Chapter 20
A loud knock raps against the door just as I pull the hoodie over my head, soft as sin and swallowing me whole. I jump, a startled yelp slipping out.
“Shit, sorry, Penn. You okay?” Dane’s husky voice bleeds through the door.
“Yeah. You just gave me a fright.”
The door creaks open slowly. “Can I—”
“Come in. Yes. After all, this is your place, right?”
I tug my curls free from under the hood and let them fall down my back.
“Yes, this is my place,” he says with a low laugh, stepping toward me. He takes my hands in his, rough and warm.
“Mail boy and mystery man doesn’t quite add up, huh?” I shake my head, a small smile playing on my lips.
“Not really. But it’s none of my business what you do or why you live here. Wherever here even is.”
His eyes flick around the room. “I’ll tell you. Just not today.” A pause. “Dinner’s ready.”
He pulls me gently down the hallway. The dining room is set like something out of a memory I never had, quietly intimate, a single black candle in the centre, its base wrapped with tiny white rosebuds. I swallow hard. This version of Dane, soft, romantic, will always undo me.
Before him, I thought Blake was the pinnacle of romance. But when you’ve only known one kind of love, even the crumbs can look like a feast.
Dane reaches behind him, finds my hand, and fits my palm into his. The tips of my fingers barely reach the centre of his. His fingers fold over mine like a vow as he leads me the final steps to the table. His touch is a contradiction, calloused yet gentle. Masculine and warm.
“Your hands… they’re soft and rough.”
A soft chuckle escapes him. “Yeah.”
Still holding my hand, he twirls me beneath his arm before pulling me into his chest. Teek’s hums softly from the speaker, each note wrapping around us like silk.
My heart folds into itself as I stare into Dane’s eyes, eyes like a two-story home where I’m stuck on the bottom floor, trying to find the staircase that leads to where he waits, whispering that I’m worth climbing for.
The air shimmers between us, a tether of desire and something that aches like belonging. But guilt coils around my ankles, dragging my stomach to the floor. I shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t want what I can’t keep.
Silence falls, and in it, you can almost hear the sound of my heart breaking.
Dane breathes in just as I do, his finger lifting my chin. My gaze meets his as Remember Me begins to play. He mouths the lyrics like a prayer, and just like that, the guilt recedes, washed away in the warmth of his arms as he dances me across the dining room.
His touch says what his words won’t, that he knows. That I need this. This song. This moment.
“I needed this,” I whisper.
He holds me like I’m breakable, like I matter, his heartbeat thundering against mine. And then, just as I’m about to beg him to kiss me, he does something else entirely.
He stops dancing. Lowers me onto his lap as he sits in the dining chair. Tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, his fingers tracing my cheek before brushing my lip. My body melts into his touch, a soft whimper escaping. He hears it. Feels it. Smiles.
Breaking the contact, he reaches for the fork, twirls it through the pasta, tests the heat with his lips, then lifts it to mine. I open my mouth, thoughtless, breathless, utterly his in this moment. He feeds me, one mouthful for me, one for him, until the bowl is empty.
Then he offers me wine. From his glass to my lips. Bitter berries and something darker spread across my tongue. I watch him sip from the same glass. The sweetness of this man is unbearable. His patience. His care. It cracks something inside me wide open.
I sigh. Let go. Melt into the strength of his arms.
“You, okay?” he murmurs, tightening his hold.
“Yeah. Just tired.”
He shifts, standing with me still curled into him. The lounge is vast, bigger than my home, and the lights of Wellington blink far below. The sky outside is a velvet shroud, the stars distant and soft.
“It’s so beautiful here,” I whisper as he lowers us onto the sofa. It’s plush and white, swallowing us whole. Dane leans back, pulling me with him, settling me between his legs, my back to his chest.
He reaches around me, sweeping my hair away, baring my neck. My pulse jumps. I feel more exposed now than I did in that bathroom. His lips find the thrum in my neck. Gentle. Reverent.
I close my eyes. Let go. Let him guide me through the tangled forest of guilt into something softer.
“I shouldn’t be here,” I whisper into the quiet.
“Why?” he asks, voice a low vibration against my spine.
“I’m… married.”
The word cracks in my throat. The ring on my finger and the paper in my drawer say I am. But Blake? He left me with nothing but silence.
“And I haven’t spent a night away from her since I had her.”
My voice breaks.
“I’ll take you back to her, Penn, if that’s what you want. But know this, I want you to stay. So, fucking bad.”
I trace my fingers along his arm, grounding myself.
Dane drops his head to my ear, still playing with my hair, his voice sinking into me like smoke.
“You can’t make someone love you when they don’t. But she knows you love her. And just for tonight… give yourself a break. From the guilt. The pain. The overthinking in the dark. He gave up the fight, but mine, Penn, mine’s just beginning.”
His truth leaves me speechless. A shiver travels my spine.
“I’ve never brought a woman here before. That says something about this. About us.”
“Then why me?” I ask. “Why bring me here? To this private space?”
He tugs lightly on my hair, guiding my eyes to his. “I don’t really know,” he admits. “But I wanted to find out where this could go.”
“Find out I’m not your type?”
“Oh, Penn,” he groans, twisting the strand tighter until I look at him. A soft smile curls my lips at the playful glint in his eyes. “You’re exactly my type, baby girl. Don’t ever doubt that.”
He cups my chin between his fingers, brings my face to his. His lips hover near mine, the scent of red wine laced between our breaths.
“I want nothing more than to taste you forever, Penn. You’ll be the first and last woman I bring here… the only one who’ll ever see the real me.”
“The real you?”
“The me no one else sees, the me I hide.”
He murmurs it against my lips, low, velvety, and the words curl around my chest, tight and scorching.
My heartbeat spikes, erratic, desperate, as his lips trace the line of my jaw, teasing beneath my ear, the hollow where nerves coil into fire.
Goosebumps bloom across my skin. Each featherlight brush of his lips is a strike, a temptation, a promise.
“I like the privacy I’ve created,” he whispers, pulling me impossibly closer, weight and warmth pressing into me like gravity rewritten.
My tongue stumbles over a half-formed reply, a breathy murmur, half asleep, half unravelling.
My body remembers every storm I’ve ever carried, and yet here it is, melting, surrendered, desperate to fold into him.
“I like that it’s safe here… that no one knows I’m here,” I whisper, pressing closer, teeth grazing the slope of his neck.
His laugh is soft, a rumble that shakes through my chest and settles into my bones.
He lifts me effortlessly, and I feel lighter than air, tethered only to the heat of him, carried along the hallway, shadows dancing across skin and tattoos and muscles.
“Where are we going?”
“Where are we going, bed Penn?” he teases, voice low, dangerous, playful. I mumble incoherently, and he laughs, a sound that reverberates, rich and alive. My body responds, helpless, betraying me with heat that blooms from my core.
He sets me on the bed, white covers draped over my trembling form, and slowly, deliberately, he peels off his shirt. The sight steals my breath.
Tattoos etched in black and whispering pastels over arms and chest. Muscles sculpted like stone, alive, hard, impossible.
Abs that deserve worship, a chest that demands touch.
And the piercing sharp, teasing, a glint that makes my pulse spike.
My little wicked voice purrs in my head: yes, yes, all of this. All for me.
His sweatpants slip down, deliberate, slow, teasing, revealing the promise beneath. I bury myself deeper in the covers, peeking just enough to see the amusement in his eyes.
“Like what you see, Penn?” he murmurs, low, silk and fire.
“Um… shit… um,” I stammer, heat rising, chest tight, breath caught somewhere between want and surrender.
He throws his head back in laughter, a deep, intoxicating rumble, and leans down, kissing the tip of my nose with soft, deliberate playfulness. “I’ll stay on the outside of the covers,” he murmurs.
But I need him closer. Always. My hands slide beneath the waistband of his sweats, brushing skin, tracing lines, feeling heat and pulse, the promise of more. I tug the fabric down, kicking it aside. “Please… I want to feel you next to me,” I murmur, cheeks burning, voice tremulous and low.
“You don’t have to ask me twice, Peach,” he says, sliding under the covers.
Heat presses into me, every inch of him alive, tangible, dangerous.
Our legs tangle instinctively, fingers intertwining.
I feel him everywhere at once. The restraint in his eyes only makes it worse, the pull, the want, the edge of danger that makes my pulse spike and my thoughts scatter.
“This is as far as we’ll go tonight,” he whispers, lips brushing mine, soft, teasing, impossible.
My chest rises and falls as I nod, surrendering, letting my body melt into him, exhale after exhale.
His presence anchors me, fills the empty spaces grief left behind, and for the first time in twenty days, I feel safe.
The stars outside wink through the window like distant promises, cold and brilliant, and I allow myself to be pulled into the orbit of him. Dane’s eyes find mine, burning into me, and my chest shudders.
“I feel lightheaded when I’m with you,” I murmur, voice trembling, fragile.
“And I feel hypnotised by your presence… by your scent. I miss you when you’re not with me,” he admits, voice low, unguarded, leaving me raw. Loving him will be inevitable. Loving him could swallow me whole. Not loving him? Impossible.
Memories slip in like ghosts, Blake’s voice, the echo of footsteps down the hallway, the hollow ache in rooms that we spent time in. “Sometimes…I still hear him. Will it ever fade?” The words tumble out before I can stop them, bitter and raw.
“That’s normal, Penn,” he says, his voice a velvet anchor around me. “But you will fall in love again. His voice will be replaced by one that chooses you. One that finds your side of the bed in the dark and kisses your sleeping lips. The definition of a man is the woman he’s falling for.”
My eyelids grow heavy, weighted with sleep, with surrender, with the pull of him.
His warmth is my tether. My body loosens, ragged and raw, grief sliding into the soft dark beneath the covers.
Here, in the only safe place I’ve known, twenty days of torment and longing, I let him hold me.
I let him claim me in this quiet, in this dark, in this small universe where we exist alone.
“Sleep well, baby girl. Dream all the dreams for tomorrow is ours,” he whispers, lips brushing my temple, lingering like a promise I never want to let go. I melt fully, letting the heat of him consume me, letting grief and desire coil together into something exquisite, dangerous, and alive.
I think of her garden, my sanctuary, my sorrow, my light, my tears. And for the first time, I let that world fade, replaced with the gravity of him, the pull of warmth, of strength, of something unrelentingly dangerous and tender all at once.
His fingers lace through mine beneath the sheets, his breath warm against my hair, his scent, the intoxicating mix of him, wrapping around me, and I let go. Completely.
And as sleep curls around me, as darkness and desire coil together, I know this: the grief, the lust, the danger, the love, they are all tangled together, and I want it all. I want him. Every inch, every whisper, every shadowed heartbeat of him. I ache for it. I ache for him.