CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
“What’s the verdict?”
I EXIT THE BATHROOM and cross the hall to Trent’s old room, stopping short when I find Monica sitting on the bed with the cordless phone in hand.
With a sigh, she stands and holds out the phone to me.
I begin to shake my head no, petrified, but she grabs my hand and forces the phone into my palm until I have no choice but to close my fingers around it lest it falls to the floor. “He didn’t want to wait for a call back this time.”
As she walks past me and leaves the room, I look down at the screen, at the running minutes.
Trent
12:18
He’s been waiting on the phone for twelve minutes?
In the week and a half, I’ve since ditched the guestroom and have been sleeping in his childhood bed, drowning in nostalgia, but still haven’t returned his calls. Twice he’d showed up at Mama’s restaurant looking for me and I made her lie to him that I wasn’t there. Another time he showed up at the house and I hid and made Monica lie that I’d gone for the night with Maggie.
Suffice to say, both mothers are sick of my antics and cowardice and warned me they wouldn’t lie for me again.
But I know he knew they were lying. Red Cage has hidden cameras all around Monica’s property, and I’m strongly convinced they have surveillance on Mama’s restaurant, too.
Trent is watching me. I feel it. I’m his and he knows it.
And that knowledge makes me feel…safe. Less guilty for all this space I’ve nonverbally asked for.
The separation test I’ve been conducting? Yeah, it has worked so well giving me the confirmation that I needed, that now I’m terrified. Each day, being away from him becomes more and more suffocating. I craved and ached for him, itched to call him, touch him, kiss him, and wrap myself around him.
And that need, that desperate, helpless need, has me scared shitless.
Now I’m questioning if loving someone this much, needing someone this much is even healthy.
Still, the deeper my desperation grows, the bigger my desire swells, the more I’ve punitively deprived myself.
What have I learned from this break? That there’s no way…no way in hell or on earth I could ever live without this man.
Inhaling a deep, bolstering breath, I lift the phone to my ear. “Hi.”
“What’s the verdict?” he asks without preamble or pleasantry. And although his voice is devoid of warmth and patience and a tad on the cold side, just hearing it sends undulating waves of tremors down my spine.
“What verdict?”
“Are you leaving me, or are you staying?”
With damp hair limp and clumpy against my shoulders, I walk over to the bed and sit down. “I told you I’m staying.”
“Yeah, but see, I didn’t believe you.”
“You didn’t?”
“No, I didn’t,” he affirms. “Figured you were just overwhelmed and emotional after all that happened, talking from a place of fear. When you got up with cold feet the next morning and ran, you proved me right.
“I’ve respected your wishes and given you your time. But it’s been almost a month now, more than enough time to know if you want to be with me or not. So lemme have it.”
He’d not believed me. Thought I was just emotional and overwhelmed. All this time... “That’s what you think? That I had cold feet and ran?”
“Yeah.”
You’re so wrong, Trent. So wrong. “I love you.”
“But?” he asks, voice clipped.
Frustration creeps up my throat, though it’s more at myself than at him. For doing this to him. Staying away for so long, causing him to doubt me. “But nothing! I love you. I’m in love with you. I want to be with you. I’m staying with you. There’s nothing else!”
A long pause, before, “Okay.”
The call disconnects.
I stare at the phone, thrown and bewildered. What the hell just happened?
~
SOFT KISSES ALONG my shoulder coax me from the sweet oblivion of sleep. I stir, creeping sluggishly up the aisle of awareness.
A low hum sings on the roof above, pitter-pattering against the windows.
Heat and hardness press up against my back, fingers whispering down my side.
A sweet, nipple-tightening thrill vibrates under my skin, strumming me alive, I press back encouragingly against the wall of patience, compassion, and heart-ensnaring hotness behind me. Submitting completely.
A calloused hand slips under my nightdress and drifts up my body, curving around my breasts, squeezing gently. My nipples tingle with excitement.
A deep groan reverberates through me and settles between my thighs. Kisses along my neck, shoulder, and upper-back become more feverish, hungry, wanting.
I reach behind me and find the thing my body is writhing for, aching for. It’s bare, and hard, and warm, and ready. I wrap my fingers around it and it twitches in my palm.
A longer, deeper groan resounds through me this time, settling in that pulsing, swelling, starving bundle of nerves between my thighs.
I squeeze, stroke, pet... “Mine,” I breathe.
Singed with desire, trembling for more, I let go and impatiently rip the thing that separates us down and off my legs. “Take me,” I beg with a voice so desperate it sounds foreign to my ears, pushing my ass back.
Lips suck on the soft skin of my neck at the same time I’m filled with a mind-shattering fullness. I press my face into the pillow and moan, trying not to weep from the sheer beauty of it.
He moves inside me. Slow and controlled, as one hand dips between my thighs and massages me.
How could I have done this to myself? Deprived myself of such felicitous glory for so long?
Ecstasy consumes me as our bodies dance and sing together, and before long, a hoarse scream rips up my throat and bursts through my lips.
His large, rough palm covers over my mouth to silence me, but it’s too intense and all-consuming to suppress so I sink my teeth into his flesh as brain-rattling shudders awash me, squeezing every last bit of sense and sensibility from me.
I’ve barely descended to consciousness again when I’m flipped onto my back, my legs pressing apart as his width and weight settle between them, and…I’m filled again. Yes.
Eyes shut tight as I chase the fading waves of my orgasm, I damn near weep, “I missed you so much. Ohgod, I missed you. So much.”
“Yeah?” Strong, turbulent thrusts rock me, knocking me further and further up the bed. “Then why’ve you been away for so long?”
“To punish myself.” I grip what I can of the headboard to withstand his thrusts. “I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve to feel this fucking good. This in love.” I emit an embarrassing sound as a surge of intensifying pleasure zips through me. “I don’t deserve…you.”
“Open your eyes,” he demands. “Let me see.”
Tentatively, I do, and find an intense dark glare singed at the edges with fire and desire. He’s so beautiful. So masculine. So all-consuming. So…mine.
Holding nothing back, I let him pass the veil, the shutters, the defenses. He needs to believe me. He needs to know that I’m so gone for him it’s scared all sense and logic right out of me.
“You’re mine,” I whisper.
“Always have been,” he replies, right before he seals his mouth to mine, kissing me with a fierce possessiveness that grips my very soul.
Over and over he fills me, with rhythm and fluidity, until I’m trembling all over him again, my cries of ecstasy dying on his tongue.
In mere seconds, he follows me over the edge, his face buried in my hair, his groans rolling through me, his shaft hard as steel and pulsing inside me.
I lock my legs around him and hug him tightly to me. With baring teeth and unyielding claws, I intend to hold on to this man for the rest of my life.