Page 86 of The Biker and the Baker
He pulls on his boxers, not refuting it. She's never been here.I still have a chance.
"Let me ask you something," I push on, "how do you go from never having a girlfriend in your whole life, to asking two different women to be your life partner in less than a year? I mean, you didn't get down on one knee and ask me to marry you, but at the rate we were going, you might as well have."
With a heavy sigh, he leans back against the dresser. "What do you want from me, Pia?"
I advance until there’s less than a foot between us. "I wantyou. I want you forever. I want to share my life with you. I want you to marryme, not her."
"And what, you want me to do to her what you did to me? Leave her in the dust? Break her heart? Fuck her up?"
His words light up my guilt like a candle, but I snuff it right out. Now’s not the time for guilt. Now’s the time to be selfish. There’s no real victory without a healthy dose of selfishness.
"Only if you believe I'll make you happier than she ever could." Nerves starts to build in me like a rising tide, my heart rattling against its cage, wanting to be free. But I inhale a fortifying breath, shake my hands out, plant my feet and fight back, because I want this man with every pore of me, and I need to convince him to chooseme.
"I struggle," I confess to him. "I struggle with commitment and stability and healthy love. And then I run. It's what I do. I hurt people and break hearts. And even if you do choose me, I can't promise that I won't feel the compulsion to run again when things get too intense, but I can promise to fight back with everything in me. I'll fucking fight. Because there’s no one else for me. It’s you.You.I went from hating you with my last breath to feeling like I can't breathe without you. Every time I try to picture a future without you, I end up feeling like I’m suffocating."
I take another step closer. "Choose me, Owen Walsh. Please, chooseme."
Loaded silence stretches between us as his eyes dart back and forth, searching mine. To see if I’m telling the truth, maybe. I can’t blame him. He has every right to be careful with his heart. I’m messy, complicated, fearful of love. A huge risk. A leap of faith. I’m the wrong choice, the worst choice, and he’d be crazy to choose me. But Ineedhim to be crazy enough to choose me.
Then, after what feels like forever, with a small half-grin, he mutters, "Took you long enough," right before he cups my face and slams his mouth on mine.
It's a ravenous kiss. A drunken kiss. An ‘I don't want to live without you’kiss. A kiss more thunderous than last night's storm. A kiss bursting with life and color and sweet-smelling promises.
Warmth blooms in my chest, a reassuring blanket around my frantic, craven heart.
When I try to break, he doesn’t let me. "I'm gonna...get you...sick," I sneak out with every chance I get.
He begins driving me backward to the bed. "Don't care."
When the back of my knees hit the bed, he finally breaks, but only to undress me. In one breath, the tee is up and off, and in the next, the sweats are down my legs and I’m stepping out of them. I'm high off lust and desire right now. I've been chasing heat all damn day, and this man manages to set me on fire in a matter of seconds.
He urges me down onto the bed, settling between my legs, which fall open with ease for him.
He makes love to me. Slow, intentional, unhurried. And at the height of my climax, rivulets of happiness streams down my cheeks as, over and over, I whisper, "I love you. I love you. I love you."
To which he replies, "Baby, I know.”
Later, much later, after we've fed our lustful hunger, gorged ourselves on pleasure, satiated and surfeited, we lay tamed and tangled in each other. Heartbeats even, breathing quiet, while a soft drizzle patters on the roof of the RV.
Breaking the silence, I ask, "Why didn't you fight for me?"
A long, pregnant pause. And then his shoulders start to shake. Lightly at first, then harder with each second.
Puzzled, I push myself up on one elbow and frown at him. "What's so funny?"
His eyes are glossy with mirth. "That fucking question."
"So, what, you're too 'alpha' to fight for a woman? Is that what you're saying?"
He reaches up and sweeps my hair behind my ear. "I thought about it long and hard. How to get you back," he begins. "Until it hit me, and I realized where Cal went wrong with you: by never committing to anyone, he showed you that he’d always be available to you. The more he changed his women, the more you were convinced you made the right decision leaving him, and the less you loved him.
“So, I did the opposite. Instead of womanizing, Icommitted. Pretended to, at least. Figured if youreallyloved me, and you saw you were about to lose me, no chance of ever getting me to so much as cheat with you, you'd come back, phobia be damned. Fuck fear. Love is greater."
Shocked beyond belief, I clamber to my knees and rock back on my heels, my brain working a mile a minute to process his words. "Hang on, are you telling me that allthat—Mary, the proposal—was fake?"
"That'show I fought for you." The corners of his mouth dips down unapologetically. “Yeah, I’m alpha, but I’m also smart as fuck, so I fight smart.”
"B-B-But you two wereeverywhere,” I stutter dumbly. “All the time."
