Page 12 of Married to Number 22
This woman is going to be the death of me.
“Luns—”
“I imagined you touching me,” she whispers, nails digging in a little deeper, the slight bite of pain further eroding my control. “Kissing me just like this. Making me feel good.” Her mouth kicks up. “Though, I think you may have a few more skills at making me feel good now.”
I do.
My mind is fucking spinning with all the ways to help her fall apart on my lips and tongue, my fingers, my cock. Still?—
“You’re grieving, tiny tornado,” I tell her gently. “And you don’t need to bring a contract or kiss me”—ormore—“to stay here, to talk about her, to be friends again.”
She jerks.
Then her eyes slam closed.
But not before I see the tears.
“Christ, Luns,” I whisper, tugging her off the counter and up into my arms. She turns her head away, body going stiff.
Her efforts at controlling her emotions come too late.
The first drops of her tears escape the cage of her eyelashes, sliding down her cheeks, dripping off her jaw and plunking onto my shirt.
Then her chest hitches, a sob escaping, so forlorn that my heart squeezes roughly.
“I-I sh-shouldn’t have come here,” she whispers. “Sh-shouldn’t have brought that stupid contract. And I-I shouldn’t st-still be here. You have a life, have a family. You don’t need my bullshit fucking it up a-and—” Her words devolve into sobs.
I carry her over to the couch, settle onto the cushions with her in my lap.
And then I hold her.
Until, long minutes later, her sobs subside and her body relaxes against mine, and she murmurs, voice raspy from her crying, “I’m such a mess.”
“A beautiful mess,” I say softly, wiping at the tear tracks streaked across her cheeks.
She laughs, but it’s watery, and shakes her head. “Only Aiden Black would be this nice when a psycho from his past shows up, waving a contract that only a teenager would agree to, and then hold said psycho while she cries her eyes out.”
I leave the contract thing alone for the moment.
There’s more there.
Things that don’t make sense—it’s more than a preamble to bring us together again, more than an excuse that brought her to my door.
But that’ll hold.
Right now, she’s hurting.
“You miss her,” I murmur, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Grams,” I add, probably unnecessarily.
A shaky breath, her lids sliding closed again, hiding those storm cloud gray eyes from me once more. I hate that, want to demand she open them, that she’ll let me stare into the depths until they give up all her secrets.
But that’s not Luna.
She is—was—complicated, the Shrek equivalent of that onion, those secrets revealed layer by layer bylayer.
“I do miss her,” she whispers. “A lot.”
And I hear more there too—pain and grief and a slender thread of anger.
