Page 36 of Worth the Risk
“Please don’t say things like that to me…It isn’t fair. Not to either of us.”
“It’s the truth. I have wanted you for as long as I can remember and I don’t want to hide that anymore.” She looks shocked, but I keep going. “That’s why I came here last night. I was going to ask you for a second chance, as a grown man and not a boy who wouldn’t fight for you or too worried about what his friend would think, but then you were sick and I just wanted to take care of you and this isn’t how I wanted to do this.” I take a deep breath before continuing. “I wanted to sweep you off your feet. Show you that I can be someone worthy.”
“Worthy? Of what? What are you saying exactly?”
“I’m saying that I want you, Winnie.” She doesn’t look convinced. “Come here,” I say as softly as I can.
“Why?” I answer by reaching over and gripping the waistband of her shorts, yanking her into me. She gasps and herhands fly up to catch herself against my chest. Her eyes are wide as she looks into mine. I’m not sure what she sees there but I hope it’s something she wants. I lean down and skim my nose up the side of her face to her hair where I take a deep inhale of her vanilla scent. I’ve missed this.
“What are you doing?” she whispers.
“What I’ve wanted to do since that door hit you in the face the night I got back to town.” I see her throat work so I search her face and give her this one chance to pull away, before I gently grip the sides of her neck and bring her mouth to mine.
Rhett is kissing me. Rhett is kissing me and I can’t breathe. He’s kissing me and I think this may be bad for me later, but right now I’m going to enjoy the ride. I kiss him back and he groans into my mouth, deepening the kiss. I can taste his coffee from this morning and feel a hand sliding into my still damp hair, the other one going to the small of my back and pulling me tighter against him. I let out a sigh and he pulls back to look at me. He’s smiling.
“My memory was severely lacking…” He places another light kiss to my lips.
“Have you thought about kissing me often?”
“Only every day since I turned seventeen.” I roll my eyes at that.
“Be real, Holloway. It took everything in my arsenal to get you to even look at me back then.”
“It seems you’re under the impression that the first time I kissed you was the first time I wanted to.”
“Well isn’t it?”
“Absolutely not.”
“So the night you kissed me when we went camping wasn’t the first time you wanted to?”
“Not even close. By that time I had wanted to kiss you for years. That was just the first time I let myself be selfish.”
“Years? I don’t believe that. If you had wanted to kiss me before, I know I gave you every opportunity.”
“Oh I remember. It felt like you were torturing me.” he says as he kisses a line from my jaw to my ear.
“Torturing you? You wouldn’t even look at me!” I remember trying to get his attention, thinking all it would take to turn his head was a short sundress or sunbathing in his yard. He stops his kissing to look at my face. There’s a glint in his green eyes.
“I couldn’t look at you, Winnie. Colt was always right there beside me and if he even caught a whiff of what I wanted to do with you, he would have killed me.”
“I had no idea you felt that way about me back then.”
“I’ve been thinking about you like this—” he breaks off and brings his lips to mine again, making me feel boneless. “—since your seventeenth birthday, Darlin’. Since you decided to torture me in that tiny orange bikini that made it impossible to look at you without everyone else knowing exactly what I was thinking about.” No way he remembered that bikini. My jaw hangs and a laughter bubbles out of it.
“But that was five years before the summer you kissed me by the lake!”
“Mm, my favorite summer.”
“Mine, too.” I think about not telling him the truth, but I feel like being brave when I’m in his arms like this. “I thought about asking you to forget about our agreement.”
“I wanted to ask you to come with me.” That surprises me, I take a second to decide if I want to know but the words are out before I can make the decision.
“Why didn’t you?” He looks up and his brows pinch before meeting my eyes again.
“You seemed so set on cutting things off. I didn’t want to put myself out there first. If I could go back now, I would ask you. I can’t go back and change anything, but I can do things differently now.” I nod, he kisses my forehead then releases me but grabs my hand to pull me through the house to the front door where his shoes are. I already miss his warmth when he bends down to slip his sneakers on. “I do have to go next door for a while though. I’m meeting Alder and Knox. The rest of my furniture is being delivered today and then I will officially be moving in next door. You know, I didn’t buy the house because of it’s vicinity to you, but it was a big selling point.”
“You knew I lived here before you bought it?”
