Page 54 of With This Kiss
I watched as they left out the back door. Jamie turned and looked at me. “Is he always like that?”
“I think he was dropped on his head as a child,” I answered.
She nodded, as if to agree that it made sense.
I grinned and pulled a beer bottle toward us, cracking it open with a bottle opener nearby, and handing it to her.
“Thanks,” she said quietly. From a distance, we could hear Scottie screaming at Baran. “Do you think they’ll be okay?”
I laughed. “Yeah, they’ll be okay. This is like foreplay for them.”
She wrinkled her nose. Fuck, was there anything she could do that I wouldn’t find cute?
I leaned in closer to her and said quietly, “Don’t be jealous. We can come up with our own kind of foreplay.”
The disgust deepened on her face, and she pushed a little further away from me. It wasn’t like she could go far when I had my arms banded tightly around her.
“Just remember. We’re sharing a room tonight. There are so many things I could do to you that would hurt,” she threatened.
I couldn’t help it. I threw my head back and laughed. Tears were streaming down my face when I opened my eyes to take her in. It didn’t help my composure when she was scowling at me.
“Like I said, a different kind of foreplay.”
Before she could retort, Rose spoke up, ruining the moment. “Are you just going to talk to her all weekend and ignore the rest of us?”
Jamie frowned at the interruption, and I could almost see a shutter coming over her eyes. Fuck. She was going to shut me out again. And just when I thought I was making progress with her.
I let out a small sigh and looked past Jamie to Rose. “You didn’t have to come this weekend.”
Her expression shifted. “I… I wanted to see you. You haven’t been answering my calls.”
“And it should have been more than enough of a hint, no?”
Her face flushed red, but unlike how it was with Jamie, I didn’t find her blush fascinating in the least.
I stood up with Jamie in my arms, already tired of this conversation. The entire time, Jamie didn’t speak. She barely glanced over at Rose. Either she was confident in her allure with me—which she should be—or she truly didn’t care.
I didn’t fucking like that one bit.
She should care because, right now, with her in my arms, just the thought of her with another fucker was enough to send me into a murderous rage.
I looked at Makar, then Fabian, who had been quieter than usual, and said, “Can you make sure dinner gets heated up later? Helen cooked everything and wrote the instructions down. It’s in the kitchen.”
Makar nodded. “Yeah, man. I’ll do that. I’ll let you know when dinner is ready.”
I carried Jamie out of the cabin without saying another word, only stopping briefly in our room to grab a blanket.
Fuck, but the thought of kicking everyone out and making sure it would just be me and her for the weekend was getting more and more tempting with each second that passed.
13
REIGN
Ididn’t say anything as I walked us over to the nearby lake. There was a small bench not too far away. When I was little, and my mom’s spirits hadn’t been completely crushed by my father, she would bring me out here to get away from everything and everyone.
It was one of my favorite childhood memories.
I sat down on the exact bench my mom and I had sat on before, but this time with Jamie on my lap.
