Page 62 of Little Deer
I round the bed and walk toward her, slowly, purposely. Her entire body stiffens, but she doesn’t back away. I only stop when I’m a few feet from her. Close enough not to crowd her, but enough that she can’t ignore me. Her head tilts back slightly to hold my gaze.
“Do you want me, Lucy?”
She blinks. She wasn’t expecting that question.
“It’s not about?—”
“Answer the question, Lucy.” I’m careful not to use any kind of tone that might trigger her, keeping it calm, even. I made a promise, and I will fucking keep it.
She scowls at me. “Why is it important?” I just stare at her. She tries to hold out, letting the silence stretch and build, but it finally gets to be too much. “Fine, yes, I want you, but…umph.”
My mouth is on hers before she can continue to argue. I wrap my arms around her, haul her up into me, and then snake one hand up to grab her ponytail and keep her from pulling away.
I might be pushing my luck, but I don’t find that I fucking care right now. The only thing that I want, that I need, is the taste of her. To feel her pressed tight against me. To hear that little catch in her throat as she sinks into me, her body craving me just as much as mine craves hers.
Fuck, I love the taste of her. I want to savor it, imprint it into my mind. To make it the only thing I remember when I’m old and gray, unable to remember anything else but the moments that matter the most. Like this one.
The moment I know I’ll never let Lucy Taylor go. The moment I know she’s going to be mine forever. No matter how long I have to spend convincing her.
30
LUCY
Damn it,why am I not pushing him away? I told myself that I need to end this now. I need to keep myself from getting hurt or letting him run over my life until I lose all tenuous control I have.
This is definitely not that.
No, this is kissing him back like I’m a starving woman. Desperate for just one more. One more kiss. One more feel of his hand on my hair, angling my head so that he can deepen the kiss. Or the way his arm tightens around my waist so that I’m pressed so tight against him I can feel the heat of his body seeping into mine, despite the fabric between us.
I need to stop him. We can’t keep doing this.
Massimo suddenly pulls his mouth from mine and stares deeply into my eyes. “This chemistry, Lucy, the one that you’re trying to write off, it can’t be faked,” he rasps. “You can try to talk it away, tell yourself that we won’t work, but we both know that’s wrong. So fucking wrong. Few have this sort of connectionso quickly. And I don’t want to pretend that it’s not something I crave. Something that I want to explore. You want to find an excuse to stay away from it, but it’s not going to work.”
“Massimo…”
“I have a deep well of patience,cerbiatta. If I have to spend the next however many days convincing you to give us a real shot, then I will.”
“It’s not just sex, Massimo,” I rasp. I need to make him understand, but how do I do that when I’m having a hard time with it myself? “It’s all of it. This entire situation. I realized while sitting in your lap and you were talking about getting more information, that you didn’t get that by asking the man nicely. You came into that salon, having showered and changed clothes. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why.”
I half expect him to deny it, but Massimo continuously does the unexpected. “You’re right, we didn’t ask nicely. We obtained the information from them, and how we did that, you won’t approve of. But consider this, Lucy. Those men? They are the kind of men that, if they had figured out a way to get to any of you, they would have killed you in an instant. Or they would have given you to the people employing them and not given a damn about what you want. Did you want us to risk you or Soren getting hurt? Or would you rather we find out what we can, even if it’s not the way you think we should, to make sure that you’re all safe?”
Damn it, I don’t want him to be fucking logical right now.
“I’d rather not know at all.” There, that’s something. “I want this entire thing to be over.”
“And do you think that it will just happen on its own?” There’s no condescension in his voice, only a question.
Damn him.
“I don’t know,” I huff, glaring at him. “Look, I just know that this is all too much for me right now. I’m trying really hard todo what Sienna said and remember that this whole thing is out of my control, freak out after it’s all over. And now I’ve just spent the last, I don’t know, hour, reading from my bio mother’s journal about all the things she put up with, the way she hated her children, and how she wanted to keep Gia so she could suffer with her. It’s doing my head in. This whole family is a fucking mess, and I don’t want to be a part of it.” Desperation chokes me and I fight back tears. “I just want my life back. I want to go home, work at my job, and spend time with my son. I don’t want to know any of this exists.” A sob builds. “I just want to go home.”
It’s the first time I’ve really voiced that. Up until now, I’ve been so focused on keeping Soren safe and trying to make do with our situation that I haven’t had time to process everything about this situation.
Massimo’s reaction is instant. I’m carried over to the bed where he holds me tight,back to the headboard again, and quietly murmurs soothing things to me as I cry. I don’t even try to fight him. Instead, I just lean into him, feeling so tired and overwhelmed.
It spills out like a flood, unable to stop now that it’s going.
I don’t know how long it takes for the tears to stop, but when they do, I hear Massimo murmur, “I have you,cerbiatta.I have you. I won’t let you face all this alone, and we’ll make it work. I promise.”
