Chapter 19 Nic #3
I ghost my knuckles down her cheek, needing to touch her. “Ain’t that bad.”
“I don’t want you on it.” I don’t know if she realises she’s got her fingers tangled in my shirt, gripping me. I notice she does it when she’s unsure or worried I might leave her. “You’re going to spend the next year in physio getting your spine cracked. And there’s plenty of room.”
She gestures at the bed like she’s an estate agent showing off the floor plan of a tiny studio. Fuck. I stare at the space I’ve slept in for years and suddenly it feels loaded, like a landmine under my foot.
I’ve slept next to women before. I’m not some wet behind the ears, kid. But right now my heart is doing something violent in my chest that it’s not equipped to and I don’t know why. It’s just a fucking bed.
But it’s not.
It’s her.
It’s us taking a step forward together.
“You sure?” It comes out rougher than I intend.
Her eyes roll at me. “Nic, you’ve already had your tongue in my mouth. I think we can handle sleeping in the same bed for one night.”
Fucking hell. She’s going to be the death of me. “Sunshine, I get in this bed and it ain’t gonna be one night.”
It’ll be every night until my last fucking breath and I don’t care how demented that sounds. Watching her bleeding broke something in my brain. I don’t know how to hold it or calm it. There’s an intensity pulsing inside me I don’t know how to control. And I don’t want to.
Her throat bobs for a second before she reclaims her composure. “Brilliant,” she says, a little breathy. “At least then you can stop folding yourself like origami every night.”
She’s got no fucking idea what she does to me. Every time she opens her mouth, she knocks the breath right out of my fucking lungs. She’s funny and warm, smart and sarcastic. It undoes me in ways it shouldn’t, and wouldn’t with anyone else.
“Meant what I said, Keeley. I get in this bed I ain’t leavin’ after one night.”
I give her the chance to say no, to put up a boundary between us. Mostly because I’m serious, but also because I want to know if she is too.
Keeley peers up at me, her lashes fair and pale against her skin. There’s fear in her eyes, hope too, but also something begging me not to break her into more pieces if she gives me her heart.
Not a chance.
I’ll hold every cracked part of her like she’s treasure.
“I don’t want you to leave,” she says, and it’s all I need to hear.
I kiss her then, because fuck, I need to taste her after that. She meets my mouth with a gentleness that ruins me. It’s not testing or unsure. Just soft.
She tilts her head to fit against me, and I swallow her moan. My fingers cup her face over where her bruises have faded, and I pull her closer.
The first kiss we shared was incredible. I’ve never kissed anyone and felt the way I did with her. But this one? It feels like we’re connecting, branding each other.
When we break apart, neither of us goes far. I swallow a breath and almost pull her back in, but she already looks dazed.
“Sunshine,” I groan. “You have no idea what you do to me, do you?”
I feel the last of the tension leave my body when her hands wrap around mine, holding me against her face.
“It’s probably the same thing you do to me.” She kisses the corner of my mouth and fuck, I nearly die right there. There’s so much in that tiny fucking gesture, too much to even put into words. “Lie with me.”
Fuck me. Those three words wreck the last piece of any resolve I have left.
I take off my boots before I can talk myself into leaving the room and giving her space she ain’t asked for. My jeans follow and I drop my kutte over the back of the chair, leaving me in just my boxers and undershirt.
Keeley’s eyes drift over me, taking in my inked legs and arms, the thick muscles of my thighs. She keeps looking at me like that and I’m going to forget I’m trying to be respectful.
Her eyes slide to mine finally, heat rising in her cheeks and then she lifts the covers for me.
Ruined. I’m fucking ruined.
When I climb in next to her, I don’t even pretend this isn’t something. I reach for her, and she curls into my side, her head resting on my chest. Everything in my body unclenches the moment she’s touching me.
I wrap my arm around her, holding her as tight as I can without making it weird. My fingers trail over her uninjured side and for the first time in weeks, I relax.
Not just pretend to relax. I actually release all the tension in my body. Her hair tickles under my chin, but I don’t care. She’s here, in my arms, and I’m never letting her go after this.
She shifts slightly, getting more comfortable, and I pull the covers up over her shoulders, tucking it around her. She hums, content, and that’s better than anything I’ve ever won in my entire life.
“Better than the couch, right?” she murmurs, already sounding sleepy again.
“Yeah,” I rasp. “It’s better.”
That’s a fucking understatement. It’s everything. She’s everything.
Then she does something that absolutely ends me. Keeley presses a kiss to the underside of my jaw. It’s gentle, as if she thinks I’m brittle right now and one wrong move might shatter me. If she knew what that small kiss did to me, she’d never fucking stop.
“Goodnight, Nic.” She slides a hand across my stomach, resting there like she’s claimed me too.
I close my eyes briefly, recalibrating my short-circuiting brain. “Night, sunshine.”
My lips linger in her hair as I press a kiss to the top of her head and settle into her. Then I close my eyes and for the first time in weeks, I sleep like the fucking dead.