Owned: A Mafia Menage Romance(163)

I wanted to tell him and couldn’t. I was positively wretched. In his arms the fragile scaffolding that held me together melted away and I could see it. Everything had been ruined. Everything I had built was at risk, yet again. I felt selfish and mean, ashamed at how I had acted.

Knowing he would hold me up, I succumbed to the urge to just crumble. I let wave after wave of sorrow and regret shudder through me, not even trying to hold them back anymore.

“Oh, Margot… Margot… Shhhh baby it’s alright.”

“It’s not!” I choked, a mucousy, wet retort. “Everything… I ruined everything.”

“No, everything’s fine.”

“No,” I whimpered.

Then I pulled back and looked up at him. Had he ever been this handsome? I couldn’t remember it.

“Wait… How did you know I was here?”

He chuckled shyly. “Oh, I saw your pool light go on. Raul and I were in the garden.”

“And you… came over?”

“I had to be where you are,” he said softly.

“Declan said I would never see you again.”

“Ha! Oh he did, did he? Well that shows what he knows. Say… why are we still out here?”

He dipped down and slid his hand behind my knees, picking me up effortlessly and carrying me back to the living room.

“Declan says you never fight for anything,” I admitted, feeling a little like a gossip.

“Jackson wants to fight over everything. I want to be more judicious.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means I never had anything worth fighting for.”

I shook my head in confusion. Was he really saying this?

“But… Declan said he won. That I stayed and he won.”

Jackson sighed and pushed me back on the sofa, hovering over me on one elbow. “I can’t believe you would listen to anything he says.”

“Well… but you left.”

“I told you I would be here,” he replied, as though it was obvious.

Oh man, he totally did. How did I miss that?

I squinted at him in the dark room. The proof was undeniable: here he was. Really here. No matter what I had feared, the real and present truth was that he was here with me. The sound of that thought boomed through my mind. There was one solid thing, like the first post of a pier. One solid thing to hold onto.

“You look beautiful, by the way,” he murmured, his lips gliding over my collarbones, his voice tinged with a smile.

“I think I look like I’ve been on an airplane for six weeks.”

“That long? It suits you,” he whispered. My skin puckered into goosebumps under his breath.

“It felt like forever,” I said, letting his kisses restore me. Each one was like a tiny ray of hope. Everything wasn’t ruined. If he was here, it seemed impossible to believe everything was really ruined.

“But you never answered me,” he said, his voice suddenly wary between kisses. I wriggled beneath him, wanting more, hungry for each hope-giving touch.

“Answered you?”

“Stay with me,” he said.

I pushed him back so I could look into his unblinking, sky-blue stare. I couldn’t quite believe what he was implying.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean… stay with me.”

How many times had I heard him say that, or some version of it that mean the same thing? A dozen? More?

“OK, yeah, you’ve said that but… I-- I didn’t know that was a question.”

“That’s always been the question, Margot,” he said earnestly, diving back to cover my shoulders with kisses. “Ever since the beginning.”

“Since the… Wait now. The beginning-beginning? Like, since Zac Efron?” I teased.

He chuckled modestly. “Well if I’m being honest… Part of me knew even then. But it’s only gotten more intense as time went on. There’s something about you… You do things to me. You finish parts of me I didn’t even know I was missing, Margot,” he whispered.

“So will you?”

I bit the inside of my cheek, trying to keep my face from bursting into an uncontrollable grin, and leaned in close to his ear. Inhaling him deeply, trying to get his scent as deep as possible into my lungs, I whispered, “Say it again.”

He pushed himself and hovered over me, drawing so deliciously close I was sure we were exchanging electrons.

“Stay,” he whispered, then covered my mouth. His lips sucked gently at mine, plucking them individually with his lips, rolling them softly.

“With,” he breathed into my mouth. His tongue pushed at my teeth, opening my hungry mouth for him.

“Me,” he said, then plunged his tongue against mine, drawing lazy circles across the roof of my mouth with the tender tip of his tongue, reminding me of all the pleasures his body had shown my body.