Page 54 of Follow Me
This was his Mal…and she wasn’t. This woman looked sure of herself, every motion deliberate.
Entranced, he watched her smoothly fluid moves, struggling to process this. Mal’s quiet confidence sang to him through the song’s lyrics as she worked through moves he knew had to be physically taxing, and yet…
Here she was.
Strong, healing, rebuilding herself from the ground up.
“Quiet,” also by Jason Mraz, began playing. She knew it was one of his favorite songs. It was one he’d listened to plenty of times during his seemingly endless drives back and forth to Tampa to visit her. He softly sang along with it as she danced for him. It nearly brought him to tears, his emotions being acknowledged like this.
As he watched her, Kel stomped back the selfish thought that he missed her soft, rounded curves. Maybe one day she’d look like that again, but she was still his wife, and she was still beautiful, and he would still love her, no matter what. He’d always done what he thought was right to help her not feel self-conscious regardless of her body size because he remembered the woman he’d first met, how she’d originally been afraid to talk to him about playing because she thought he wouldn’t want to tie her because she was full-figured.
How Chelbie had helped bring them together, and he flew Mal for the first time. He wasn’t lying when he said he fell in love withherand not just her body. He’d love her at any body size, but he wanted herhealthy.
He focused on her eyes, on her smile. The song ended and moved into “Shine,” another favorite of his by Jason Mraz. She slipped into the sexy rhythm, her body fluidly undulating in time with the music as she climbed the pole and spun around it, inverting and twisting her body with a confidence she’d never shown before.
Ever.
It humbled him.
Mentally and emotionally, it brought him to his knees.
And it made him hornier than fucking hell.
She hadn’t given up on him, just like he hadn’t given up on her.
Her spin took her into a flip, upright once more to slide down the pole to the floor. There, she slowly rose into a squat, her thighs spreading as she trailed a finger down the side of her throat and between her breasts. The sports bra pushed her breasts together and gave her a deep valley of cleavage he wanted to feel pressed around his aching cock.
She worked her way toward him, dropping to the floor and rolling onto her back, a sexy series of moves he wanted to take into their bed with them. Just as he leaned forward in his chair to reach for her, she smiled and moved away, smoothly rising and returning to the pole and leaving him almost falling out of his chair.
This was absolutelyhisMal, the sexy call and response in her eyes asking for him to play with her in the shadows…and yet she wasn’t. She was changed, and so was he. They’d both come through this crucible forever seared and scorched but trying to remake something stronger and better from the ashes.
For the first time, as he watched her, he realized shewasdifferent this time.
The very air around her shimmered with a strength and confidence she’d never possessed before despite his best efforts, almost like a St. Elmo’s Fire.
HisMal’s blue gaze pierced him to his core, but this new woman wanted him as badly as he wanted her.
As the song ended, she finished standing against the pole, one foot propped on it, knee bent, holding on to it with her hands behind her as she breathed heavily and watched him.
He stood and crossed the room, his body pressing her against the pole while he reached up with one hand and cupped her face. “Fuck, that was gorgeous, baby,” he hoarsely said.
“Thank you, Sir.”
“Best Friend” played next. Their gazes met for a long moment as he let the lyrics and music wash over them. Then he slanted his lips over hers in a crushing kiss, rocking his hips against hers to let her feel how hard he was in his shorts.
Without a care about how hard he was pressing against her.
Without worrying about hurting her.
She hooked one leg around his. Her hands grabbed his hips and she ground back against him.
“I’d like to negotiate you living at home again,” she finally said.
His hopes soared. “Anything you want, baby. Whatever you want.”
“Week-to-week, for now. I have to keep earning my recovery boundaries, and so do you. We keep seeing the guys, for now. We don’t drop our individual recovery efforts. And you can’t supervise or control my diet, or my weigh-ins, or any of that. I won’t hide anything from you, but it’snotyour responsibility.Icontrol the timeline of when we transition from Doyle, Niall, and Doug supervising my weight and logs and everything to you doing it. I will agree that, for now, they will continue supervising all of that, and you can askthemfor information. Can you accept that?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Absolutely.” Hell, it’d beenworking. He kissed her, long and hard, savoring it. Treasuring it.
