He stood still, listening to the words. “I like it,” he murmured.
Olivia took his hands, pulling him away from the window and into the center of the room. “Dance with me,” she whispered.
“I don’t know how.” He frowned.
“Here,” she said softly, “I’ll show you.”
She took his hand and wrapped it around her waist as he pulled her in closer. Her hand snaked around his neck to toy with the slight curls at the nape of his neck, her other hand entwining with his.
She showed him how to move, and after a few hesitant steps, they began to sway together.
The snow fell silently outside the window blanketing the house, and for those precious few moments, the world stopped and held its breath. They existed only in their own little pocket of time, wrapped up in each other, unaware of the golden-colored threads spilling around them and causing the room to glow a soft, warm gold.
29
Dawn broke, pale and unrelenting, creeping through Olivia’s bedroom window to dance across the floor. She lay perfectly still, watching the fiery red and gold blaze across the sky through the open drapes, and her heart lay like lead in her chest.
“You’re doing it again,” Theo mumbled as his arm snaked around her, pulling her in close.
“What?” She rolled over to face him.
“Thinking too loudly.” He smiled with his eyes still closed. “I can hear you thinking all the way over here.”
With her fingertips, she traced the silver moon hanging from his neck, the metal warmed by his bare skin. He caught her hand and rolled her onto her back, leaning over her and taking her lips in a soft kiss.
“Talk to me,” he breathed as they broke the kiss. “I don’t like it when you’re sad.”
“I’m not sad.” She traced his jaw absently. “I just... it’s hard knowing that today I have to face my dad.”
He propped his head up on his hand and watched her intently. “You don’t have to do it alone, though.”
“I know.” She blew out the breath she’d unconsciously been holding. “It just hurts to look at him, knowing what he has taken from me and wondering–”
“Wondering what?”
“If he ever really loved me at all, or if it was all just another lie,” she admitted quietly.
“I can’t answer that for you, love.” He tucked her hair behind her ear.
“Don’t call me that.” She pulled away irritably.
He pinned her down gently. “I know you don’t want to hear it, but it’s the truth. I know I’ve not been here for long and you need time, but...” He shook his head. “It feels like I’ve been waiting for you my whole life. Right now, you’re hurting, and you’re scared, but it doesn’t change the fact that I love you, and I’m going to keep telling you until you believe it.”
A hot, uncomfortable ball of emotion burned in the back of her throat as she blinked back the tears. “I don’t want to love you,” she whispered.
“Then just let me love you,” he murmured against her lips before he took her under.
She knew he loved her, she could feel it in every soft, teasing glide of his fingers, in every stroke of his tongue, and every brush of his lips. She couldn’t say the words he deserved to hear, and she hated herself for it. He slipped between her legs, and as it did every time he touched her, every thought drained from her mind except him. There was nothing else. She wrapped her arms and legs around him, pulling him in as close as she could, and when she felt him slide inside her, she arched as her thoughts scattered.
Theo hung on, clutching onto what little sanity remained when he felt her surround him. She was truly everything. As they moved together, he absorbed every movement, every sound she made. It was all his, even if she didn’t know it. He knew she couldn’t say the words, knew that her fear was holding a part of herself back from him and he ached for her, ached to hear the words tumble breathlessly from her lips while he was deep inside her, but he knew she wasn’t ready. She may not have been able to tell him she loved him, but he knew it. She showed him in a thousand little ways she wasn’t even aware of. What she couldn’t tell him with her voice, she showed him with her body.
He could wait for the words. After all, he’d waited three hundred years for her. He could wait a little while longer.
Mac hung up the phone and frowned. He had the uncomfortable feeling that something was going on. After her statement the day after she had been released from the hospital, Olivia West had been dodging his calls. He’d even driven out to the lake house to see her, but she’d told him she was busy working. He wasn’t stupid and knew how to read people, and she was definitely trying to keep something from him.
Now Jake had mysteriously called in sick. Jake was never sick. Mac had gone over his file, as he had with all the staff files when he’d temporarily taken over the department, and Jake had never been sick a day in his life. Now he suddenly had the flu and was not answering his phone. Neither was his sister, Louisa, or his girlfriend, the one he insisted wasn’t his girlfriend, who just happened to be Olivia’s lawyer, Erica Kelly. All of a sudden it was like total radio silence and all his hackles were up and tingling. They knew something and were purposely keeping him in the dark.
In the week since he’d fled, there had been no sign of Thomas Walcott. The guy was completely off the grid. Mac had no idea how he was surviving with no money and no supplies, but he had definitely not resurfaced. Mac was almost expecting to find his body in the woods somewhere, dead from hypothermia or exposure.
