Page 156 of The Holiday Heartbreaker

“I’m glad of that, Shayna. You don’t have to tell me everything that goes on in your life, not until you’re ready. But your happiness is the only thing that I care about.”

“I appreciate that.”

“You also don’t have to stay here in exhaustive service to me or to the church.”

“I know that.”

“Do you?” He looked concerned all of a sudden. “I feel that it has been impressed upon you that you were supposed to be filled with gratitude to me for raising you. But it was never a favor to you. I love you. You are the child that I prayed for, and one that I never thought I would have. You are a miracle to me. And you owe me nothing. All I want is for you to go and have the life that makes you happy. If that’s here with me, I’m glad of it. If it takes you somewhere else, I would be glad of that too. Because you were happy.”

“Thank you,” she said.

And she meant it. Though, there were certain things her gentle father did not need to know, and the fact that she was enjoying glorious nights with a man who left his fingerprints on her skin was probably one of them.

But she was happy. She was happy.

She dropped a kiss on her dad’s cheek. “You have never made me feel like I owed you anything.”

“I’m glad of that.”

But she could see that he looked a bit emotional. And she found herself blinking tears away.

They finished dinner, and she made the trip up to Zane’s cabin. She had taken to driving up his driveway, which was faster. It had been a few weeks now.

He was just wonderful. He told her stories about his time in prison, and they could be bracing. Though honestly, not worse than the stories of his upbringing. Which was altogether more disturbing because the violence that he’d suffered was at the hands of his own father.

She talked about the way she had wished for her mother with a detached kind of wistfulness that had nothing to do with reality.

How when she had gotten older she’d realized she was lucky to have a father who loved her as much as hers did, and how most people couldn’t claim to have that kind of love even if they had two parents.

She told him that she secretly dreamed of traveling abroad, but had never taken the steps toward it.

He confessed to her that he had never dreamed.

And she had broken just slightly for him.

They shouldn’t connect.

He was ten years her senior, and jaded by the world. And yet she had never found another person that she felt quite so connected with. There was something about him. He didn’t try to give her advice, even though he had lived a great deal more than she had. He was never derisive of her lack of experience, or her innocence. He didn’t believe all the same things she did, and yet he never mocked her.

She had never found quite that combination in another person, and plus, he was... Incredible. Fantastic in bed and demanding. Stern when she wished him to be, and commanding as it aroused her.

To be with someone who respected her, didn’t sell her short, understood her and was also not...easy on her... That was something she hadn’t known existed. Something she hadn’t known she needed. There were other men, she knew, who would’ve treated her like she was breakable, or like she was a sacred object because her father was the pastor. He managed to make her feel sacred while igniting her with pleasure, and there was something about that which thrilled her in ways she had not anticipated.

She pulled up to the house and got out, and she was secretly thrilled because she was wearing underwear that was entirely different to what she normally did. She knew that he enjoyed her plain underclothes. Because there was something about her innocence that aroused him, but she was in the mood to play seductress tonight. To push his boundaries.

They were all about testing boundaries.

As she approached the door, he opened it, and stood there, wearing nothing but a pair of low-slung jeans, his chest bare, the curve of his mouth dangerous tonight. As if he was waiting for her. As if he had something in store for her.

She shivered in anticipation.

The more that she got to know him, the more trust they built outside of the bedroom, the sharper an edge their play took within it. Because there was trust. It had been delicious to be with him when he was a stranger, because that in and of itself had carried with it a hint of the dangerous. But it was better now. Better the more intimate they became. The more they entwined around one another.

“I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Good. I’m glad.”

“I was beginning to wonder if you were going to come tonight. I might have had to punish you if you’d decided not to show.”

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