Page 79 of A Murderous Crow
“She cheated, with one of my brothers, and I never got over it.”
“I’m… I’m sorry,” I stammered, in part because that sounded a little excessive. I mean… I’ve heard of heart break butholy shit.
“She wasn’t who I thought she was, and I’d given my heart over to her completely. It was the kind of pain that… Well, it wasn’t very easy to get over it. The broken trust something even more so. I swore never again…”
“Then…” I formed it as a lingering question, because I wasn’t sure what I had done to break the curse so-to-speak.
“Then this obnoxious blonde with a fake-as-hell souped-up southern accent showed up and made my work lifeactual work,” he said with a chuckle and I had to laugh.
“Oh, the horror,” I said rolling my eyes.
“You have no idea, Ihatedthat she was better than me at the real estate game, and then, one night, I got a text from her that was meant for somebody else and I found out in the intervening weeks that she wasnothinglike I thought she was. She was something entirely different. Entirelywonderful… and I almost missed out.”
“Well, I’m sorry to say,” I said lightly and dryly, “You wereeverythingI thoughtyouwere.”
“Oh, yeah?” his smile was almost shy and he tweaked my nose. I jerked back with a laugh and he said, “This, I’ve got to hear. Please, do tell…”
“Overbearing, arrogant, insufferable, incorrigible, oh, and gorgeous…” I ticked off each point on one of my fingers and his eyebrows went up in amusement. “But what I hadn’t counted on, was just howusefulthose things could be and how they also equated to,protective, confident, tenacious, unstoppable,and that you were as gorgeous on the inside as the out when you wanted to be.”
His expression was inscrutable as he searched my face.
“You know, I found myself thinking the other day that I would gladly let you put me through no end of trouble and hell just for those moments where you were so gentle with me. The way you hold me, the way you wash my hair, and the way you sometimes forget when we’re in the thick of being intimate and it almost feels like loving rather than fucking.”
He snickered then and said, “Busted…”
“I asked you this morning if it would be so terrible if you loved me and could only be with me… I’ve been second guessing your answer all day.”
He hooked a hand behind my head and pulled my mouth to his, kissing me thoroughly until I was all but totally breathless.
He pulled away and murmured against my lips, “No need to guess, bright-eyes. I love you, and you’re mine. You’ve been mine from the second I first licked that delicate pussy of yours on that dining room table.”
“You say the sweetest things,” I murmured, and then we were kissing again, hands roaming, and before I even knew what I was doing, my fingers were at the buttons on his shirt, undoing them one at a time.
“No condom,” he whispered against my lips.
“Shit,” I swore softly.
“You’re on birth control?” he asked.
“Yes, I have the five-year implant.”
“We doing this whole commitment thing?” he asked and I pulled back and looked him in the eyes.
“Absolutely.”
“Then it’s just you and me, baby. I haven’t so much as looked at another woman since you came into my life that night.” He swallowed hard at the confession and I felt a soft smile paint my lips.
“I don’t think any man could honestly measure up to you even if he tried,” I murmured. “Only way any other man is getting into my pants is by force.”
“They’d die for it,” he said flatly and thatdidmake me smile – some of his darkness rubbing off on me, I suppose… either that, or maybe being with him had woken some darkness of my own.
“I believe you,” I whispered against his mouth, as we both slid down to lay with each other, “and I hope you’d make them suffer.”
“That’s even if they got to you in the first place,” he growled and we were kissing again. Something primal, something feral, something that was a touching of souls that’d been laid bare.
We’d been quietly baring them for however many minutes in the freest exchange of words I think we’d had to date.
It felt good.
