“You don’t have the sense that god gave a goose.” I’ve always hated that saying, so I don’t know why I’m saying it now.
“You would never hurt me. You would never hurt anyone. You offered yourself up as a sacrifice. You did the exact opposite.”
This is getting out of control. Because I want to take her face and kiss her until neither of us can breathe, and I’m lost. I want to lose myself in her. Again. More. Always. I want to take those vows seriously, and I want to keep her. I want to keep Darby, but this isn’t about keeping anyone, and that’s an issue. That’s a fucking issue I need to remedy and fast because no version of our future works out as a happily ever after.
There is no future with me. I am futureless.
“You’re crazy,” I hiss, mustering up some of the cruelty that Darby doesn’t think exists in me. “If I gave you a contract that said you had to take care of my tired, sick, painful, and grouchy ass for the rest of your life, you would be so pathetically eager to sign on that line, wouldn’t you?”
Darby doesn’t flinch. “You’re being a jerk.”Yeah, I am.“Here’s a news flash. I already signed. It’s called marriage. Or did you miss the whole sickness and health and better or worse until we’re freaking dead part?”
“It was fake.”
“It was legally binding.”
“I won’t hold you to it,” I counter.
Darby’s gentle, sweet, warm hands bracket my face for the thousandth time since we’ve been here. There is a storm raging in her eyes that she isn’t setting free. Not yet. That fire in her, the sparks crackling in the room, that’s what I didn’t mean to unleash. I wanted her anger and disgust, not this. Not her passion. “If you fucked me six ways to Sunday, I would enjoy every bit of it and pray that Sunday never came. You don’t want to let me in. I know you’ve been hurt so badly that you think you can’t trust anyone but yourself. You think the best parts of you were beaten out of you, and you have so little to offer, but you need to stop going to that place. You need to stop hiding behind walls and walls and more walls. You don’t need to go there with me.”
I grasp her hips hard but carefully so as not to hurt her. Her eyes widen. “You’ve obliterated those walls.”
“You are not a stray cat, even if you hiss like one and happen to like fish.” I can’t help it. My lips curl at the edges, and she sees it. “There you are,” she whispers.
“You are everything I shouldn’t want, and I am no good for you,” I groan, aching so fiercely that I feel ill.
“Too bad.” She wriggles against me. “I want you anyway.” She gets a serious expression almost immediately. “Please don’t call yourself a monster. That’s not what you are, and I can’t bear it.” She shifts down, but not away.
She gets her hands, warm and soft like her, underneath my shirt and peels it up. I help her, tugging it off before collapsing back against the bed. She kisses me on every part of my skin that has a scar, every inch of me. She kisses my heart, letting her lips linger on the fluttering beat. Then, she kisses lower, down my ribs, and I jerk because I can’t help it.
“Are you…are you actually ticklish?” Her head jerks up, and she’s amazed. She runs both hands down either side, starting up near my armpits and going lower, tracing my muscles and ribs, and I can’t hold myself steady. I nearly explode off the bed. “Stop,” I beg her. “For the love of god, okay, I’m ticklish there. On my sides. Who isn’t?”
She smiles at me and giggles, and her face looks like I’ve just handed her the keys to some priceless kingdom. I am undone.
She kisses my abs, her hair brushing over me in her wake. The sensations are new and unexpected, and I don’t know how to live in my own body. For once, it doesn’t feel like I’m trapped in it. It feels good. So, so fucking good that it’s a new kind of pain. “You’re not his anymore.” She kisses my scars again and moves back up to my heart. You don’t belong to him anymore, Leon. You’remyhusband.” She looks up at me through the thick fringe of dark lashes. “And I’m yours. Your wife.”
“Fuck, Darby…”
“Okay. That sounds good to me.”
She straddles me and lifts the hem of her sundress, revealing creamy thighs. Then, she slides the straps of her dress off her shoulders, looking at me in the face the entire time. Her eyes glisten, sparking with emotion and playfulness. When she shifts against me, my gasp at the contact—her rubbing the bulge in my jeans—is anything but playful. She pushes her dress down her breasts, and the fabric whispers lower, falling to her waist to pool there. She’s wearing a white bra underneath, just a plain one, but it looks anything but plain with her gorgeous breasts swelling in the cups. She reaches behind her and undoes it, peeling it off with a sigh that sounds like relief.
Her breasts are inches from my face, the dark, beaded nipples more than I can bear. I lean in and taste her, suckling one into my mouth and caressing the other, running my fingers gently over her nipple.
“Ahhhh,” she sighs, throwing her head back and thrusting herself against me. Her moan is a breathless pleasure, and it makes my dick beyond hard in my jeans. She lets me worship her breasts for a few minutes before she threads her hands in my hair and pulls me away gently.
She doesn’t say anything as she shifts on the bed and moves down the length of me, her dress sitting at her waist, her lovely breasts swaying with every movement, tempting me until I’m ready to explode in my pants. She maintains eye contact while she undoes the button on my jeans, then the zipper. I know what she wants, and even though I know I’m supposed to be making this not happen, my self-denial game is seriously weak as of late. I want this too. I want her. I tried to push her away, but she’s crazily stubborn and won’t allow me to do it.
I lift my hips up, letting her pull my jeans and boxers off. She tugs them off my legs, then peels off my socks—yes, I’m wearing socks, even at the cabin—one at a time. Taking off socks shouldn’t be sexy, but there’s something about the way she watches my face the whole time she does it that definitely is. She bites down on her bottom lip when her eyes stray lower, and I watch her saw away at it when she notices how hard I am. Her tongue licks her lips, and I let out a feral sounding growl.
My nuts nearly do a deep dive into my body when she positions herself above me again and wraps her hand around my shaft. She doesn’t give me any time to protest or fight her on it or tell her that I don’t need her to dothat. She takes me into her mouth, takes way too much, and has to pull back. She tries again, this time gently, but she still softly scrapes her teeth over my cock by accident, and I nearly jack in half on the bed. In a good way. She’s so eager and unpracticed, kind of clumsy in her haste and desire, and it is so, so charming and hot.
So hot, in fact, that I have to suck in a breath at a rapid pace and think about things that really are not charming and hot just to keep my shit together.
“It’s okay,” Darby says, looking up at me with her huge eyes as she works my dick with her hand. “You can finish in my mouth if you want.”
I can’t stop myself from driving into her hand. Hard. I just about do as she asks right on the spot, but I shake my head. “I shouldn’t do that.”
“Why not?”