Page 82 of Mariposa
“Sometimes when I read.”
“Why are you here, Kade?” I say, stripping off my OCP jacket. I throw it in the corner where I keep my dirty clothes.
“I think you know why.”
He stands at full height—clearly over six feet by four or six inches. He’s so intimidating and beautiful, yet his cold expression melts me.
“No idea,” I mutter sarcastically, pulling on my hair tie. My hair falls all the way down to my hips. Kade walks closer to me and then leans on the door frame.
“I want to know who he is, and I won't leave you alone until you tell me,” he says, pointing to the ring on my finger.
“God, you’re incorrigible, you know that?” I walk up to him, holding his curious gaze.
“I’ve been called worse things.”
He runs his knuckles across my cheek until they’re at my lips. I love it when he touches them.
“I’m not engaged,” I confess.
He stops moving as I blink up at him.
“You’re not?” He lifts his dark, scarred brow.
“No.” My throat rolls.
“Then why?—”
“I was showing Castle my grandmother’s ring. I put it on because it makes me feel closer to her. A certain someone asked for it to propose. When I was home on leave, I tried to return it to my grandmother before I deployed here. She wasn’t lucid when I asked her to take it back, so my grandfather told me to take it with me.”
He watches me intently; a curve pulls at the side of his mouth as he continues to drink me in. He plays with my hair, bringing it to his nose and smelling it. Perspiration leaks down his face, dripping onto his black shirt.
It’s hot as hell in my bedroom. I already put a work order in with maintenance, but they still haven’t come to fix it. Every night, I strip naked and plug in a fan to survive the heat.
“The AC doesn’t work in my room.”
“Shut up, Violet,” Kade growls. He narrows his eyes at me angrily. “I haven’t stopped thinking about you. Every single night, I feel you in my veins when I’m alone. Every single time I’m out on a mission, I can still smell that sweet perfume you wore on the beach, or maybe it was just you. Every single day, you cross my mind, tormenting me.” He grips my mouth, forcing his fingers into the hollows of my cheeks, making me part my mouth.
“I can’t have you, Violet. Tell me to leave this room. Tell me that I’m an asshole. Tell me I’m a monster, undeserving of a woman who tastes like heaven. Tell me, I’m not worth waiting for.”
He runs his nose across my cheeks, then hides his face in the crook of my neck. His hands rest on my hips, but he doesn’t hold me.
Why is he saying these things?
“No, Kade. I want you, and I don’t give a crap about what the world thinks. I want you to let yourself be happy with me. Do I make you happy?”
His lips press against my pulse point. The gesture is sweet and too short—I need more. He keeps walking forward, making me walk backwards until my shoulders crash into the wall.
“Happy? No. That word doesn’t justify what I feel for you. You infuriate me. You have me overly fixated on you. You are the first person in my life to make me feel alive, and I resent that.There’s an entire list of reasons why kissing you and holding you is a bad idea.” He slaps the wall behind me as though fighting with himself.
“You. Have. Me,” he growls.
He hates himself for wanting me, and our attraction to each other weakens him. He wants to be an honorable man—he doesn’t want to cross this line, and I get it.
“Do I?” I breathe, running my hands over the snakes and skulls tattooed on his muscular arms. “Do I have you? I get it, Kade. I understand you don’t want to let yourself have me.”
I’m your son’s ex. You’re my boss. There’s an age gap.
“Whatever this is stays between us. It’s only us. Right now. Right here. Forget the world.”
