AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I walked away from him and headed higher up the mountain. Kingston Heller was the absolute last person on Planet Earth I wanted to talk to now or ever.
“Why have you been on the run all this time, Riley?” he called after me. “Why do you keep moving from city to city and changing your identity all the time?”
“I have my reasons,” I yelled over my shoulder without turning around. “If you cared about me and wanted to be a part of my life, you never would have left.”
“I’ve been looking for you for years!” he called louder, but he didn’t move to follow me. “I didn’t vanish. You did. I came back to find you four years ago and you were long gone. I’ve been looking for you ever since.”
I stopped dead in my tracks. A mixture of fury and heartache tossed and struggled in my chest. I shouldn’t talk to him. I shouldn’t dignify him with the time of day.
I couldn’t walk away from him, though. I never could do that. I couldn’t walk away from what I carried with me in my own heart and soul.
Just walk away.I kept telling myself that, but it didn’t work.Just walk away right now.
He walked up the trail behind me and the air sizzled with tension. He always had that effect on me. He could melt me just by walking into a room.
He inched up behind me and the energy pulsed back and forth between us. His presence electrified my senses to the breaking point.Just walk away.I would be able to think straight if I just got away from him.
I didn’t walk away. He stopped right behind me. His powerful energy seeped through my pores and got into my very blood.
Out of nowhere, his hands fell on my shoulders from behind. Heat radiated into me from his hands and I almost buckled at the knees.
“Did you miss me, baby?” he half-whispered in my ear. “I couldn’t live without you. I couldn’t stop thinking about you every day when I was away.”
“Well too bad because I’ve moved on and so should you.”
He eased closer and his scorching hot breath burned the sensitive skin on the side of my neck. “Your body says otherwise.”
I shuddered and a ripple of excruciating desire raced down my skin to my crotch. He could do that with a single breath, a single whisper.
“Do you still love me, baby?” he breathed. “Do you still want me?”
Why did he even ask that? He knew I did. I would never stop wanting him—not ever.
“Say it,” he barely whispered. “Say you love me.”
I gulped hard and clamped my eyes shut, but that voice had a way of weaseling into my mind. “I hate you… and I hate that I still love you.”
His muscular arms closed around my body and he hugged me against his iron-hard chest.
“I never stopped loving you, Riley. From the day my dad married your mom. I tried to fight it. Everyone said you were supposed to be my sister, but neither of us could fight what was meant to be.”
“Don’t say that!” I choked. “You left me! How could you do that to me?”
“I didn’t leave because I didn’t want you. It had nothing to do with you. I would have given anything to stay with you…”
“Why didn’t you, then?”
He moved his blistering hot lips up and down the side of my neck. Every graze of his hungry mouth sent a lightning bolt of aching need between my legs. Fuck, I wanted him so damn bad. I needed him. That was the truth. I’d been living in torment since the day he left.
“Your mom took care of me after my dad got killed,” Kingston went on. “She raised me like her own son. She never could have understood about us. She would have hit the roof if she found out we were doing when she wasn’t around.”
“You didn’t have to leave!” I cried. “I was only fifteen when we met…..”
“And I was only sixteen, but that didn’t stop us from falling in love at first sight. I never wanted anything but to be with you…..”
“Liar.” I flung his arms away and stormed up the trail. I had to get away from him. “You abandoned me! You betrayed me! You broke my heart when you left. You disappeared without a trace, and you didn’t say goodbye to anyone. I searched for you for three years, but you just vanished off the face of the Earth. I never stopped wishing you would come back….”
I whirled away. I couldn’t let myself see him or I might start feeling something for him. I couldn’t open that box, but something told me it was already open. Now all those feelings came pouring out as never before.
