okay. It’s all going to be okay.’
‘No. It isn’t.’
She nuzzled against my neck. ‘I know.’
‘I want the chance to love you, right, Esther. Not like this, in hiding and secret. But for real.’
‘You love me?’ Her voice shook, her eyes meeting mine as she sat up, leaning over me.
‘How could I not?’
The smile that broke across her face didn’t quite reach her eyes, which were as glassy and as wet as my own. ‘Oh Alec, if you can’t love me right, then love me wrong.’
Then she was everywhere at once, her mouth on my own, her hands lost in my hair and her body pressed fully against me. Beams of orange light were streaking across her freckled skin as the day came to be. The day that would ruin me.
I gave as good as she did, turning us over so that I crushed her beneath me. Our tongues collided in feverish abandon, words replaced with raw emotion as our souls crashed and entwined.
Every kiss, every wipe of my tongue, every groan, it all screamed I love you. I love you. I love you.
Another roll of her body landed with her above me, her taking me inside of her with an arch of her hips that took my breath away. My fingers dug their imprints into her hips as I moved her against me, matching the harsh movements she made until she was whimpering above me.
I nipped at her lips as she moaned into my mouth, her skin hot to the touch. It was too fast, too much. I needed to slow down. In a few hours we’d be on a plane, and I wanted to savour her.
‘Slow down baby, I’m not ready to finish and if you keep that up, I’m going to blow as quick as a fucking virgin. You feel too good.’
