twenty-eight
PRESENT DAY
KATE
Brandon’s hand finds my shoulder through the scratchy motel blanket. The lone street lamp outside faintly illuminates the dead of night. He tugs gently, and I roll over to face him, my eyes heavy with sleep.
“What?” I mumble.
“I can’t go another minute like this.” Brandon’s voice is raw. “Without you.”
I blink in time to the emerging thump in my chest. “What… are you saying?”
“Give me another chance, Kate. Give us another chance.”
A battle erupts between my heart and my mind. My mind screams “No.” That I should run. That I’m still a disappointment.
But Brandon already knows that.
And… he wants me?
A heady spin whisks away my thoughts at the heated look Brandon is giving me. It makes me feel desired in a way I haven’t before.
Whole. Complete in my flaws. A beautiful photo despite the edges being out of focus.
I bite my lip, dizzying desire building within me, and Brandon’s gaze zeros in on the movement. His eyes are ablaze with desperate want, and an electric pulse hums throughout my every nerve.
“I want you, Kate,” Brandon urges. “Now.”
His breathy declaration tickles across my eyelids, which have fluttered closed. He draws me closer across the tiny bed, and the electricity rolling off me in waves explodes into a firestorm. Hot need sizzles in my chest, my fingertips. My hands find Brandon’s bare chest in the dim light, and a growl escapes him.
Our bodies press together as the cheap hotel sheets intertwine.
But Brandon’s lips hesitate a frustrating fraction from mine, like the breath of a question.
Do I really want this? Want him as badly as he wants me? Is this a bad idea?
Screw it.
I crush my mouth to his.
I taste regret on his tongue, melting me faster than a candle. Hands fly across hair, across faces, across bodies. Brandon is every bit as indecisive, every bit as frantic. His calluses graze my lower back, the sensitive skin on the nape of my neck. His grip finally settles on the curve of my hip, fingertips digging.
I wrap my arms around his neck and pull us impossibly closer. His lips are a fever dream, his spicy scent all-encompassing. I’m wild—unbridled even—but Brandon tames me by pulling and pressing my lips into a sensual rhythm.
Our chests rise and fall, and I begin to disintegrate at the seams. I’m unraveling. I’ve never needed anyone more in my life than I need Brandon.
The mere knowledge of that fact should freeze this raging current of attraction. It should send me running out the door to never come back.
But Brandon’s words are now permanently etched inside my mind. He won’t abandon me again. He never meant to in the first place.
Searching my soul, I excavate my walls until cracks of light appear. Hope beams within me, and I make a promise to myself that I won’t hide again. Brandon sees me. Heknowsme. And after six years of disappointment, maybe he’ll be impervious to my imperfectness.
I whimper Brandon’s name as he nips at my bottom lip. His name rolls off my tongue in a moan. I tangle my fingers into his hair and marvel at how much longer the strands feel since the last time we kissed.
He sits up in the bed, pulling me onto his lap. My corset twists around my abdomen, and I wiggle my fingers beneath it to straighten it. Brandon kisses a fiery line across my bare collarbone to my off-the-shoulder sleeve. My white skirt ripples against the cheap bedspread.
A light begins to glow red hot beside us, and I notice that Brandon left his forging iron on the nightstand.
