Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 77171 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77171 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
But it’s too late to change anything now.
There’s no more illusion. Just truth. And it’s worse than anything we were avoiding.
Because we’re still here, facing each other, choosing to stay in it.
I lift my hand, ready to touch her soft cheek, but I stop myself.
“If I touch you,” I say quietly, “this doesn’t go away.”
“I know.”
“If I don’t—”
“It doesn’t go away either.” She steps closer and closes the distance between us.
“No, it doesn’t.” This time I do touch her. Slide my finger over her lower lip and then up across her cheek. “I don’t walk away from things I choose.”
Her breath catches.
“And I choose you.”
The words aren’t particularly romantic, not even sexy. They’re just the simple truth, and they mean everything because they cost something.
“That makes you reckless,” she says, her lips curving upward.
“It makes me honest.”
She nods. “Then we finish it. We figure it all out. The setup. The lie. The person who made that night happen the way it did.”
I nod. “Yes.”
I slide my hand around her throat, gently this time. Her pulse jumps under my fingers.
“We finish it,” I say. “All of it.”
48
DELANEY
Something dark passes between us.
He tightens his hold on my throat. If he were any other man, I’d be frightened. I’d fight back, try to release his hold.
But he’s not any other man.
He’s Samson Vexley, the man I—
No. Not yet. I clear my throat, and he releases me.
“I spent years denying who Halstead was to me,” I say. “And now I don’t get that distance anymore.”
“No.”
I lift my hand and place it flat against his chest. “I’m not going back to that version of myself,” I say. “I can’t.”
“Then what are you now?”
I don’t hesitate. “Not objective. I’m done pretending I don’t feel this.”
“What you feel doesn’t change what I did.”
“I know.”
“Then why—”
“Because it doesn’t change what I choose.”
That stops him.
Completely.
“I’m not choosing this because it’s right,” I say. “Or easy.”
“It’s neither.”
“I know.” I draw in a breath. “I’m choosing it because it’s true.”
He exhales slowly. “I’d tell you that you’re making a mistake, but I’m making the same one.”
“Probably.” I smile. “But at least we’re doing it with our eyes open.”
He pulls me into his arms. “You’re not supposed to stay.”
“I know.”
“After seeing everything.”
“I saw it before,” I say quietly. “I just didn’t let myself call it what it was.”
He slides his hands up my back and stops at my neck. That same place.
I tilt my head, and he brushes his lips against mine.
It’s not a kiss, really. Not the kind of kisses we’ve shared before. It’s more of a question. He made his choice. I made mine. Now we’re asking each other if we’re sure.
Is anyone ever truly sure of anything? You can think you are, in the moment. But things change. Life changes.
People die.
Others kill them.
I stand here, my lips against the man who ended the man who gave me life. I didn’t know Halstead, didn’t have a relationship with him. If I had, I probably wouldn’t be here.
But still, I wouldn’t exist but for him.
So he, along with my mother, gave me the ultimate gift.
I part my lips. Samson’s tongue dives between them.
And in this moment, knowing what I know, I still choose Samson Vexley.
The kiss becomes more raw, more fierce. He walks forward, backing me against the wall and sliding his hand from my throat down to my breasts. He cups them, kneads them, pinches my nipples through the silk.
I moan into his mouth, not only from the pleasure of it, but from the sudden catharsis that comes with letting myself want him, with letting myself need. I claw my hands up his broad back, needing him to know it.
When he finally breaks the kiss, we’re both panting. Staring at each other over the gasp of breath. I catch my reflection in a mirror across the room, and I see something different.
I’m a woman stripped bare.
Not by Samson. By the truth.
It’s honest.
It’s ugly.
It’s mine.
And it was a long time coming.
He’s imperfect, but so am I. The dark inside me recognizes his, and what started as a choice becomes a surrender.
We won’t walk away. We won’t deny. We’ll own every shard of whatever this is.
He bites at my lower lip, just to the verge of pain. “I’ll ruin you,” he says, voice low.
“You’ve already done it.” I slide my hips against him, my thighs already slick, my heart hammering so hard he must hear it.
“Fuck…” he growls as he fumbles with the silk-covered buttons on my pajama top and then gives up, ripping the two halves apart and letting the buttons fly.
He drags the top off my shoulders, exposing my breasts to the cold air and his burning gaze. He buries his face in the hollow of my throat and then his hands are everywhere—on my breasts, teasing my nipples, pinching me, owning me.