Page 32 of Rescuing Josiah
“Of course you're angry. You haveeveryright to be angry. But I want you to feel other things too. I want you to feel happiness, peace, enjoyment, and excitement. I want to help however I can. Please, Josiah, I'm right here, talk to me. Let me in. Just a little bit.”
Hands skimmed the length of her spine, then dropped once again to hang limply by his sides. “Can't. You're too sweet, too innocent. You’ve never experienced anything like what my team and I lived through, you won't understand.”
“Oh, Josiah,” she said sadly, lifting her head again so she could read his expressions. “Don’t you get it? I don’t have to understand what you lived through, I don’t have to get what it was like to be a SEAL, I don’t have to have lost people I cared about in such a horrific way. Because I understandyou. There’s no way you can't know that I'm in love with you and have been for a long time. Everybody knows it.”
Throwing caution to the wind, Chelsea leaned in and pressed her lips to his, needing him to know without a shadow of a doubtthat the love she felt for him was not conditional. It was freely given with no expectations of anything in return.
Chapter
Nine
May 15th
12:39 A.M.
She was kissing him.
The crazy woman was kissing him.
Like he hadn't wrapped his hands around her delicate throat and almost squeezed the life out of her not even five minutes ago.
More than that, she’d told him she was in love with him.
Withhim.
How was that even possible? How could a woman who was as good, and sweet, and kind, and loving, and open as Chelsea Pierce possibly love a man like him? What could she possibly even see in him?
“Make love to me, Josiah,” she whispered as she pulled back. Desire danced brightly in her gray eyes, along with arousal, and he didn't understand how she could be totally fine with him almost killing her.
And locked in his dream as he’d been, hehadbeen trying to kill her.
It wasn't that he wouldn't love to lose himself for a while, bury himself so deep inside Chelsea that he couldn’t help but absorb some of her goodness, her light. But there was no way he was going to cause her more pain.
The truth was, he had zero to offer her. Not now and not ever.
Because he knew Chelsea wasn't really wanting just sex. She wanted a commitment, a future, she wanted him to love her back, and allowing himself to love her was like asking the universe to take her from him.
Not a risk he was willing to take.
Not with someone as special as Chelsea.
“Chels,” he said slowly, lifting his hands to grip her hips and still them when she began to rock them against the erection straining against the flimsy boxers he wore. “You're something special, you know that, right? You're beautiful and smart, you're caring and kind, you go out of your way to see the best in people. You're the brightest of light shining on the darkest of days.”
“Why do I sense a but coming?” she asked, but she didn't sound angry. If anything, her voice was full of tender affection.
“Because you have to know I have nothing to offer you. If things were different, if I was different, then I’d ask you out in a heartbeat. But as the man I am right now, I don’t have anything to give you.”
“But I'm not asking you for anything.”
“Look, I know you think you can do just sex, but I know you, and I know you're looking for more than that. You want the whole fairytale, white picket fence, happy ever after, and that isn’t something I can give you.”
“Pretty arrogant of you to assume you know more about what I want than I do.” She arched a brow at him to emphasize her point, and he had to shake his head at this sassy woman. She might be all sunshine and sweetness, but she knew how to stand up for herself, and he respected the hell out of that.
“Not saying I know more about what you want than you do, but we’ve known each other for years, and I know you're a hopeless romantic. You think you can fix me, and that’s … that’s not possible.” If he knew a way to fix himself, he would have done it by now. Truth was, he was too broken to ever find enough pieces to put together to make a whole, and Chelsea deserved only the best.
“Oh, Josiah, once again you’ve got it all wrong. I don’t want to fix you, you don’t need fixing, you're not broken. You're hurting, you're suffering, and all I want is to be there for you, to love you.” Leaning in, she brushed her lips across his again in a searing kiss that seemed to brand his soul. “Now make love to me, please.”
“Trying to do the right thing here, Chels,” he told her, restraining his urges to tear her clothes from her body and sink inside her regardless of whether it was a good idea or not.
