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“Well, you can leave because I don’t want anythi—” Shit.
Freddie doesn’t allow me to finish. Turning around, he goes back to Cassie’s mermaid-blue-green Evoque. The thought of him driving it is almost enough to make me laugh, but then my snarky remark dies a swift death on the tip of my tongue. My eyes rest on the basket he holds out as he returns to stand in front of me. A wide green stare ogles back at me, followed by a loud meow. I’m waiting for Freddie to put the basket down so I don’t have to risk the chance of meeting his gaze or, worse, grazing his hand. I’ll fall apart. I know I will, even if I wish I didn’t or try and deny the fact to myself.
“Georgina—”
“What do you want?” Not that he answered the first time I asked back at the hospital.
Crouching, he puts the wicker cat carrier down between his feet, and the glimpse that I catch of his stare robs me of all the air in my lungs and around us. They’re a liquid azure, so bright that I want to dive right into his sights, bask in its coolness.
“What are you really doing here?” I know it’s not to give me my cat back. Had he thought that I would eventually come back for Chips instead of sending someone else to get him, he wouldn’t be here. Most of all, he wouldn’t be here unless he wants something.
In spite of my words, my heart is screaming for him to stay. This closeness is the best thing I’ve felt since he left me. As though he can hear my thoughts, he comes closer, and naturally, my head tips back so I can hold his gaze.
“You look tired,” Freddie rumbles after a beat.
“So do you.”
The dark circles around his eyes are more pronounced than ever, making the blue colder and sharper while he hulks over me. It’s then I notice the blood crusted around the sides of his nose, as though he gave up partway through cleaning his face. While my eyes trail over the angles of his countenance, I realise that he’s got a hoodie over his bloody shirt. The collar peeks from beneath it, tinged in red.
An audible swallow calls my attention to his throat, and before I get all tangled up in my traitorous feelings and clashing wills, I grab the cat basket between us. I’m trying to get past him when his arm wraps around my waist, holding me in place in front of him. The silence is deafening along with the sound of the breeze surrounding us.
We can’t keep doing this. We can’t keep playing this cat-and-mouse game. One of us has to be the better person and walk away.
I wish it could be him. That he could be the stronger one of the two of us right now and leave me. But he won’t, not this time that I need him to, and it’s obvious from the way his hand tightens around my side. The blackness of his pupils eats at the glint of his irises, and I’m completely glued to the spot as he steps closer, his front pressed to my side. When I inhale, his scent stings my insides, making my eyes burn with tears I refuse to shed.
“Fuck,” he grumbles as though I’m the one holding him hostage.
His hand traces up my other side as my body threatens to melt into him.
Why do I still love you? I ask silently at the same time as he grits out, “Fuck, Swan…”
The gruffness of his voice rakes through me, pulling at my seams and picking at my defences as I try to push away from him.
“Stop!” Spinning me to face him, he forcefully takes the cat basket from me and puts it down on the gravelled ground. Large hands wrap around my biceps, and when I try to yank away, they grasp tighter until it feels as though he’ll snap bone. “Fucking stop, Georgina!”
“You stop, okay? Fucking stop acting like you care! Like you want me…”
Pushing away from him, I attempt to walk away even though he’s still holding on to me. The hope that if I actually try to put space between us, he’ll do the right thing and allow me to. Freddie doesn’t though. I take two small steps to the side, and he pulls me right back in, closer than before. When he releases my arms, a hand twists in the top of my leggings, making sure I can’t get away. At least not with my dignity intact.
Before I can coherently word the putrid frustration and rancour clawing and screaming inside me, he tugs me flush to him. Our chests crash at the same time as his mouth clashes with mine. Sharp teeth bite and gnaw on my flesh while my thoughts tornado and my senses jar at his scent, closeness, and warmth. I’ve never known ice to burn so hot. To incinerate and inflame more volatile than a wildfire.
With a growl, he pries my lips apart, tugging them open with a hard bite that has my nails cutting into my palms as I grind my fists to his stomach. The device still in one cuts into my flesh. My heart bungees between my feet and my throat, making it impossible to gather myself and my senses as his tongue pushes into my mouth, licking over mine with a groan that’s half-blissed and half-pissed and altogether tormented.
Silently, my tears sluice down my throat as I am decimated by his taste and his touch. I have yearned for this—for him—since he left me. There hasn’t been a single second since the last time I tasted him that I haven’t wished, hoped, dreamed, and fantasised about this kiss. And it’s so easy to lose myself to Freddie. So easy to surrender to the consuming pull between us that everything fades. The world ceases to exist. There’s nothing but darkness.
Arms wrap around me tight, holding me to him as we taste and feel and yearn for more. And my existence finally shines again.
I’m home. This is home. He is home.
Every one of my muscles twists tight as we gasp and groan at the friction of our chests rubbing together. My hand clings to his side as he sucks my lip back into his mouth, rolling it between his. My heart hammers against his relentlessly as Freddie breathes raggedly into my mouth, and I suck all his air into my lungs, allowing it to pound through me with my erratic pulse.
“We’re not done,” he states hoarsely, eyes ablaze with all the longing and need that’s torching inside me. “We’ll never be done.”
“Stop—”
“Your heart and your soul belong to me. No one owns you…no one will ever own you but me.”
He’s right. He’ll own me forever. But that doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t change everything he’s done and refused to do. We’re still exactly where we were when I left him at the hospital.
