Chapter 9 Annabelle #2
“You’re mine,” he murmurs, his palms trailing up my thighs, grease-smudged hands leaving prints against my skin. “And I want the whole damn valley to know it.”
My breath stutters.
He kisses each mark like he’s trying to erase them. Like love could undo what violence did. Like this—his body, his mouth—is the only redemption left.
“I should’ve protected you,” he says between kisses. “Should’ve gone after him the second I knew.”
“Stop,” I manage. “Please, Derek. Don’t?—”
He looks up, eyes burning. “You don’t get to protect him.”
“I’m not,” I say, voice tight. “I’m trying to protect you .”
His hands move to my waist, anchoring me. “I don’t need protection, Honeycrisp. But you? I’ll burn the world to ash before I let him near you again.”
Tears sting my eyes.
And I don’t stop him when he lifts me, carries me to the front of the car, and sets me on the hood like I weigh nothing.
He unfastens my dress, each button slow, reverent, opening from my chest to my thighs. The cotton slides off my shoulders. I should feel exposed. Instead, I feel seen.
The last light of sunset floods the garage windows, streaking gold across the floor. Dust motes float like fireflies in the beams. Tools line the wall like an audience holding its breath.
He traces my calves, his thumbs nudging my knees apart, coaxing instead of commanding, like a man who knows how to open something sacred.
I forget how to breathe.
His gaze darkens as he sees the bruises again. Violet blooms edged in olive and rose. He doesn’t flinch.
“Annabelle,” he whispers like it’s all that matters.
“I didn’t want you to see them,” I say, trying to shift my legs closed.
He holds them open. Gentle. Unmoving. “Don’t hide from me.”
He kisses each mark slowly, lips trailing up my thighs, lingering where the skin is softest. Where I’m tender in ways no one else has touched. Where I almost forgot what safety felt like.
“I’ll kill him,” he breathes against my skin.
Another kiss. Higher.
“I swear to God, I’ll kill him.”
“Derek—”
“No. Let me do this. Let me love you like you deserve.”
“No, I mean, don’t you have to work?”
He leans in and kisses me hard. A claiming. A promise.
“A man’s gotta eat,” he says, voice ragged. “A man’s gotta remember why he wakes up every morning. The car’s ready for the race. And I’m starving.”
But the warmth drains from me all at once.
“Derek, please. If Mike’s racing…if he’s in the race…it’s not safe.”
He freezes.
“What?”
I hesitate, slowly sliding off the car’s hood.
His jaw sets. “Annabelle… Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was going to. I am. I just…” I reach for him. “I was scared.”
His expression darkens. “You think I’d let that bastard get on a track with me and walk away ?”
“Exactly,” I whisper. “I’m afraid of what you’ll do.”
His arms cross, the muscle in his jaw ticking. “This race means a lot, Honeycrisp. I’ve won before and won’t blow it. I need the money.”
I nod slowly. “Not if I marry you, right?”
“Right,” he says, voice softer now. “But?—”
“Then propose properly,” I tell him, trying to sound bolder than I feel. After all, the divorce will be backdated. “We’ll get married.”
He blinks. “Properly?”
I smile, sudden and real. “Yes. I want a real proposal.”
He groans, low in his throat. “You ambushed me.”
“Maybe,” I tease.
But when he drops to one knee on the garage floor, shirtless, grease-streaked, and utterly devastating, I stop breathing. Because he’s serious. And I’m the one being ambushed.
From his back pocket, he pulls a small box. The lid flips open, and my heart stumbles.
Inside is a pink diamond, set in a halo of smaller stones shaped into an apple blossom.
I gasp. “Where did you get that?”
I’m standing there in nothing but my bra, panties, and flip-flops on a grease-streaked floor, and somehow I feel like I’m both in a fairytale and a prison break.
Joy and terror twist in my chest.
“I had it made last year,” he says, voice thick. “Back when I thought maybe… Someday.”
“Derek,” I whisper, fingers trembling against my lips.
He takes my hand in his calloused one, eyes never leaving mine. “Annabelle Waters, you took me out of my darkest days and made every day bright. You already know how hard I love you, so please”—his voice cracks, just slightly— “let me love you for the rest of our lives. Will you marry me?”
The ring glitters like a promise. But all I can think is: what if I can’t give him what he needs? What if forever is just another word for cage?
Still, I step forward.
Still, I say yes.
I yank him up by the collar until our mouths crash, an overexcited “Yes” falling between kisses.
His grin spreads, slow and sinful, across my lips. “Now,” he murmurs, voice thick, “are you ready to consummate this engagement?”
The tears come out of nowhere, hot and silent. I don’t sob. I just feel every ache, every year of what we missed, every piece of me that’s been clawing toward this man since the day I ran.
He doesn’t wipe them away.
He just lifts me into his arms and carries me across the gravel, straight to the back seat of his truck.
Somehow, he manages to flick open my bra with one hand and toss it toward the front seat while laying me down in the back.
I giggle, breathless. “Showoff.”
His jeans hit the floorboards with impressive speed. I don’t even know how—magic or muscle memory—but he’s out of them, kneeling between my legs, all golden skin and hunger.
And still, he’s slow. Intentional.
Like he has all the time in the world to worship the pieces of me I thought no one would ever touch again.
His lips trace a path up my stomach, each kiss a brand of heat. He pauses at my breast, sealing his mouth around the curve until my body arches, greedy for more.
By the time he reaches my face, I’m trembling. He cups my cheeks, breath brushing against my lips.
“I want to make love to you,” he murmurs, low and gruff. “But if you want me to stop, just say it.”
“I don’t want you to stop.” My voice is already wrecked. “I want all of it.”
For the first time, his touch doesn’t trigger flinching, but memory. Of love, not fear. Because in Derek’s hands, I’m not something broken. I’m wanted. Cherished. Chosen.
I rise to kiss him, fierce and sure, like I’ve forgotten how to be afraid.
His mouth moves over mine, deep and coaxing, threaded with hunger held back by sheer will. When his calloused fingers sweep across my skin, I gasp.
He notices. Smiles.
“Still sensitive there?” he asks, brushing a knuckle over the curve of my breast.
“Yes.” I can barely breathe.
His grin turns wicked. “Good. Means your engine’s already running hot.”
A breathless laugh escapes me. “Are you seriously using a mechanic metaphor right now ?”
He shifts his weight, forcing me gently back against the seat with his hips. I feel him, hard and urgent, pressing against my thigh.
“Sweetheart,” he rasps, “I’ve been dying to strip you down and get under your hood since the day you walked into my garage.”
A moan spills from my lips.
His mouth claims mine again, deeper now, as his hand rolls my nipple between practiced fingers. He moves lower, trailing over my stomach, until his fingers part me, slow and sure.
“You’re soaked,” he groans, voice rough with need. “Tell me what you need, Honeycrisp.”
“You know exactly what I need,” I whisper.”
He groans, filthy and full of bite.
One hand strokes between my thighs while the other cradles my neck. He slides his fingers into me, deep and slow, drawing a shudder from my spine.
“You’re so damn perfect,” he whispers against my jaw. “Gonna do this right. Slow. Yeah?”
I nod, already dizzy.
When he finally sinks into me, it’s slow and deep and devastating. He holds still, like he needs a second to take it all in. Like he’s engraving the feel of me into his soul.
“Goddamn,” he breathes. “You feel like home.”
We move together in a rhythm that’s as old as us, slow and aching and honest. His hands roam like they can’t choose what part of me to memorize first. My name is a whisper on his lips, over and over.
He shifts, lifts my leg over his hip, and drives deeper. Harder.
“Just like that,” I gasp. “Don’t stop.”
He kisses me again, rougher now, needier. Like he’s coming undone and needs me to fall with him.
“Not stoppin’,” he growls. “I’ve got years to make up for. I’m nowhere near done with you.”
When he pulls out, I nearly sob at the loss. But then he flips me onto my stomach, kisses blazing a trail down my spine.
“You good?” he asks, his palm firm at the small of my back.
“God, yes.”
He tilts my hips and slides back into me with a groan that sounds like worship.
“Could tune an engine with how tight you are, baby.”
I brace against the door, my hand pressed to the fogged window. “Then do it. Wreck me.”
“Oh, I intend to.”
He pounds into me with purpose, each stroke hard and deep, laced with all the things he can’t say. My fingers claw at the seat as my body spirals into a helpless frenzy.
When release finally hits, it knocks the breath from my lungs. I come with a cry that sounds like a plea and a promise rolled into one.
Derek follows with a growl, hips locked to mine, fingers digging into my waist like he’ll never let me go. His body shudders behind me, spilling warmth, his weight folding over my back before he shifts us gently sideways.
He pulls me onto him, my head finding its home on his chest. Our skin is slick. Our hearts are still racing. His cock still pulses against my thigh, a slow, satisfied thrum.
His hand traces lazy circles along my spine, each pass soothing something jagged inside me.
“Damn,” he mutters, voice thick and reverent. “You short-circuited me.”
I laugh, muffled against his chest. “Is that a mechanic euphemism for coming too hard?”
He groans. “Don’t make me regret telling you I think in engine metaphors.”
I press a kiss to the underside of his jaw. “You started it.”
“Pretty sure you begged me to wreck you.”
“And you did.” I stretch, boneless and warm. “Thoroughly. I’m going to walk like I lost a bar fight.”
“Good.” His voice dips, wicked and low. “You bent over like that, moaning my name? That’s the kind of memory that keeps a man awake at night.”
I swat his chest, still smiling, still floating. He smirks and runs his thumb over a smudge of motor oil on my thigh.
“You’re officially mine now,” he says. “Marked you in grease and everything.”
Another laugh bubbles up, light and unguarded. It wraps around us like the sunset streaming through the garage door.
He shifts onto his elbow, and I curl into his side, letting myself get lost in the rhythm of him. His breath. His heartbeat. The steady calm of being seen and safe.
“Was it too much?” he asks, voice softer now.
I tilt my head to meet his gaze. “It was everything I didn’t know I needed.”
He brushes a damp strand of hair from my face, then kisses my temple. We lie there, tangled in silence, the world reduced to soft rustles of trees and the faint creak of wind across the barn roof.
His stomach rumbles.
I grin. “You’re hungry.”
He swats my backside lazily. “I’m not opposed to watching you cook naked.”
I kiss him, playful. “Apron, at least.”
“Fine. But nothing else.”
I laugh, but the sound catches. Something twists inside me.
Because I haven’t told him everything.
Not about the forged divorce papers. Not about the coerced marriage. Not about the gun hidden in the RV’s bench. Not about the journal filled with truths too dangerous to leave lying around.
He doesn’t know.
Not yet.
And that knowledge sits heavily in my chest, even as we walk back toward the house with fingers twined and hearts still echoing what we just shared.
Time slips by. At some point, the dogs come in and I start dinner. By dinnertime, the kitchen smells like bacon and lemon dish soap. The windows are open to the breeze. The dogs mill around our feet. The apple trees are in bloom.
I cling to the moment. To the way his eyes follow me around like I’m the only thing he sees. To the dogs underfoot, and the stray mosquito fighting with the light.
For now, I let myself pretend that I belong here. That this is forever. And that no forged document or hidden gun can ruin the peace.
I glance at Derek, but behind that smile, I see the flicker of worry he doesn’t say aloud.
And for the first time, I let myself feel it too.
I’m scared.
Not of Derek. Not of this love that’s wrapping itself around my bones.
I’m scared of what happens when the truth finally catches up.