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This wasn’t instant love. This wasn’t me looking at Elijah on day one and knowing our fate was sealed in the stars.
I didn’t think any love worked that way. Sure, romance novels might.
But real love was for the warriors.
The ones who chose to thrive on romance, but also fight it out so that love would have a glorious end.
I knew I’d fallen for this man because he would be that person. He would uphold my purpose.
And that made me break down ugly crying, a spoon of spaghetti still in my hand, in front of him.
“Oh, oh.” He was beside me immediately, his hands reaching out to hold me as he comforted my sobs.
I wept like a baby, each shuddering wail pulling me closer and closer to sounding like an orca.
“I’m here,” he whispered. “I’m here.”
I couldn’t understand why, but the words wouldn’t come. Iwantedto tell him I loved him.
That the single month I’d known him and his best friends had mended me in ways I’d thought impossible.
That he’d made me believe girls like me, who’d been shunned as “too curvy”, “too much”, “too emotional”, “too everything” also got to live in fairy tales, and better yet, own those fairy tales like bosses.
But in that moment, all I could do was make sounds that’d give a trumpet good competition.
When I finally calmed down, I pulled him close and kissed him. Slow, long, and deep.
Hear me through this kiss, Elijah.
“Come to bed?” he asked, his voice hoarse.
“Will Sally be asleep?” I ran my hands through his unruly hair.
“Like a little kitten.”
27
Elijah
She tasted of wine spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg. I was a lone traveler who’d chanced on her shores on a rainy night.
My new home, my refuge.
It didn’t matter that I hadn’t heard the words from her lips. I’d read them in her eyes.
Tonight, for the reader in me, it was enough.
I locked the door to my bedroom before pulling her into my arms. I kissed her neck. She shivered.
Pushing her hair to one side, I sucked an earlobe into my mouth, my stubble tickling her shoulder.
“Can we take this off?” Slow, burning urgency fueled my voice as I gripped the bottom of her shirt and ran my thumbs over the hot, bare skin of her belly.
“Uh-huh.” She exhaled, a smile playing on the corners of her full mouth.
I eased the shirt over her head, trailing my fingers the whole way. I turned her around, pressing my bare chest against her back. Looking down, she saw the tattoos across my arm.
She’d never asked me about them. Just like I’d never asked about the fern on her collar bone. There would be another time for that.
