Worth the Risk(87)
He continued the onslaught, down her body and back, making her burn. Until he had her moaning with pleasure and squirming beneath him. He came back to her lips, met her eyes and held until she was shaking inside. “What…what did Mr. Ed tell you?”
“Mr. Ed told me,” Stephen kissed his way to just below her ear. “That you like me. He said…”—Stephen pulled back until their eyes met—“that you might even love me.”
Her heart was suddenly too big for her chest. Because she did. She loved him. She’d been half in love with him before their first kiss, and more than anything, she wanted him to love her too.
Chapter 38
Stephen stared down at Hannah, so small beneath him, so naturally beautiful, her hair spread out like a halo. Lying there in the sunlight. Open to him, trusting him. Exposed. Not just her body, but her heart. And his own stopped and stuttered at what he’d just said.
He’d practically asked her if she loved him. Why? Because, even if he didn’t know his own feelings, he was desperate to know hers? So he could run or…not run?
He didn’t know what to say. What he should or even could say. So he crushed his mouth over hers, desperate to pour out everything he felt and couldn’t say. He took in the rapid rise and fall of her chest, her pulse thundering under his lips at her throat.
He saw the undisguised emotion when he filled her in one deep stroke. Felt it himself. Everything about being with her was so fucking perfect, so right, he was raw with it.
Her eyes started to glaze and her lids fluttered. “Don’t close your eyes.”
And with her eyes locked with his, he claimed her and she let him, holding nothing back. Giving everything. She arched against him, fingers in his hair, heels digging into the back of his thighs.
He kissed her gently, then watched her face when she came around him. Still so innocent of her own pleasure, her own desires. But even innocent, she tore him apart. The way her eyes looked deep into his. The way she sighed his name. Like he was the only one. Her only one.
He buried his face in her neck, drove one last time, and came so hard he thought he must be leaving a part of himself inside her.
His heart. More likely his very soul.
—
Stephen followed the long, winding drive through Pleasant View Cemetery. Long oaks stretched across, offering shade and companionship to those who came to sit beside their loved ones.
A squirrel darted out and he slammed on his brakes, sending the flowers on the seat next to him crashing to the floorboard. He retrieved them, twelve red roses wrapped in plastic. His usual offering.
A part of him had thought to send Hannah flowers. But since today was the fifth anniversary of his fiancée’s death, another part of him spoke louder. The part that said he should feel guilty. And he did. For his time with Hannah, because he didn’t regret it, and even more, for not wanting to come today. It hurt to come here, but wasn’t it supposed to?
He pulled over to the edge, parked, and got out. There were more dirt mounds every year. More tombstones. More flowers. He treaded lightly on the grass between them, passing names that had become as familiar to him as his own.
He didn’t come so much anymore, but there’d been a time he’d come every day, sometimes more than once. Sometimes he’d stayed all night, more at home with the dead than the living. They seemed to understand him, didn’t ask for more than he could give. Sleeping. Silent. Echoing how he felt inside. Or how he used to feel, before a chance meeting at a grocery store.
And the guilt crept in like dark mist.
He walked a little farther, up a gentle rise, and found the one he’d come to see. He stared at the letters carved into gray stone that spelled out her name and the short time she’d spent in this world.
Over the years, coming here had become more and more about nursing his anger and less about being close to her. He didn’t feel her here. Feared she was beginning to fade altogether. What did it say about him that her killers’ faces were still burned into his brain in high resolution?
He remembered his fiancée as a happy-go-lucky girl. They’d both been like that. The golden couple, never thought a bad thing could happen. So different from Hannah, the bright sunny girl he’d fallen for who knew exactly how bad people could be.
He leaned the forgotten bouquet against the stone, wondering if he should apologize for wanting to live again. For not wanting to be that man anymore that her death had left behind. Stephen dropped his chin to his chest, suddenly so weary he could barely stand under the weight of his own hatred. Maybe that was the problem. He’d never been able to separate the two. His rage and his grief. His love for Tracy and his hatred for her killers.