Chapter Eighteen #2
Sighing, he kicks my stand down, grips my waist, and whirls me off the seat, placing me stably on the ground beside him. World spinning, I teeter. “Whoa.”
“Told you.”
Absently, I reach for his arm. “Do you…workout?” Firm muscle meets my fingers, and I think I’ve answered my own question. He can lift me. Effortlessly. My heartbeat trips, and I grip his bicep as excitement rises. “Hey, Mars?”
Hesitant, he watches me. “Yes, my dearest love?”
“On a scale of one to ten—with ten being very confident and one being not confident at all—how confident are you in your ability to throw me over your shoulder, march me into either of our bedrooms, and toss me into bed?”
“Zero.” He covers his face with his hand as red soars beneath his flesh. “I’m barely confident I’ll survive the illicit images you insist on bombarding me with.”
I deflate. “Well, that’s terribly disappointing.
We’ve got to address your innocence before I scar you for life.
Would you be willing to borrow some books from me?
They’re by my favorite author, Rouge, and they depict everything I want in a relationship.
If you aren’t comfortable with the idea of what’s depicted in them, then chances are we should stop while we’re ahead. ”
“Come with me to the courthouse, and I’ll do anything from any of your books upon request, because trust me, Ceres, this isn’t an innocence issue.”
My brows rise. “Seriously? You’re just a marriage-first guy?”
“Yeah. I am.” He pauses, drops his gaze and his hand, and says, “My dad taught me that you don’t test drive a woman before you commit to her, because women aren’t cars.
It was one of the few things he was lucid enough to imprint in Jove and me.
You edit spice. You know. The stuff that matters happens outside the bedroom while the bedroom stuff gets redundant.
We’re decent communicators. I think we can handle a pleasant enough copy-and-paste experience.
I want to forge something deeper.” His gaze lifts, back to my eyes.
“I want to know you, protect you, and keep you. I want you to be mine beyond skin. Because while every cell in your body is replaced roughly every ten years, the same can’t be said about your soul.
That’s where I want to leave my fingerprints.
In the place you can’t ever get rid of them. ”
My heart thuds a steady beat in my ears, and my voice sounds funny when I find the words to speak. “I didn’t know they still made men like you.” Flushed, I clear my throat. “I respect those wishes.”
“So we’re going to the courthouse?”
“Now who needs to slow down?”
He pushes my hair back over my ear so tenderly it makes my thudding heart stumble. “Still you.”
To escape, I begin walking my bike back from the street up my driveway, to where I’ve been hoping it’ll get stolen off my porch. “You’re really super duper keen on this whole marriage thing, aren’t you?”
“When I say it’s not an innocence issue, I do mean that I want nothing more than to fulfill your every fantasy.
Over and over. Until you’re begging for me to stop in a fit of exhausted delirium.
So, yeah. I’m trying to get you used to the idea of my prerequisite, considering I’d like to experience that whole fulfilling your wildest desires thing for the rest of my life. ”
I reach for my doorknob and step into the foyer. “You’re serious?”
“Deadly.”
I catch the deadly serious look in his eye, which seems a whole lot like a brooding, obsessed, insane male lead’s, and find myself taking a fragile breath.
Then, since I’m me, I say something stupid: “Well, still… I mean, for the purpose of considering whether or not marrying you is in my future, logistically , can you throw me over your shoulder and toss me into bed?”
His gaze roams my foyer table, hands tucked in the pockets of his leather jacket. “Can I take that as consent to sully the sanctity of your bedroom?”
“What?”
“I’m taking that as consent.”
In another moment, he has me tossed over his shoulder. Confident strides take me from my foyer, down my hall, and into my bedroom. Unceremoniously, he dumps me in bed…and looms over me on all fours, caging me there.
My lips part.
“Have I met your standards, my goddess?”
Thoughts evade, so he takes his time teasing a lock of my hair around his finger while scanning my room, from the neat white shelves to the matching dresser. “Immaculate. No plants. How surprising.”
“How did you know which door was my room? They were all closed.”
“Do you want the safe answer, or the truth?”
“Always the truth.”
Darkness tangles in his eyes as he pulls my hair to his lips and fixes his gaze on me.
“The floorplan for your house is online. I have studied it. At length.” My hair slips from his finger, and he scans my body, beneath him, pillowed against the white cloud of my down comforter.
His lips meet my forehead, then he pushes up, separating us.
Once he’s seated beside me, spinning a card between his fingers, I regain the ability to think and speak. “You’re strong.”
“I’ve been training for this.”
“For… this ? Specifically?”
“More or less.” He shrugs, rubs his shoulder. “That did hurt a little, though. I’ll keep training.”
Slowly, I sit up, take in his broad back, the card spinning between his long fingers. I don’t know what it is about him. He’s really something else.
I’ve never been the greatest at identifying what’s going on inside my body.
It’s why I don’t eat as often as I should, probably.
Hunger is a foreign sensation. It’s only when I’m starkly panicked that everything seems to come online, and then it’s horrible.
Like being shocked, suddenly, at full strength.
On some level I think I understand that my interest in extremes stems from a desire to experience positive feelings, yet knowing I won’t unless they somehow manage to get beneath my flesh.
I’m naturally cold. Void. Empty. I learned really young how to get others to fill in the spaces.
But other people are heavy. And I’m tired of paying the price to be around them when I’m so much lighter alone.
Sagging, I let my cheek fall against Mars’s back, let my eyes close, let the tension and weight leave me.
“All good, little goddess?” he murmurs.
“Why me?” I ask.
“Why…you?”
“I know you have a reputation, but surely there are other women in town who’d take a chance with a bad boy. Why me?”
His head rocks back to rest against mine. “Do I have to be honest again?”
“Always.”
He sighs. “You’re beautiful.”
“Really? That’s surprisingly shallow given your spiel just a few minutes ago about wanting to carve your name into my soul.”
“It progressively gets more complicated, but I’m not ready to share all those details.
Ultimately, when I first saw you and you offered me a polite smile, I lost my mind.
You were the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, and you spared me a scrap of attention.
I’m probably too used to being avoided and ignored.
It meant a lot that you saw fit to grace me with a bare minimum kindness. ”
“You were throwing cards,” I say.
“Yeah. I do that a lot.”
“I thought it was cool. I was nervous about moving into my own place all by myself. I’d wanted to be alone, but after the long, silent drive out here, alone was scary.
I stayed in my car for a while, watching you throw card after card, thinking it was insane that there were people in this world who actually put apples on other people’s heads to practice aim.
When I finally found the strength to get out, I felt less alone.
” Sugar sweet scent fills my lungs. “Because…you were there.”
“You know,” he whispers, “most people don’t find my presence at all calming or reassuring in any way at all.”
I snake my arms around his waist. “I’m not most people.”
His hand tangles with my fingers. “True enough.” A labored breath pushes against my hold. “So. Courthouse?”
“No.”
“Would it help if I beg?”
“I’d prefer to be the one begging.”
His thumb runs against mine. “Go ahead, then. I’ll let you.”
“Nice try, villain.”
His chuckle soothes something aching, and I squeeze him as close as I can, wondering why some people aren’t nearly as peopley as others, and why peopling with this person doesn’t feel quite so peopley at all.