Chapter 19 #2
“Fine, I can admit that I’m the greedy one,” Ridge says, shrugging. “Because all I can think about now is fucking you.”
My clit pulses.
Traitor.
“Which is unfair of you, by the way. I came here with a speech.”
My steps slow. “A speech?”
I can feel him looking at the side of my face, but I don’t look at him.
“A whole speech. An excellent one. Very emotional. I’ve completely lost it now.”
“I’m not listening.” I forge a path through the gummy bears, making the floor harder so I can move faster.
Of course, he keeps up.
“But even though I’d love to fuck you, I didn’t come here for that.” Ridge steps around in front of me, and I stop automatically.
He reaches out to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear with one careful finger, then kisses my temple. “I promise,” he murmurs, breath warm against my skin. “I will not fuck you right now.”
“Ridge.” I bat his hand away. “Stop saying the word fuck.”
He chuckles, and it does terrible things to his face. “I’m sorry. But seriously, I really want to talk to you. We can do the fu… the thing after. If you still want to sit on my dick.”
I look at his eyes, and I know what I see there. It’s the same look he had when he dropped to his knees and licked me like he was starving. “This is a trick.”
“I would never joke about you sitting on my dick.” His gaze drops to my mouth, then lower, watching how my chest is rising too fast. “Though I do like the visual. You, flushed and dripping, taking every inch while I watch those pretty tits bounce.”
The gummy bears start launching themselves at him.
I don’t entirely mean to do it. I’m flustered and annoyed, and the dreamscape responds to whatever I’m feeling, so when red gummy bears peel off the ground and launch themselves at his face, I don’t exactly stop them.
“Goddammit, sweetheart.” He ducks the first few but then takes a hit to the shoulder. He gasps, mostly in outrage, but that only gives a lucky red one an opening to rocket directly into his mouth.
Ridge freezes in surprise, but then he chomps down viciously, glowering as he chews the gummy bear into a pulp.
It has never been so hard not to laugh.
“Strawberry. If you’re going to weaponize them, at least make them lemon.”
A blue one joins the party, nailing him directly in the forehead.
“That one was accidental,” I say.
“Oh, it felt personal.”
He ducks an orange one that comes crashing, but catches a green one, looks at it, and eats it.
“Still not lemon,” he informs me.
He’s a grumpy horror author standing in the middle of my candy dreamscape, with gummy bears stuck in his hair, but instead of looking ridiculous, he makes everything else seem less believable.
And I am so tired, angry, relieved he is here, and so furious at myself for being relieved, that words just bubble out of me.
“I am not weak, Ridge. Okay?” My voice cracks, and he stills, but I don’t care. “I am not a weak little thing that you can just do whatever you want with because you’re bored. I have feelings, and I’m not just here for your entertainment. I’m not. I’m not some…”
I don’t even know how to finish it. Some what? Some girl you fuck in a dream and forget about when you wake up? Some person who is actually, genuinely, humiliatingly in love with you and terrified of what that means, given that I don’t even know if I’m getting out of here?
I can’t say any of it.
So I stand there with my mouth open and my chest splitting.
He takes my face in both hands and kisses me hard, but I bite his bottom lip harder.
He pulls back with a hiss and runs his thumb over his lip, chuckling at the red smear.
“No,” he says, his eyes darker than before.
“You’re not. You’re the strongest fucking person I’ve ever met.
” He brushes his thumb over my cheek, probably smearing his blood there.
“And I would like to tell you what you mean to me, if you’d let me, because that is what I came here to do. ”
“Ridge.”
“Every fiber of my being is pulled toward you. Every minute. Since before I knew what was happening, since before I understood what it was. Something in me locked onto something in you, and I haven’t stopped moving toward you since.”
I want it to be true. God, I want it so badly it scares me.
But wanting something this much only to be wrong about it, I know what that feels like. I’ve been wrong before. The voicemail. My mother. All of it. I have a documented history of being the last to know.
“That’s not real.” My throat hurts. “That’s just the deal we made.”
He frowns. “The deal we made?”
“The deal we made about Tessa and me helping you build—”
Ridge scoffs. “I know what you are talking about, but why would that pull toward you be the deal we made?”
“Because we made a soul contract, we—”
“Jesus, Lenny.” Ridge laughs in my face. “That wasn’t a soul contract. I don’t know shit about them, but I know we would know if it were one.”
I stare at him. “What?”
“It was a deal. A regular deal.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
I shake my head. “No, because normal deals don’t do…” I gesture vaguely between us. “This.”
His gaze sharpens. “This?”
“The pull.”
“The pull?” Ridge goes rigid. “You’re feeling a pull?”
Something in his face shifts. It’s not surprise exactly but more like recognition, as if I’ve just confirmed something he already suspected, and that scares me more than the alternative.
What does he know that I don’t?
“I mean, yeah, I…”
He puts his hands on my shoulders, leaning down to stare into my eyes. “What do you mean? What pull?”
My pulse stumbles as I unconsciously press my hand to my chest. “I don’t know. I…”
“Lenny.” All the teasing vanishes from his expression. “Tell me.”
“There’s a pull.” I swallow, pressing my hand harder into my chest. “Here. And it pulls me toward you.”
“Toward me, how?”
“I don’t know.”
“You do.”
“I don’t.”
One finger comes to rest beneath my chin, tilting up my face. “Try. For me? Please?”
Ridge doesn’t say please. Ridge barely says thank you, and the fact that he’s looking at me like this, begging me to tell him what I’m feeling.
God.
“It’s always pulling me to you. When you’re gone, but when you’re around too.”
He strokes his finger down my neck, pressing it over my racing pulse, and the dreamscape shivers.
“Keep going.”
“It’s easier.”
His eyes don’t leave mine. “What is?”
I hate him for making me say it.
“Everything.”
Breathing.
Thinking.
Dreaming.
Being here.
Being me.
His thumb stills, and the look on his face changes enough that my heart hurts.
“When I touch you,” he asks quietly. “Do you feel more real or less?”
I exhale. “More.”
“Grounded?”
I nod quickly. “Yes.”
He shuts his eyes, and when they open again, they’re filled with so much emotion, I forget to breathe.
“You said Tessa is your tether.”
I nod.
“How does that feel?”
“It’s a pull too.”
“Where does it pull from?”
“My heart.”
“And where does mine pull from?”
I know the answer before I’ve finished the thought. I’ve known it for a while, I think, the way you know something you’ve been refusing to look at directly. It’s been there in my peripheral vision this whole time, waiting for someone to make me turn my head.
I look down at my chest, at my citrus nails, splayed over…
“My heart.”
Ridge’s smile is broken, beautiful, and so achingly hopeful it almost undoes me. “Oh, sweetheart.” He presses his forehead to mine and huffs out a laugh. “You thought that was a soul contract.”
I lean away so I can glare at him. “Don’t laugh.”
“I’m not laughing.”
“Ridge.”
“Lenny.” His smile softens, then disappears entirely. “I’m your tether.”
“You are?”
“Yeah, and you are mine.” He brushes his lips against mine. “I spent years waiting for things to end. My career. My dreams. My life.”
I squeeze my eyes shut.
Don’t cry. Do not cry. You bit him thirty seconds ago. You cannot bite a man and then cry at him.
“And then you showed up.” A shaky breath leaves him. “And for the first time in a long time, I wanted more.”
My throat closes because I know what this is costing him. I heard him through the wall of sleep, not saying it to me but saying it anyway, and now he’s saying it to my face, and I don’t have anywhere to put it.
“Ridge.”
His hand slides into my hair, and my bottom lip wobbles. He softly presses a kiss to it right at the center of the wobble and says something against my mouth that might be my name.
“I thought this was a soul contract,” I whisper, slowly coming to terms with it all.
“No.” He tugs on my hair. “You don’t get to tell me this is some magical deal when we both know what it really is.” Another tug. “This is me. This is every broken piece of me choosing you. This is love.”
My heart feels like it’s trying to skip out of my chest.
“You can’t say things like that.”
“Apparently, I can.”
“No, because I might believe you.”
The tears spill over in defeat.
I lost.
Not the argument. Myself. The version of me that was still trying to keep a safe distance, still convinced this was chemistry, proximity, and dream logic.
“You are such an asshole.”
He chuckles, brushing his nose over the wet trails on my cheek. “I know. But I’m an asshole who loves you.”
“That is not making your case better.”
“I disagree.”
“Of course, you do.”
“I think it’s a very strong argument, actually.”
I let out a watery laugh. “I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Right now I do.”
“Liar.”
“Asshole.”
“Lenny?”
“Yeah?”
Those ridiculous amber eyes hold mine for one long second. Then he murmurs a soft, “Shut up,” and kisses me.
I fist the front of his hoodie as his hand cups my jaw, and for one perfect second, the gummy bears, the dreamscape, Lucien, and Tessa all disappear.
There’s only Ridge.
Only us.
Only…
A strawberry-smelling piece of gummy bear pelts him on the side of the head.
Both of us jerk apart.
Ridge closes his eyes. “I swear to God, Lenny.”
“I didn’t do that!”
A throat clears, and we turn to find Nevan, arm already cocked back with another red piece of gummy.
“Oh, you little shit,” Ridge mutters, and Nevan lets it loose.
A shadow rises from the ground, and splat! The gummy bear explodes against the darkness, splattering onto Ridge.