Lacing my fingers through hers, I started from the beginning. I told her about each of the guys, and what it was like being with them every day for a solid year. We talked all the way into the morning as the sun rose. She laughed and cried, and held me tighter. She held her breath and flinched when I told her about the bomb going off and she’d kissed my chest as if she could feel my heart breaking. She told me that she wished she could have met them. I knew they would have adored her. I’d never felt more connected to anyone in my entire life. Kat was someone I was falling in love with. It wasn’t a fleeting feeling that came and went. She gave me a new sense of purpose. It went above and beyond any hero mentality I’d taken on. She made my life worth living. I wanted to heal her like she was healing me.
I watched as she grew quiet and her eyes got heavy. Resting my hand on the side of her face, I said, “You’re tired. Let’s take a nap and we can talk more in the car on the way home.” She yawned and said okay before she closed her eyes and quickly fell asleep.
I felt so light after letting every little detail out about the guys. Watching her sleep, it occurred to me that had I told her everything about me, but she hadn’t said much about herself. That was going to have to change. This afternoon, after we said goodbyes to my dad and Alice, I was going to put her in the hot seat and start asking some of the harder questions. There’d be no running away from me this time. We’d taken our relationship to another level last night, and it was time she learned to really trust me.
THE RADIO WAS ON IN the car and I had my feet kicked up on the dashboard. My toes were twitching to the beat of the music, and Timber and I were quietly enjoying each other’s company. He was running his fingertips in circles on my palm, up my forearm, and back down again. It made me shiver and I could see him smirking out of the corner of my eye.
I was currently perched on Cloud Nine after the weekend we’d had. He opened up and given me the nitty gritty details of the boys he called his brothers. His eyes had been full of light and happiness as he reminisced over the stories he shared. I laughed at his light-hearted teasing and the pranks they had played on each other. It was a side of Timber that I had never gotten to see. There had been flickers here and there when he had chased me around, or when he had talked with his dad about his upbringing. I wished that I could see more of that side, but I knew it was going to come in bits and pieces with him.
My mind drifted back to last night when I finally gave myself to him. And give myself to him, I certainly did. When he was up pacing the bedroom, the haunted look in his eyes was more than I could bear to see. The atmosphere in the room had been heavy with grief and desperation. He’d needed me, all of me. Any reservations I’d had took a back seat to his needs. His grief stricken eyes had pleaded with me to help him forget, even if was for just the night. The fireworks had really done a number on him. He was paralyzed. Even through the thick fog of his nightmares, our bodies had been buzzing with need for each other. When he’d told me he wanted me, that was all it had taken for me to feel the moisture pooling between my legs. My nerve endings had ached for him to touch me.
Something that I wasn’t sure I could ever tell him about was my own battle within. The aggression in his eyes as he’d taken me had made my heart was feel like it was in my throat. I was reminded of Adam’s black eyes as he forced himself on me. Timber had been so gentle, yet demanding, when he’d come at me before. In that moment, he’d been incapable of trampling down the emotions working through his system as he pursued me. He’d been dominant and bossy, directing me what to do to myself as he penetrated me. The tense sensations that had been coursing through my veins melted away as he slipped inside me, and all I’d seen was a sea of blue gazing at me approvingly. I’d left the memory of Adam in the darker recesses of my mind and brought myself into the here and now with Timber. Every stroke and every hard caress had been between him and me. I’d given myself, mind and body, at that moment to him. I knew that after that one time, I’d be okay giving myself to him again when the time came.
“Hey,” he said, breaking into my thoughts. “Where’d you go?”
His thumb was soothing my wrist. “Sorry, I’m here. Just lost in thought.”
He frowned. “What kind of thoughts?”
I leaned over and smoothed out the lines between his eyebrows. “Good ones, cross my heart.” I motioned an X over my heart. “Just remembering last night.”
His frown relaxed, but his face was still flat. “I didn’t hurt you, did I? I was so lost in the moment it didn’t occur to me that you might not have been okay with how I handled you.”