Chapter Thirty-Seven – Bradford #2
Before, at my father’s house… the thought of losing her was too much.
I had her in my arms, but I knew deep down it couldn’t stay that way.
I knew someone would come and take me away, and it angered something deep inside of me, something I’ve never felt before.
At the time, it felt as if I was losing my mind.
But not anymore. Not now. Now it’s just me and Kayla—and Hayden, but for reasons that should be obvious, I’m fully focused on her.
As much as I want to lose myself in her here and now, I also know that this office isn’t exactly the place I want to remember when it comes to our first time. Then again, maybe I’m getting too ahead of myself. Maybe she’s not ready for that.
Though the last thing I want to do is pull my mouth off hers, I do just that.
“I would like to make you mine, provided you agree.” The moment the words leave me, I want to take them back.
I sound so… formal and stiff. Clearly, I’m not used to this sort of thing.
I have no practice. I don’t really know what I’m doing.
The smile that tugs on her lips is answer enough, and what she says next cools my embarrassment, “I want to be yours.” The way she looks up at me fills me with a new kind of heat, new desires, new passions ready to bust free from the cages they’ve been locked inside for so long.
I do what I was too afraid to do before: I heave her into my arms and pick her up. Before, it was Hayden’s job to carry her weak body through the house, but now… now I want to touch her as much as I can. I feel like a whole new man.
Carrying her through the house, we end up in her room.
I set her down on the edge of her bed and instantly note the heat creeping up her cheeks.
The expression on her face is both wanting and coy, and it stirs something in my lower half, something that I hope will fulfill every need she could possibly have.
A cough near the door reminds us both there’s a third person here, and said person followed us from my office.
Hayden stands, leaning on the door, his arms folded over his chest. He says, “Unfortunately, I’m not clear for certain…
physical activities for another few weeks.
Looks like it’s gonna be just you two. Think you can handle it, Bradford? ” His tone is teasing.
I manage a glare in his direction. “I believe I can handle it just fine without your supervision,” I toss back.
He chuckles. “You’re getting good at the repartee, I’ll give you that. I’ll, uh, leave you two alone for now. I’ll go sit outside or something, so be as loud as you two animals want.” He gives us a wink—yes, a wink—before he ducks out of the room.
A wink. Who the hell does he think he is, some teenage heartthrob that makes the girls go crazy? As I think that thought, I glance at Kayla and find out that, yes, Hayden’s wink did have its intended effect: she’s blushing even harder now.
Once he’s gone, once it’s just the two of us, I feel as if I need to remind her that this isn’t something I’ve ever done before. I tell her, “If I do something you don’t like, or I don’t do something you want, tell me. I’m not… I don’t have much experience in things like this.”
Or any, but it sounds too pathetic to say it out loud.
Kayla smiles up at me. “It’s okay. I’m not an expert, either. I’ve only been with Hayden, and… I honestly don’t remember a lot of it.” Her hands reach for me, for the two buttons holding my suit jacket together. Though she doesn’t say it aloud, it’s as if she’s asking me if I’m sure I’m ready.
I am. I don’t think I’ve ever been more ready for anything in my life. Everything I’ve gone through, everything I’ve survived, everything she’s survived; we’re here now, and I could not possibly be more ready than I am today.
I want her. I need her. Somewhere along the way, this girl became the air I need to breathe, and I am so ready to dive deep.
Her fingers work to undo the buttons, and once they’re undone, I shrug it off.
It falls to the floor, crumpled and forgotten about.
She pulls my shirt out of my pants, untucking it so she can work on the buttons, starting from the bottom.
She works with a slow and steady pace, the kind of pace that tells me she wants this to last. She doesn’t want to hurry and get it over with.
Button after button she undoes, and as she reveals my torso bit by bit, I can’t help but feel as if I need to explain what she’ll see. She knew my father locked me away, but she doesn’t know the full extent to which he used to punish me.
When the final button near my throat is undone, I stop her before she can help me out of my shirt by saying, “There’s… I should tell you that—” How weird. I’m tripping over my words. Not something I’m used to doing.
Kayla’s voice is soft when she says, “I know.”
Wait. What? How could she possibly know what I’m trying to say? How could she know about them?
“That morning you slept in your office, when you went to your room to change and shower,” she whispers, “I saw you through the door. I saw the scars on your back.”
My breath catches. She followed me? Why? It’s unimportant now, and I’m past the point of being upset she saw the scars I hide from the world. No one knows about them. No one knows they exist, other than me.
But now she does. She knows and she holds no traces of judgement in her tone or in her eyes.
She does not look up at me as if I’m less of a man.
No, there is only one thing in those beautiful green eyes: love.
Love and acceptance and everything else that comes with it, emotions I never thought I deserved, emotions I never imagined I would receive. For so long, I assumed I’d die alone.
She doesn’t say anything else as she helps me out of my shirt, and as she pulls the sleeves off one arm and then the other, she walks around me, to my back, and she runs her fingertips over the ugly skin there.
No one has ever touched my scars like that, and I can’t help but shudder as she does so.
After a moment, she presses her lips against my back, planting a kiss above the scars and making the skin there tingle.
Even now, a part of me still feels as if I don’t deserve her. She’s too good for me, too sweet. She could do better—and she has done better. She has Hayden. In what world does she need me, too?
But those thoughts fade away as she returns to stand in front of me. Simply having her here, so close, puts all those doubts at ease, makes them disappear into the void.
Kayla sets a hand on my abdomen, slowly drawing that hand down to my belt.
She seems to want to continue to take charge, so I let her undo my belt and pull it off.
I let her help me out of my pants and what’s underneath, and soon enough I stand there before her, utterly bare, every single part of me on display.
She doesn’t look at me in disappointment. No, as those eyes of hers survey my body, I see nothing but hunger in her. It’s clear she likes what she sees, even with the ankle monitor still on.
As much as I want to give her all the time in the world to memorize me, the longer she looks at me, the more rock hard I get, and the more I desperately want her to join me and shed her clothes.
I step forward and sweep some of her hair off her shoulder, taking my time in helping her out of her shirt.
It’s all so new to me, the feeling of her clothes, the way her skin trembles beneath my touch.
Her shirt comes off, and then she turns around so I can undo her bra.
She shivers when my fingers brush what must be a sensitive spot on her back, and I undo the hooks on her bra moments after.
The bra slides down her arms and falls to the floor, on top of her shirt.
When she turns around to face me, now free of everything above the waist, I can’t help but touch her. My hands roam over her stomach, along her sides, up to her chest. Such slow, deliberate movements on my part, but moving fast right now just doesn’t feel right.
So I touch her. I run my palms over her nipples and make her sigh. I touch her to my heart’s content before my hands drop to her waist and work on undoing her jeans. And then, just like that, we’re both naked, and I stand before the woman that has somehow become my everything.
I can barely formulate the words, but I do my best, knowing she probably hasn’t heard it enough in her life: “You’re beautiful.”
She blushes, nibbles on her inner cheek, and then blurts out, “So are you. I mean, um, you’re handsome, too.”
I don’t know about that, but now isn’t the time to diminish anything she says.
She doesn’t strike me as someone who’d outright lie, so maybe…
maybe she does think I’m handsome. Honestly, I never looked at myself like that, never tried to attract any potential mates, but knowing she indeed likes what she sees when she looks at me gives me a kind of satisfaction nothing else in the world could.
“Well,” I say, taking a step toward her and placing my hand on her hip, “I think we should move this to the bed.” The bed that’s only two feet behind her, a bed that’s currently calling both our names.
Kayla nods, and I help her onto the bed. Together, we lay down, with her on her back and me on top of her. I admit, I thought it might be awkward, but being here with her, being above her; it’s right where I’m supposed to be. It feels right. There’s no other way to describe it.
Her head is comfortable on her pillow, her hair splayed around her head.
She runs her hands along my chest, then those hands wrap around my neck and bring me down to her level, where our lips meet.
Our third kiss, and now we both know what to expect, what the other’s mouth feels like on our own, and we are each so full of longing that the kiss sears our very souls together.