Page 113 of Forever Never
Had he known it would be like this? Is that why he fought so hard to stay away?
There was a clear demarcation in his life. Before he’d made her his. And after. Now.
He reached for her in the dark, intending to pull her warm little body into his arms and feel the beat of her heart. To remind himself it hadn’t been a dream.
But she wasn’t there.
He sat upright and tried to peer through the darkness. The warm, glowing thing inside him gave way to fear. Sharp and claw-like. Where was she? Had she left?
An irrational panic sliced through his post-orgasmic bliss. Kicking off the tangle of sheets, he found the bedside lamp and slapped it on. Her side of the bed was rumpled. She’d been there. It hadn’t been a dream. He realized she’d slept in the dark with him and wondered if he’d made her feel safe enough.
Maybe that’s why she’d left.
He found his underwear halfway under the bed and dragged them on.
When he burst out of the bedroom door, he found her immediately, and his body reacted with a mixture of relief and longing.
She was curled up in one of the chairs in front of the dark windows over the water. Her hair was a curtain of fire that he longed to run his fingers through. Those slim fingers were wrapped around a mug. She had music playing softly from a speaker on the table. Some kind of instrumental jazz. He wondered what it looked like to her.
She studied him with an unreadable expression.
“What’s wrong?” he rasped, his voice still thick with sleep.
She smiled then. A soft kind of opening that had him by the fucking heart.
“You look awfully cute when you wake up,” she said quietly. “I always wondered.”
Self-consciously, he combed a hand through his hair. He wanted to go to her. He wanted to wrap her into his arms and never let go. She belonged to him now. And he was fucking terrified that she didn’t understand that yet.
Instead, he walked into the kitchen and helped himself to a sturdy mug of coffee. To feel closer to her, he opened the fridge and added her creamer.
“I thought you liked it black?” she said when he took the chair next to her.
“I thought you slept at four a.m.”
She took a sip of her coffee and used a bare foot to toe the chair around to face him. “I can’t sleep.”
He had about a thousand questions on the tip of his tongue. But none of them came out. Did she have regrets? It would annihilate him if she regretted what they’d done. What’d he’d done.
She was wearing the same oversized Mackinac PD sweatshirt he’d seen on her just a few weeks ago.
“I’ve been looking for that shirt,” he said mildly.
Her smile was coy, and it went straight to his gut.
“I borrowed it a few years ago.”
“Remi, are you okay?” he asked finally. “With what we did?”
Her face softened again, and she reached out with one pale hand. She gripped his arm with a strength that surprised him.
“I don’t have any regrets besides the fact that we didn’t start doing that years ago.”
Those green eyes were so earnest he could have fallen in and drowned.
“Are you sure?” His voice sounded shaky to his own ears. He hated the gnawing need he had for her. Hated the knowledge that it wasn’t enough just to share his body with her. He’d served up his fucking heart to her.
Remi rose and put her mug down on the small table between the chairs. With one step, she was standing in front of him and then climbing into his lap.
