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“Are you okay?” she asks me.
Am I okay? No. I am not okay. But I don’t say that. Instead, I tuck an errant strand of hair behind her ear and place a single kiss on her forehead again. “I’m perfect,” I whisper, and it could not be closer to the truth and more of a lie.
This woman was one hundred percent right when she said she’d ruin me, and the slight problem I can’t reconcile, is that it’s already happened, and I don’t know when it occurred. We’ve been in the same room a handful of times. We’ve spent one perfect night in each other’s company before now. And, still, I know the moment has already come and gone before today.
Sensing that I’m stuck in my own mind, Catherine hops down off the counter and removes the blue apron. She folds it neatly and leaves it near the sink.
I stand on the spot, watching her as she gets further and further away. When she reaches the stairs, she turns back to me and tilts her head, her full lips curving with what I can only imagine is some amusing secret. She doesn’t talk or ask me to come. She just extends her hand for me and waits until I move forward to take it.
Needing to throw her off just a bit, I scoop her into my arms at the base of the stairs and begin to climb. Catherine doesn’t blush or mumble that she’s too heavy. She throws her head back and her arms out and she laughs, delighting in the moment.
She’s curvy but still short, small, light in my arms.
A perfect fit.
Go figure.
Chapter 19
Catherine
I have never been carriedby a man, and, as Aiden makes his way up my narrow staircase, with me in his arms, I decide that every woman should be carried by a man she cares for at least once in her life. Aiden is big and strong, but when he carries me, I don’t feel self-conscious about my curves.Ifeel powerful. I feel adored. I feel cherished. And yet I know that it’s not just the act of being carried—it’shim. It’s being carriedby him. When I’m in his arms, the world fades away. There’s no work, no demanding clients, or social perception. There’s just us.
The thought is humbling. And altogether unusual. To think that I had to meet this particular person to feel brave and beautiful and strong is absurd. Ludicrous, even. And still, denying it would be foolish. There’s a part of me, a silly, childish part of me that wishes we’d met ages ago.
He would have been enough.
The feminist in me wants to rebel at the idea. And, still, everything that has happened to us as individuals before now somehow made us perfectly meant to couple. Maybe, it’s not permanent. Maybe, that coupling is just meant to nurture, maybe it’s meant to balance us with the good things that life hasn’t yet. But I don’t want to think about permanence. Tonight, I don’t want to think at all.
When he gets to the top of the stairs, I point left towards my bedroom. Right is the guest bedroom. Straight takes you to a second, spiral staircase that leads to the rooftop.
Aiden turns, angling us through the doorway so that my feet and head don’t hit the frame. But when he steps into my bedroom, he doesn’t put me down right away. He stands in the middle of the room, with me in his arms, and looks around. His eyes scan, missing nothing, ever the detective at a crime scene.
This time it doesn’t scare me. I’m beginning to understand it’s just how he interacts with the world. He absorbs things, the small details and nuances.
Also, there is absolutely nothing of interest in my bedroom. It’s sparse. A big, California king bed with a white bed set and sea-blue throw pillows sits against the far wall of the room, with matching bedside tables on either side of it. There is a striped throw rug in various shades of blue and green on the hardwood floor at the foot of the bed. A single accent chair sits in the far-left corner. My bathroom and the small closet lie off to the right.
Aiden moves forward after a minute, but instead of placing me on the bed as I’d expected, he walks to it, turns, and sits down.
I pivot in his arms. With one hand on his chest to stabilize myself, I balance on my left knee and swing my right leg around him, straddling him. I lower myself down until I’m sitting on his thighs, my knees tucked under me.
The movement brings us chest to chest. Face to face. A faint smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. “Are you laughing at me?” I tease, knowing full well he’s not. Using both of my hands, I brush his thick hair back off his forehead, forcing it into the unruly messiness I prefer.
“No.” He smiles. “I would never laugh at you.” He places his big hands on my hips but otherwise sits still while I mess up his hair. I rake my hands through it, running them from the front to the back of his head.
Aiden closes his eyes and sighs deeply. “That feels so good.”
I know that it shouldn’t, but his response ignites a flame of longing in me. It starts low in my belly and spreads, pulling everything tighter. I have never gotten here before with something as basic as touching a man’s hair.
I am aware of everywhere we are connected. The pressure of his thighs against my ass. The silky feel of his hair between my fingers. His big, heavy hands on my hips.
Needing more, craving more, I sit back a bit and cross my hands over my hips to lift my shirt off. I throw it into the corner of the room, leaving on only my jeans and a black lace bra.
I’m well-endowed, compliments of my curves. It’s something I’m not usually conscious of because next to the burn scar on my chest, all thought of the size of my breasts typically disappears. I hesitate now, gauging Aiden’s response to the coiled snake below my clavicle, its tail dropping in a straight line to just above the dip between my boobs. His face is unreadable. But he raises his fingers and traces the snake, pulling a shiver of pleasure from deep within me. “What is this from?’ he asks. His deep voice is calm, his tone serious.
“I don’t know.”
His eyes flicker to me. I see the doubt there before he manages to bank it, and, feeling inexplicably defensive, I add. “I don’t remember who gave it to me. Or where.” I shut my eyes against the memory for a moment, but all I see is darkness and all I feel is blinding pain. All I smell isthe searing of human flesh,myflesh. “Just the pain…” The fragments in my memory are dark and every time they threaten to rise, my panic smothers them down again.
