God, I missed her. I wanted her back. But it was clear I wasn’t destined to be happy.
I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling. I could jerk one off right now thinking about her, imagining how tight and wet she’d been for me all those years ago. It would feel good, really fucking good to come with the image of her in my mind, but after it was all said and done, that ache in my chest would just intensify. It always did. So I punished myself, didn’t touch my dick, didn’t get off. I wanted to. I wanted to really fucking badly. But denying myself made me feel stronger.
I’d been denying myself the pleasure of having a woman for five years. She’d been the last woman I’d been intimate with, because no one else compared to Nadja. No female ever would.
Maybe one day our paths would cross once more. Or maybe I needed to get off my ass and try to find her again, search high and low until she was mine. Damn the consequences.
It wasn’t like I had anything else worthy in my life. It wasn’t like she didn’t consume my thoughts every fucking second of every fucking day.
She was my life. She always had been and she always would be, even if I never saw her again.
I thought I reached a dead end all those years ago, and knew it was my reality when her father had told me I’d never see her again and if I didn’t let her go I’d be six-feet under the ground. That despair had thrown me into a darkness I didn’t think I’d climb back out of.
Because I hadn’t wanted to climb out of it.
And even if I knew trying to find her was. Alost cause, it wasn’t like I had anything better to do right now, wasn’t like I didn’t obsess about her every damn second of every damn day.
Being alone had that effect.
Falling in love had that effect.
I’d find Nadja, no matter how long it took, no matter who I had to tear down to make that a reality.
I’d probably die in the process by her father’s hands, but I didn’t care. If I could just see her once more it would be all worth it.
She’d be mine, because life wasn’t worth shit without her in it.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Wilder
I tracked Zoey’s movements as she stepped through the front door. I had a set of blueprints in front of me, my forearms on the wooden kitchen table, but my focus was on her. Always. I was supposed to be focusing on the next job we were planning on pulling, but when Zoey was around, there was no chance of thinking about anything but her.
She stepped into the kitchen with a bag of groceries in one hand, a smile on her face as she saw me, and everything in my body tightened painfully.
“Hey, you,” she said in a soft, sweet voice, the only one that set my blood on fire.
It was that voice that always went straight to my cock. The fucker gave a mighty jerk behind the fly of my jeans. I didn’t say anything as she walked farther into the kitchen, her small smile growing as she no doubt saw the look on my face. I was feeling especially predatory in that moment.
“I missed you, baby.”
She chuckled and walked past me, and I continued to follow her with my gaze, my focus zeroing on her ass. I bit my lip and groaned. God, her ass was like a ripe peach.
“I think you missed other parts of me more,” she teased, and I lifted my gaze to her face to see she’d caught me checking her out… again.
I sat there and watched as she finished putting the things away, and when she turned and was close enough to me, I reached out and grabbed her, pulled her onto my lap, and nuzzled my mouth against her ear. “You smell so fucking good,” I groaned.
I pulled back and looked down at her shirt, could see that I was affecting her. Her nipples beaded, and she straightened, her arousal clear. Good, ‘cause I was already there. I shifted her quickly, so fast she had to wrap her arms around my shoulders to steady herself. With her chest to mine, her legs spread on either side of mine, I slid a hand up the center of her back and cupped her nape, showing her my ownership of her. And I knew she got off on that, as did I.
I growled, “I can’t get enough of you. I never will.” I went back to nuzzling the side of her throat, taking her scent into my lungs, running my tongue over her skin, and memorizing her flavor.
Since moving out of the main house and getting our own place, things had been… domestic in a way I never experienced. And I grew addicted to having this always, for having more. Having Zoey in the same bed with me every night and waking up to her pressed against me every morning was a euphoria that could never be matched. I might not have been a good man in every sense of the word, but she made me want to be better.