“You’re really here,” she rasps.
“Can I spend the night with you?”Or I’ll drink if I’m at home. Intertwining my fingers through hers, I bend until our foreheads touch. “Just sleeping and holding you, no sex, I promise.”
Her eyes twinkle as she fights back an adorable smile. “You drove in the middle of the night just to cuddle me?”
“Yeah, I did.” Nuzzling my nose against hers, I murmur, “I was missing you.”
“You only saw me hours ago.”
“Too long.”
Rising up, she captures my mouth with hers and kisses me slow and lazy. I bask in her love and taste. When she pulls back with the sweetest sigh of satisfaction and peers at me with those sunshine eyes, it hits me with full force.
I’ve fallen for her.
It’s a feeling far deeper and intense and poignant than what I thought love was. This desire to own her mind, body, and soul is what loving someone is. Not wanting to be apart from them for even a second, the protective impulse to guard them with life, even from ourselves, wanting to breathe the same air as them, and making them happy, claiming them in front of the entire world, all of it is falling for another soul.
Arya is the first and the only woman to evoke this in me.
But is she falling for me?
I’ll make her love me back whatever it takes. It solidifies my belief that I need to seek help in order to be a man worthy of her love. Most of all, I have to tell her the truth about the night we met and hope like hell it doesn’t send her away running.
If we can stay together through that, then we can beat the other dangers in our lives.
“Come on,” she murmurs, tugging on my hand to pull me inside.
I shut the door and pick her up.
Cupping the side of my throat, she strokes along my jaw, whispering, “I missed you too. Not just tonight, but for the past weeks.”
“I won’t stay apart from you again,” I promise, entering her bedroom. “And I’m sorry for ending it with you so rudely. Forpretending I didn’t have strong feelings for you. Do you forgive me?”
“There’s nothing to forgive,” she says, running her fingers through my hair. It felt so good. “I understand why you did it. You didn’t want to get attached to me and take a chance on us because it meant being vulnerable. You didn’t want to go through the pain of losing another person in your life after they said they’d stay. I’ll never abandon you, Nathan. For me, there’s you and the rest of the world. And I’llalwayschoose you. You’re my number one.”
She tears down my walls, crumbles my defences around my heart, making it hers.
“It goes both ways, my gorgeous angel,” I rasp thickly and kiss her on the forehead. “You and me against the world.”
A teardrop slips down the apple of her cheek, while her eyes shine with awe.
“Don’t cry.” I kiss the tear away and tighten my hold around her.
“I… I’ve never been this happy, Nathan,” she sniffles. “Not even with Aryan. It’s like I’ve never been whole and now all my broken pieces fit against yours. The way you lov…” she trips over her words, gaze widening in alarm, and tries to backtrack, “I meant-
“I love you, Ari.”
Her lips part as she becomes frozen in my arms.
I put her down, facing me, and cradle her flushed face with both palms. My entire body vibrates as I confess the three little words that I’ve never told anyone, “I love you, Arya. It isn’t madness, it’s infinite love I feel for you in my bones. I think I’ve been falling for you since the moment you walked into the conference room. It was fate giving me a second chance to make you mine. Fuck, I love you so damn much. I’ve never felt this way for anyone.”
“N-No one?” she utters quietly.
I know she means Iris. So, I erase her doubts that she’s a replacement or a rebound. Because that’s just false. “No one, angel. Do you want to know how I know?”
She shakily nods.
“Because if another man tried to steal you from me, I will fight him to the death. I will not give you up. You belong to me. With me.Mine. All fucking mine.”
