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I frowned at him. “I don’t like your tone.”
He put down his beer and crossed his arms. “Answer the question, Snow.”
I crossed my own, adding a brow raise because of course I had to one-up him. “No.”
He gave me a look. “Answer the fucking question,” he demanded. Though his voice was rough, his eyes glittered with something that took the edge off it all. Not that I minded the edge. In fact, the edge delighted my over-caffeinated mind far too much.
“I’m not answering the fucking question because I feel very threatened by your agitation to my hours of sleep and caffeine consumed. What does it matter? Coffee, sleep, same thing.”
He stepped forward, uncrossing his arms, uncaring that mine remained crossed as he grabbed my hips to yank my body to his. But not before he snatched the wine glass, thrusting it down beside his beer bottle.
“It matters a fuck of a lot to me, babe. You matter a fuck of a lot. And when you do things like compromise your health for a story, for anything, it worries me.” He paused. “I’m worried enough when you get your eight hours.” His eyes darkened as he pulled me even closer with a deliberate gesture that had my stomach dipping in the most delightful way. “I just need to tire you out enough that you have no choice but to pass out from the fact that I’ve fucked you into oblivion.”
I blew at an errant hair that had tumbled into my face, flushing like a teenager on prom night from his words and the promise behind them.
And then it wasn’t a promise, because his lips found mine in a brutal clash of both of our anger and frustration.
We devoured each other like we hadn’t just had sex hours before.
But my body didn’t remember that. My body only remembered the six months of his absence and all the bullshit before that.
My body—my entire soul, in fact—urged me to do what I was doing, kiss him, let him rip off my halter, fasten his mouth against my breasts. And it urged me to tangle my hands in his hair, then let him carry me to my bedroom and proceed to fuck me into oblivion.
Dinner was a long-forgotten dream considering Keltan had already feasted. And my sated body felt like it might explode if any food tried to enter it. We’d been lying together, silent and still. Wrapped up in my bedsheets and in each other.
Everything on the outside was just that—outside. What we’d created, what had spent two years building, shut that all out. All the chaos.
It was just the chaos on the inside that I needed to learn how to handle. And to handle it, I would reveal it, welcome it. Because two years building something would not be ruined by the demons of the past. Those ghosts.
By Gray.
It was time to let it all out if I wanted this. And damn, did I want this. More than the latest version of the Chanel Boy bag.
“You said I’ve been drowning,” I whispered, trailing my finger across his scarred pec before looking up at him.
His eyes saw through the moonlight. Saw through me. “Yeah. But not anymore. Not ever again,” he promised.
I traced his stubbled jaw. “No. Not anymore,” I agreed. My heart thumped at the promise of forever. But my mind taunted me with how easy promises were broken, so I urged myself to keep going. “But you saw it. You didn’t know why or how, yet you still saw. The drowning. That I was broken.”
His arms flexed around me. “Yeah. I see you, baby. I see all of you. Mostly because it takes someone who’s been under that water to recognize what the drowning feels like. Might not be the same. The reasons. What pulls us down. But the result’s the same.” His eyes glittered. “Yeah, babe. I saw it. My gaze found you ‘cause you were so fucking beautiful. Like you were carved out, separate from that entire party with your magnificence. It’s cheesy as fuck, but I don’t even care. I only had eyes for you.
“My gaze found you for your beauty, the stuff on the outside. It stayed for you. For the beautiful drowning girl who found a way to breathe underwater, who found a way to hide how hard that was. It stayed because all I wanted to do was figure out how to pull you out.” He paused. “Though I was wrong. It wasn’t up to me to pull you out. Maybe that’s why it took so long for us to get here. I had to realize that you had to pull yourself out.”
I let his words sink into me. Settle into my soul so I could find the strength to give him some of mine. Or at least show him the last broken piece I’d been hiding from him.
