Chapter 48
Ledgar
I stand in the hallway for a moment with my hand still on the doorframe and the weight of the whole day sitting across my shoulders.
She stood inches away from me in my kitchen, looking up at me through her lashes with those big beautiful doe eyes, and said I smelled good, like it was nothing and then walked back to her barstool with that smile that nearly undid me.
Then there was the couch where she let me hold her and kiss her again.
If I didn’t carry her down the hall and set her down on that bed and walk out, there is no telling what we would’ve done.
It was the right thing to do in that moment but it didn’t make it any easier.
I push off the doorframe and head down the hall to the laundry room and open the dryer and grab a pair of boxers and a pair of shorts so I can shower.
It’s been six years since I last saw her, and last night she was asleep on my couch.
This morning she stood in my kitchen smelling like that shampoo that drives me wild to this day, and she looked at me the way she used to, if even for a moment.
I’ve never been a patient man, but with her the patience and willpower go hand in hand, and since I set eyes on her again… both of those things have their limits.
I head to the bathroom on the other side of the house and close the door behind me.
I turn the shower on cold and contemplate standing in it, letting the cold water shock my body and wash the remnant of her scent off me.
Then I turn on the hot because I’m not a monk.
Just a man who has been wanting the same woman for six years and now she’s only thirty feet away, laying in my bed and my willpower can only extend so far before it snaps.
I step in and put both hands flat against the tile and drop my head, letting the water run down my neck and back as I think about her.
About the way she felt against my side on the couch, where she belonged.
The way her hands found my jaw when I kissed her, and the sound she made when I pulled her closer.
Or the way she looked up at me in that flirtatious, devilish way, knowing exactly what she was doing when she moaned over that piece of chicken.
I palm my cock in my hand, squeezing hard and pumping it a few times to relieve some tension.
When it doesn’t work, I close my eyes and think of her lying in my bed and stroke my cock hard and fast, imagining her hand beneath mine and those perfect lips wrapped around my cock, licking and sucking.
My balls draw up tight and I grunt out my release against the shower wall, panting heavy as the last drop leaves my trembling body.
When I’m done showering, I shut the water off and grab a towel hanging on the rack and dry off.
I pull on my boxers and shorts and run a hand through my wet hair and look at myself in the mirror for a second before I shut the light off and head back down the hall.
Duke is already on the couch, stretched diagonally across the full length of it.
“Move,” I tell him. He opens one eye and closes it again.
I stand there for a moment looking at him, this forty-pound animal who has completely seized a piece of furniture that cost more than most people’s first cars.
I sit down in the twelve inches of space he graciously gives me at the end and lean my head back and stare at the ceiling.
Duke’s snoring softly beside me as I stare at the ceiling and think about the woman down the hall in a bed that should have been hers a long time ago.
The way her voice cracked when she told me she waited a long time, and all the things she still has left to know.
The email Griffith sent me from Jarrell and the order in which I’m going to have to tell her.
It’s not going to be easy for her to hear or for me to watch.
I think about what it cost for Jarrell to write those words and encrypt them for just the right moment, and the promise I made him, I made her, and the way I betrayed them both.
I don’t sleep. Last night I sat in that chair across the room and watched her sleep while holding onto the fact that she was here.
One wrong move and I’d be back to sitting in this house by myself with nothing and no one but Duke and the quiet.
Tonight is different. She drove fourteen hours on nothing but a dead man’s last wishes and a bone deep instinct that knowing damn well she argued with herself before she followed.
But she’s here and she’s still hurt and angry.
She hasn’t forgiven me and probably won’t for awhile but she’s here and I’m not letting her go again. I can’t.