Chapter Twenty-Three #3
I stop because I run out of steam. I do want to say more things, though. I have a lot more to say, but while I’m hiccuping and trying to catch my breath, he moves. He inches closer to me, and I feel his breath on my cheek, all hot and wild.
And while I’m trying to contend with that, with his sweet breath, I feel his mouth on my cheek. My left cheek, just under my eye, and I feel him licking my tears away. Something I wasn’t aware of. That I was crying.
Actually, he’s not licking, he’s drinking.
I can feel him sucking them down and I hear him swallowing them thickly.
But there’s so many of them, my tears, that he has to catch the stream on his rough thumbs, his long fingers, scraping and rubbing my face.
His hands remind me of where my hands are.
They’ve somehow landed on his shoulders and I fist his shirt, sighing under his soft ministrations, thinking this is the first time he’s put his mouth on me like this, and oh Lord, it’s so soft.
Softer than I’d imagined. Hotter and wetter.
That all I can do is whimper and moan as I cling to his body. “W-what are you doing?”
“Taking care of what’s mine,” he rasps against my skin, his stubble stinging me.
I twist his shirt and say the exact opposite of what I just said: “I’m not yours.”
His mouth laps at my jaw. “Unfortunately for you, you are.”
“I—”
“I’m gonna kick his ass.”
“What?”
“Ax,” he says, his thumbs making circles on the apples of my cheeks. “Told him to stay away from you.”
“I don’t care about—”
“A cow’s delivery was breech,” he says next.
“What… What does that—”
“Today, at lunch.”
That’s when I understand what he’s doing. He is taking care of me. He’s answering all the questions I didn’t ask, or rather didn’t want to but blurted out anyway, and I just… God, my heart clenches in my chest.
“We were out a hand and the vet was late,” he goes on, licking and explaining. “So I had to pitch in.”
“Is she…” I clench my eyes shut and arch my back, despite myself. “Okay?”
“Yeah,” he whispers at my jaw, his fingers in my hair. “It was hard. But she pulled through.”
“And the calf?”
“Tiny little thing but yeah, she’s okay too.”
“Okay”—I swallow—“good.”
“Went to see my parole officer after that,” he goes on.
“Your parole officer.”
“Now that I’m back in town.”
“Oh.”
“And Haven told me.”
“Told you what?”
“That you didn’t want me around. So I made myself scarce last night at dinner.”
I move my hands to his hair then and pull the strands. “Did you eat something, though?”
“No.”
I pull at his hair. “You shouldn’t skip meals.”
He rolls his forehead on my neck. “And you shouldn’t worry about me.”
“You should also see someone.”
“About what?”
“Your PTSD.” Before he can say anything, I continue, “I know you hate to hear this but I could see. You didn’t like being at the party. You didn’t—”
“This helps.”
“What?”
His chest moves with a breath. “Breathin’ you in.”
I bite my lip so hard it hurts. “I’m not—”
“And I couldn’t.”
I think I know which question he’s answering, but I still ask, “You c-couldn’t what?”
“Sleep last night.”
I go up on my tiptoes then, the pain in my chest is so huge. I wind my arms around his neck and whisper, “Because I wasn’t there?”
He tucks his face in the crook of my neck and keeps breathing me in. “Yeah. Couldn’t see you. Couldn’t smell you.”
“Oh, Arsen, I—”
“So I came to your door.”
My heart skips a beat. “You came to my…”
“Stood there a long time.” He sniffs my neck as he says, “Kept taking a whiff of the wood, tryin’ to smell you through the barrier.”
I swallow. “I didn’t… I didn’t know.”
“Kept tellin’ myself to leave,” he goes on, rubbing his nose in my pulse.
“Kept tellin’ myself I couldn’t bust down your door, couldn’t go in there.
Not after everything. Not after how I’ve fucked up with you.
Told myself you needed peace, you needed to be free.
From me. That you aren’t my wife, not really.
It doesn’t matter how much you feel like it.
I’ve got no right to you, to go in your room.
” Then, pushing his forehead against my neck, he goes, “I wouldn’t have climbed on though, I swear.
I wouldn’t have gotten in the bed with you.
I wouldn’t have touched you. Tell me you know that.
Tell me you know I’m not lyin’ about that. ”
He says it so urgently, so sincerely, I have no choice but to nod. “I do.”
A breath of relief pushes out of him. “Because I wouldn’t have.
It would’ve been hard. It would’ve taken every shred of decency I’ve got left in me to not touch you, everything that my mama taught me before she died, everything my brother taught me about how to treat a girl, but I would’ve done it.
I would’ve watched you. Smelled your hair.
Your skin. Watched the moonlight play with it.
Like I’ve been doin’ for the past week. And then fallen asleep for a little bit, just under the window. ”
“God, Arsen, you—”
He shudders. “So when it became too much, I left. Went for a ride.”
I swallow again, flexing my arms around his neck. “On Rebel?”
“Yeah.” He nods, his open mouth dragging up and down the column of my neck. “It’s been eight years since I saw him but he remembered me. He remembered that I was the first to break him.”
Warmth spreads across my chest because I can hear the pride in his voice, the joy, and it sounds glorious.
It makes his voice a little deeper and rougher, more of a growl that scrapes over my skin so good that I can hear it for days.
I tilt my face and rub my chin in his soft hair. “Like your dream.”
Finally, he moves away from my neck and looks up, his eyes heavy-lidded. “Yeah, my dream.”
I see the scratches I made on his face. His jaw specifically. A cut on the side of his mouth, his high cheekbone. I bring my fingers to stroke the cuts I gave him lovingly, tenderly, as I whisper, “So it was real? What happened between us?”
A tightness flashes over his face that resembles torture as he replies back gutturally, “Yeah, darlin’, it was real.”
A relieved breath escapes me. “But you didn’t… You didn’t say my name.”
His jaw pulses beneath my fingers and his fingers in my hair fist. I don’t know what it says about him or about me, about us, that he knows exactly what I’m talking about. Actually, I do know. It says that maybe we’re both branded. He branded me, but maybe I did the same to him.
“I shouldn’t get to breathe the same air as you, let alone look at you when you’re in the same room as me.
” My gaze scurries up and I look into his glittery, molten eyes as he keeps going: “What makes you think I should get to say the absolute fuckin’ dream that is your name after everythin’ I’ve done and everythin’ I’m going to do? ”
“You—”
“This isn’t the first time, is it?” he cuts me off, his voice all rough edges. In fact, ever since we arrived at the ranch, his voice has become even more of a drawl and even deeper. Like he’s exactly where he belongs even though he’s struggling to fit in.
“What?”
“That you’ve cried.” His eyes rove over my features, his thumbs still circling on my cheeks. “Your friend, she said it. Yesterday. That you never cry. Except when it comes to me.”
I shake my head. “That’s—”
“Made you feel bad about yourself at that goddamn café when the truth is that I stopped thinkin’ the moment I saw you walkin’ through that door.
I got fucked in the head the moment I heard your voice.
And then I put you through hell. Lied to you.
Tied you up, drugged you. Stripped you naked, humiliated you.
I did everythin’ to break you, but you didn’t break.
Not until now. Not until I once again made you feel less than.
” He moves his jaw back and forth. “Instead of tellin’ you the truth, I made you feel like you’re the one lacking.
You’re not. You’re a survivor. You didn’t let anything that happened to you in the past break you.
Your daddy beat you; your mama let him. She used you to protect herself instead of protectin’ you and yet you wanna help people like her.
Do you realize how beautiful that is? How brave you are.
How fuckin’ stunning and breathtaking. I told you it’s hard to breathe around you, didn’t I?
It is. It’s hard to not look at you, to not ask Haven and my useless brother about you.
It’s so fuckin’ hard to let you go. But I’m tryin’, darlin’, yeah?
” He swallows thickly, his Adam’s apple jerking.
“Because if anyone’s lacking between the two of us, it’s me.
I’m a piece of shit. You call me your criminal asshole cowboy and that’s exactly what I am.
I’m a selfish fuckin’ piece of shit, baby, because I’ll take what you give me and I’ll steal what you don’t.
So the reason I don’t look at you is because I’m not the kind of man you want starin’ at you.
I’m not the kind of man you want sayin’ your name. ”
Maybe I should focus on other things. Try to listen to what he’s saying to me.
But I’m a girl. A girl who’s never been called beautiful by a boy before, much less a man who sets her heart on fire.
He sets my entire soul on fire, and for the life of me, I cannot focus on anything else but the fact that he called me stunning.
“You really…” I lick my lips. “You really thought that, when you saw me at the café? You really think I’m beautiful?”
His eyes flash bright. “No, because you aren’t just beautiful.
You’re so beautiful that you might not be real.
That maybe I made you up in my fucked-up head while starin’ at the little piece of sky through the barred window above my bunk.
You’re so beautiful, you’re like a dream.
A reverie.” He circles his eyes all over my face. “My Reverie.”
“But you sent me away,” I remind him. “At the café. You… you told me to leave and I thought…”