He winced. “This guy sounds like a fucking idiot.”
I shook my head. “Not really, just…not secure in himself, and he took it out on me rather than dealing with his own baggage. By the time we graduated, he didn’t have a job lined up and I was already working on opening the store.”
“I take it that he didn’t like that at all.”
Denton’s gentle fingers pushed my hair back from my face, and I bit my lip as the painful memory swamped me. “No. I loved him, but I knew he would never let me be who I wanted to be, not without making me feel bad about it. He was always so resentful, purposefully so. I had to thank him for doing even the littlest things, or else he would be mad for days. Like if I forgot to thank him for taking the garbage out or something.”
Denton’s soft movements paused, and I could sense him trying to select the right words. “That sounds heartbreaking,” he finally said.
A lump unexpectedly formed in my throat, and I swallowed it as tears prickled at my eyes. “Yeah, it was,” I said thickly. “I don’t miss Lucas at all, but I don’t want anybody to ever make me feel that way again. That’s what I’m afraid of.”
I took a deep breath. “And what I want,” I continued, “is someone who cares enough that it never occurs to them to try to hurt me like that.”
Denton wrapped his arms around me and pressed a gentle kiss to my temple. I buried my face in his neck, breathing in his spicy scent as I savored his embrace.
“I’m divorced,” he finally said. “Did you know that?”
I pressed a kiss to the firm flesh of his shoulder. “No.”
“Two years ago,” he said. “Completely broke my heart. She’s not a bad person—she’s a good person, honestly, but something between us wasn’t really clicking anymore, and she didn’t want to try and fix it. She fell in love with someone else.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “That sounds terrible.”
His arms tightened around me. “It’s really okay. Sometimes—” he paused, as though searching for the right words. “Sometimes I think that maybe I didn’t want to try and fix it either. Like I knew that Elyse and I were just a moment, not forever. And I just didn’t want to admit it to myself when that moment passed.”
“So what do you want?” I asked, resting my hand on his chest as I glanced up at his face. “Is…is your heart still broken?”
His lips curved in a breathtaking smile. “No, my heart isn’t broken. Not anymore.” He leaned down and brushed his mouth gently—so achingly gently—against mine. “I want you,” he breathed against my lips. “You’re brilliant and brave and wild, and I want to see where this goes.”
“You don’t care that I’m so much younger than you?” I asked as he pulled away.
He gave me a look. “You’re an adult and so am I. There’s nothing wrong with that. The rest of it—we can figure it out as we go.”
With another lingering kiss on my lips, he rolled me underneath him and loosened the sheets around us to press his hard, naked body against mine. He slipped easily into my still-wet center, and I sighed with pleasure at the now familiar feel of his thickness pulsing deep inside me. He pressed whisper-soft kisses on my neck, shoulders, and face as he slowly ground against me. I moaned with need as his hands smoothed across my skin, and relished the feel of his big body and reassuring weight against me.
It was different this time—not like the explosive, wicked encounters we had before, but something new, saturated with sweetness and colored with the trust building between us. It wasn’t love—not now, but I felt like I was on the precipice of something life-changing. As much as it scared me to place my heart in his big, warm hands, it exhilarated me, too, and I knew that I couldn’t stay away from him even if I tried—no matter the odds stacked against us.
He caught my mouth in a deep kiss as I came. My orgasm was gentle and soft, fluttering inside me as the dam burst, and it felt like coming home.
Even though I planned to sneak out again after he fell asleep, I stayed the entire night, tangled in his arms.
And it felt like I belonged.
* * *
“Marcie, your phone’s ringing,” Kresley called from her spot behind the counter, where she was carefully sorting a pile of hand-tooled leather bags.
“Who is it?” I called out through a mouthful of straight pins.
I slid another one in place on the back of the mannequin. I had just been daydreaming about the night before with Denton—our shared shower, the heartbreaking way he made love to me, and waking up in his arms this morning.
“Unknown number. Seattle area code,” she replied.
With a sigh, I pulled the pins from my mouth and dropped them into the little tin, snapping it shut with a click. “Coming,” I muttered as I hurried back to the counter, where Kresley held the phone in her outstretched hand.
I quickly answered the call. “This is Marcie Davenport,” I said breathlessly.
“Hi, Marcie?” a woman’s voice said on the other end. An unfamiliar voice, but she sounded friendly. “This is Keisha Blackwell, from Keisha Blackwell Couture.”