9. Olive #2
He started to make his way towards me slowly. Each step calculated. Like a predator stalking its prey. My chest rose and fell heavily.
Then something came over me.
A calm of sorts.
I knew I wasn’t going to run. I wasn’t even going to try. I didn’t want to. It was stupid and crazy, but I wasn’t afraid of my sheriff. I loved him.
I found out he’d been watching me. Taking things, sneaking into my cabin late at night doing only who knew what and… I liked it. I loved it. It was kind of exhilarating.
Watching his gaze, the intense way he looked at me, really saw me… Shit, it was beyond exhilarating. Maybe there was something seriously wrong with me, but even knowing what he’d done, I think I fell a little harder and deeper in love with him.
Then he was suddenly there. Right in front of me. Close enough to feel the heat pounding off his body. But he didn’t touch me. I gasped when he leaned over and opened one of the two closet doors. He looked at the things in there, and I turned to take a peek as well.
“The green cardigan,” he pointed out, and my mouth was bone dry. I licked my lips and nodded. “You left it at Pine and Grind. After you had coffee with that one girl you used to work with at the ski resort,” he shared. “You looked cute in it. It fit you perfectly.”
“Scarlett made it for me.”
“Figures.” He pushed the hanger forward, and behind it was a throw. One that had been at the foot of my bed that always slipped off and ended up underneath. “The first time I went inside your place, I took this.” His fingers skimmed the plush fabric. I shivered. I knew what that touch felt like.
My body was addicted to it.
Even then, caged in between his body and the closet, I wanted his touch.
“There are pictures,” I whispered.
“A box full of them.” I chewed on my bottom lip. His fingers rose and pulled my lip out from between my teeth. “Don’t do that, Cookie. You’re going to hurt yourself.”
“This is crazy… You’ve been…. You’ve been watching me. Stalking me?”
“I have,” he admitted easily again.
“You promised! You said no secrets, no lies and?—“
“I haven’t lied. I haven’t played games. From that moment when I promised you that just outside my house, I haven’t done anything.” From here on out. Those words replayed softly inside my head. Words that had caught my attention in that moment, but I’d been so easily distracted by them.
“Have you snuck into my place after we got together?”
“Officially?” My lips thinned. I knew that was simply a loophole.
“Luke,” I warned, and it was like something in him snapped.
He was done holding back.
He shut the extra door of the closet and really caged my body against it.
“You’re mine.”
“You’re crazy,” I argued. He rolled his eyes.
“About you,” he growled, pressing his forehead against mine, our lips almost touching. And just like that, knowing everything I knew, I still wanted him. Still craved him. “You know it, your heart knows it, and your body sure as fuck knows it belongs to me.”
“I don’t belong to anyone,” I muttered, and instead of that pissing him off, his lips stretched into a soft, almost boyish smile.
“We both know that’s not true.” I opened my mouth to argue, but he kept talking, “That night you showed up on my doorstep? I wasn’t kidding.
I wasn’t ready for you to walk in. If you had, you would have seen half this shit in the living room and the other half of it in my bedroom.
I’ve never been this way with anyone, and maybe your original assumption of me was on the dot.
The nice vanilla guy next door. But you, Olive?
You brought out a side of me I didn’t know existed.
I didn’t know someone could live and breathe for someone else.
The thought of not being around you? Not knowing where you were?
Of not smelling you? Touching you? It fucking drove me close to insane! ”
“Luke.”
“I love you. You love me,” he pointed out as if all the other stuff didn’t make a difference.
“This is?—“
“This is us,” he cut me off. Even with the intensity in his gaze, there was a gentleness there, too.
Love and respect. Something deeper that was so beautiful and so real, I didn’t think it even had a name.
“I can see it in your eyes, Cookie. You like this side of me. That side only you know about. One that’s a little more than unhinged about you and only you. Overprotective but not overbearing.”
“Luke.”
“Tell me I’m wrong,” he pushed. I opened my mouth to do just that but hesitated.
Is he wrong?
I pressed my legs together and licked my lips. No. He wasn’t. Not even a little bit.
“Tell me knowing this makes you scared of me.”
“I am scared.” His body stilled.
Before Luke could move away, my hands had a mind of their own. They wrapped around his shoulders and settled at the back of his head. I knew there was no changing our course. He was right. I was his, but in turn, he was mine, too.
“But not of you. Never of you,” I confessed.
“I’m scared of how real this is, of how much I feel for you.
The first time I saw you—“ My voice cracked. “I thought you were the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. You looked like the kind of guy I could picture a forever with, but I didn’t think I had it in me to be that for someone,” I admitted.
“I told you about my past, about my ex and how he broke my heart and cheated on me.
“I would never hurt you,” he said, meaning it wholeheartedly.
“I know.” And I did. I knew to the soles of my feet he’d never hurt or disrespect me. He’d never intentionally cause me pain.
With Luke, I could be myself. Unabashedly me.
Not holding back, not worrying about hurting his feelings or being too much or too focused.
But I could also be vulnerable with him.
In this past month, I’d done that. If I really thought about it, there hadn’t been a moment where I’d been anything but myself with him.
And he still loved me.
Maybe not despite it but because I was who I was? Luke loved me unconditionally.
“Are you going to stop?” I asked, and my body trembled.
He blinked slowly as if he was trying to figure out what I meant.
“Stalking me, I mean.” Raising a manly brow, he leaned in closer, making me feel every hard inch of him pressed against my belly.
“Are you going to stop?” I repeated, my voice hitched at how close we were.
“Do you want me to stop?” His voice made goose bumps flare over my skin. Do I?
“No.” I let my heart and mind take over and answer for me. “No, I don’t think I want you to stop.”
“Good,” he gruffed, then his lips crashed over mine. His mouth felt rough against mine, almost punishing with passion.
He lifted me up, and my legs wrapped around his middle as my back pressed closer against the closet that held proof of his dirty secret.
“You like me watching you. Sneaking around, sniffing your clothes? So fucking obsessed with you I can’t think straight.”
“Sounds horrible,” I whispered and gasped as he pressed his thick bulge against my core.
“It was. But fuck, Olive, having you? Like this? Accepting me for all my faults? I don’t think I could ever give you up. I love you so fucking much.”
“I love you, too. I don’t think… I don’t think I want to think about what life was like without you,” I admitted. He started to kiss my jaw, making his way to the crook of my neck.
It all made sense now.
How he was always around. Why my place sometimes smelled like him. Why I slept better at night, dreaming almost nightly of him watching over me. I pulled away, my hands holding both sides of his face.
“Did you watch me sleep?” I panted. His head righted, and when our eyes locked, he nodded, pulling my lower lip between his and letting it go with a pop.
“A lot. Outside your window. If you knew what I did when I watched you…” My pussy spasmed.
“You’ll show me,” I whispered, diving deep into the insanity that was us. And I meant it. I wanted to know what he’d done while I slept. “Did you play with yourself?”
“Fuck yeah, I did,” he shared without remorse. The thrill it shot through me, the image it painted in my head made me wet. Or wetter, as the case was. I wanted to watch that, see it firsthand.
“Is that why you were at the gym so early? You were peeping through windows and then hitting the gym when I got up to start baking?”
“Now, how do you know that, Cookie? Is it possible you were watching and asking about me, too?” My lips twitched before my nose nuzzled his.
“Raven mentioned it. She likes you for me. She’s been Team Sheriff since you came into town.”
“She’s my favorite of your siblings.” That made me laugh out loud, laughter that turned into a moan when his mouth went to the spot on my neck that drove me wild. I knew exactly where this was going. And I didn’t mind it at all.
Not even a little bit.
Life was weird sometimes. The twists and turns it took you on. Evey high and low all to lead you where you’re supposed to be. And damn, I was glad our paths connected. Even if once upon a time, I’d been my sheriff’s dirty secret.