41. Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Two
JULIAN
“Let me see you, anyway.”
Her words undo something inside of me—something I did not know to exist inside my bones.
The way this woman makes me feel is foreign and nearly unhinged.
I can see it in the way she’s looking at me with her hand pressed against a reminder of my past that she’s real.
Perhaps the realest thing I’ve had the chance to encounter in a long, long time.
Every time I lay eyes on this insanely beautiful woman, it feels like heaven crashing into earth inside my chest. It’s like two worlds meeting; souls colliding.
It’s possibly the worst feeling in the world to be lucky enough to have such a thing standing right in front of you but not finding yourself worthy enough to take it.
“My father was not a good man,” I say to someone willingly for the first time in my life.
Her already tear-filled eyes overflow, causing droplets to land on her pillow. “He hurt you a lot?” she croaks.
I dip my chin, emotion building in the back of my throat. “My mother had it worse because she did everything she could to protect me. He didn’t like that. He said it made me weak, and I’d never be a man if she kept coddling me. ”
She opens her mouth, but no words come out. The devastation on her face worries me, and I sit up on my elbow before crossing the line between us and wiping away her tears. “Hey,” I whisper. “Do not cry for me.”
She grabs my hand to hold it against her face and I note how she’s never pulled away from my touch. It doesn’t matter if it’s for show or for us. She always accepts it. More often than not, she leans into it like it’s something she needs.
After a shaky breath, she tells me, “I will cry for you, damn it.” Her fingernails dig into my skin, but I don’t shy away from the pain. This is not brought on by hate. It’s the kind of pain given by someone who cares. “Please just let me,” she breathes, her voice nasally.
Words failing me, I nod. I watch as she sorts through her emotions, but not once ever taking her eyes off mine.
I see you , her eyes say to my soul.
“How many?” she forces out and I don’t have to ask to know what she’s talking about.
My answer is immediate. “I have twelve in total. Seven of them are from him.”
“Who else hurt you?” she rasps.
“A lot of people hurt me, Andrea,” I murmur, pushing her hair away from her damp cheeks. “But I’m not hurting anymore, ok?”
She nods, sniffling. “I want to see them.”
I shake my head subtly. “They’re not pretty.”
“I don’t care.”
With only a moment of hesitation and fear at what she’ll think, I sit up and turn the wall lamp next to the bed on. It casts a faint warm light around the room. I look over at her puffy red eyes as she sits with her legs tucked beneath her and the covers clutched tightly to her chest.
Her eyes roam over my chest and down to my abdomen. After a minute, I turn stiffly, letting her get a good look at my back. I wonder what’s going through her mind as she looks at me and if she sees me for what I truly am.
Hideous. Broken. Frail.
Cold fingers touch my skin, and my body lightly jolts at the contact. Then, I feel something else there—her lips as she places a kiss on each of my scars.
“What are you doing?” I breathe, not daring to move. The drug-inducing feel of her mouth dragging across my skin causes a shiver to take over my body.
“I’m choosing you,” she whispers against the skin of my neck.
She goes to move away, and I grab her arm, keeping her in place as I stare at her with a thousand storms in my mind.
Her eyes flick to my mouth. “Your darkness doesn’t scare me and neither do the scars.
” Her brows furrow as she looks at me like I’m worth something.
She grabs my wrist, and I release my hold on her.
She leans back and I finally get a glimpse of what she’s wearing, which is a green satin night dress. I have to rein in a groan at the sight of her and the absurd jealousy I feel toward the fabric that’s freely brushing against her skin. She’s trying to kill me.
With her focus on my face, she slowly begins to lift the dress from the bottom, revealing her skin inch by inch. My pulse skyrockets and my heart pounds in my eardrums as the air is pulled from my lungs. She wears a scrap of white lace as underwear.
“Andr—” Her name dies in my throat as the fabric reaches its destination and reveals a pale scar slashed across her abdomen and side .
“A shard of glass stabbed me,” she states with a shaky voice.
“From the accident.” She drops the dress back down and this time, she rolls her shoulders, letting the thin straps fall away, allowing the dress to drop further down.
She holds it up enough to cover herself, but enough for me to see what it is she’s showing me.
Another scar that’s long and vertical across her sternum.
“My heart stopped during surgery,” she breathes at the same time that mine does, blinking rapidly at the ceiling as if to stop more tears from falling. “For four minutes, I was gone. And do you want to know what I saw?”
I nod, feeling the backs of my eyes burn. I can’t even remember the last time I cried and why.
Fuck.
“There was this field that stretched for miles. I was standing in the middle of it and I had this feeling that something was wrong, but I couldn’t remember what exactly.
The sun was warm, and the sky was so blue that I wanted nothing more than to stay in that comfort.
There was a strange push I felt against my body, and I knew that wherever I was, I wasn’t ready to stay.
” Her brows bunch in thought. “I’ll never forget the soft, small wisps that fell like snow around me. ”
My heart is ricocheting in my chest, batting itself back and forth to break through a wall I never considered tearing down before.
“There was this voice in the back of my mind that was telling me to fight and without really thinking, I listened to it. I started to fight for something I didn’t understand and because of it, I think I lived.
” A single tear falls down her cheek and she wipes it away before I can.
“It kept replaying in my mind while I was in a coma and when I woke up, I knew that whatever the reason, I’d find my answer someday.
” She offers me a small, sad smile. “I’ve been playing it by ear ever since and nothing has made more sense to me than you.
Meeting you shifted my universe, and I think that after all this time, maybe my heart is just now starting to beat again. ”
There’s a relentless anguish that comes with her words, but at the same time, I feel something else. I think it’s part hope and part dread, because everything she’s saying is telling me to take hold of this woman and never let go.
“I have a pretty decent track record of saying the wrong things at the wrong time or wanting something I’m told I shouldn’t,” I tell her stiffly.
I’m afraid to move from where I sit for fear of making her run away.
Even when something tells me she won’t, I know that I can’t always trust my instincts when it comes to this.
“I like what we have, and I don’t want to mess that up. ”
She inches closer to me, walking on her knees. “What else do you want, Julian?”
I shake my head, running a hand through my hair. “It doesn’t mat—”
She takes my face in her hands, forcing me to look at her. “What. Do. You. Want?”
I can’t recall the last time anyone ever asked me that. “I want to kiss you,” I admit. “And this time, I want it to be real.” Where I expect to find confusion or disgust, there is none. What I find instead is a woman looking at me like I make the stars burn.
“You trying to test a theory, Havord?” she asks me playfully, not backing away, but inching closer.
Before she can even blink, I wrap a hand around the back of her thigh and the other around her waist and pull her onto my lap to straddle me.
It causes breath to be expelled from her lungs as her chest grazes mine.
“ Maybe,” I murmur, tucking hair behind her ear.
My thumb grazes over the freckles fanned across her nose and cheeks.
“How drunk are you?” Fear spikes slightly at the thought of her regretting this in the morning.
She nuzzles her nose against mine and already I’m losing my mind. “I assure you, I am completely lucid and willing.” Her lips ghost mine and at my quick intake of breath, she smiles. “Real,” she whispers.
I nearly groan in relief as I close the distance between us, catching her mouth with mine.
Real .
Her thighs squeeze my waist as I drag my hand up her back, gripping her hair tightly as I plunge my tongue into her mouth.
Her hands roam every inch of my chest and back before her fingers find their way to my hair.
A deep growl of approval vibrates out of me, and she rewards me with a roll of her hips.
I hiss, my hands going to her waist, but not stopping the movement as my jaw unhinges in ecstasy. It would be so easy—too easy to pull myself free and her panties to the side. The mere thought of driving into her heat has a white-hot pleasure rolling down my spine.
“Goddamn,” I breathe, looking down at where she moves herself back and forth over me. I’m hard as a fucking rock.
“Keep kissing me,” she rushes out. “ Please .”
I curl my fingers around her neck, pulling her mouth back to mine.
The little sounds she makes as she grinds against my dick have me inching closer and closer to insanity.
I squeeze her thighs tightly and then move my hands up her body, causing the fabric to bunch at her waist. My fingers meet lace and I pause.
“Keep going,” she pleads, pressing closer to my touch. It does something to me that has all of my resolve leaving and every line drawn to fade.
To emphasize her want, she drags her teeth over my bottom lip as she presses harder into me. I moan, stilling her hips before I spill in my pants like a teenager. “I am hanging on by a thread, Andrea,” I ground out.
She drops her forehead against mine. “We can stop if you want.”
“No,” I state, my voice husky and coated with lust. “Just tell me what you want. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”
When she places her hand over the one I have on her hip, I let her guide it to where she wants it.
“I want,” she starts, but shutters as my hand grazes her center and I have to bite back a groan.
“I want you here,” she breathes, her hips rocking lightly until I still them again. “Really, really badly.”
I angle my hand so that my thumb presses into her clit. She shivers, her eyes closing as her head falls back. I press my lips softly to her throat as I move my thumb in a small circle, keeping a steady rhythm.
“Like this?” I ask, my lips brushing over her soft skin.
“Yes,” she breathes.
I drag my tongue over the column of her throat as I pull the soaked thin material to the side. Then I do something I’ve never done before; I close my mouth on her skin and suck. Knowing that if another man looks at her, he’ll see it and back the hell off if he knows what’s good for him.
I run my fingers across her wetness, teasing her as I mark her with my mouth.
“ God , Julian,” she moans, her hands gripping and pulling my hair so hard that I know my scalp will be sore in the morning.
I release her skin and lean back to admire my work. Personally, I think it’s my best. It drives a wild instinct inside of me that has a part of me going feral at the sight.
“Exquisite,” I murmur, before placing a gentle kiss over the redness.
She pushes down onto my finger, causing it to slide inside of her a little. “Please.”
I place small kisses all over her chest and shoulders, not able to get enough of her and never wanting this moment to end. Pushing away the voice that tells me she won’t see me this way tomorrow, I ask, “What do you want, ma cerise?”
“Your fingers,” she whines, pushing down more.
“Where do you want them?” I ask, pressing my thumb on her clit again while I brush two fingers over her wet heat.
She grips my chin in her hands and with her lips against mine she says, “You know where I want them.”
“I want to hear you say it.”
“I want them insid—” Her words break off into a moan as I slide my fingers into her. I groan at the feel of her tight walls wrapped around them.
“Christ, you’re tight.” I remove my fingers and then drive them into her slowly. I do it again and again, slowly increasing my speed.
She kisses me hard, and our tongues tangle aggressively as she starts to roll her hips again. I lose my mind completely as she starts riding my fingers.
“Shit, keep doing that,” I gasp, and a cry leaves her throat as she clings to me—both of us are too lost in the moment to kiss. She pants breathy moans into my ear as I graze my teeth over her shoulder.
“Oh, fuck,” she moans, grinding harder as I rub her clit. “I’m gonna—”
Her walls tighten as her mouth falls open in a silent scream. When her frenzied hips stutter, I move my fingers in and out of her to draw out the pleasure.
I understand now that I have crawled out of every dark hole in my life to see this woman come apart in ecstasy. If I’m meant for anything, it’s this—her.
She peppers kisses over my jaw and cheek until she reaches my mouth. The kiss is deep and drugging. When she reaches for my waistband, I catch her hands. I don’t want now to be our first time—not on some yacht with a few drinks in her system and too many listening ears surrounding us.
She blinks a few times, confusion coating her lust. “I want to take care of you now.”
I shake my head, push the hair away from her face, and kiss her softly on the mouth. “You already have.”
“But I—” Her eyebrows bunch together. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No,” I say quickly. “You’re perfect.”
“I don’t understand. So, you don’t want me to uh. . .repay the favor?” she asks slowly.
“That wasn’t a favor, ma cerise. I made you come because that alone brings me pleasure. When you touch me for the first time, I want it to be because it pleases you, not because you want to please me.”
“Oh,” she breathes.
“Now, what I want is to clean you up, get back in this bed, and hold you.”
Her mouth twitches into a smile. “I want that, too.”
Every moment in my life has had one common denominator.
No one ever chooses me.
No one until Andrea Sommers.