“More like I know how to dream.”
I saw a different side of Shooter than most people. He was collected, softer, and even nicer than when I first met him. He had controlled his temper. And with one glimpse at his smile, your heart would skip a beat. His rippling muscles were prominent from his long sleeves. It made it worse when I had to look up at him, he was a tower of a man.
I silenced the thoughts in my head. I needed to stop fantasizing about him, especially knowing that I would be the one to scare him off.
“Peaches, your thoughts are very loud,” he said, stirring me from my thoughts.
He wasn’t completely wrong, but I knew that sooner or later he would be prying into my own silence.
He allowed my silence to keep going until he sighed very loudly, and I couldn’t help but laugh thinking it was almost brat behavior.
“There’s a lot in my head,” I confessed.
“Like what?”
“Why have you been nice to me?” I finally asked. “I mean, I get being on your best behavior, abiding by rules from Hound Dog. But all the attention, and everything else, why?”
He stopped dead in his tracks, as we got deep into the wooded area within the compound. He had been a couple steps ahead of me but turned around to stop me in my own tracks. My heart started to race again, and I didn’t know what to expect.
Shooter slowly stepped toward me, making my back hit a tree trunk. He hovered above me, his burning eyes placed on me. My chest heaved with a racing heartbeat. It wasn’t anger but maybe confused, perhaps pity that washed over him. My eyes flicked to his mouth and back to his eyes. I needed him to say something. I needed to feel like more than a trapped mouse.
Chapter 14
Shooter
Why had I been nice to her?
Like there was something more behind kindness and adoration. My heart ached thinking that no one showed her kindness or dedication.
Her body was flush with mine. I wanted to know what was going on in that pretty little mind of hers. What was buried so deep that she fights me every step to unlock something more than the workaholic nurse with some secrets? I mean, I already knew something, but it had to go deeper.
“Why have I been nice to you?” I re-asked her question, daring her to expand or re-ask.
She swallowed something in her throat. She was afraid, but not of me. Her gaze dropped away from me. I lightly lifted her chin back to me. “Look at me, Amelia.”
Her breath was caught. I couldn’t help but softly grip her cheek, my thumb caressing her cheek. I needed her to keep trusting me.
Amelia got lost in the feeling, melting into my palm. Putty in my hands. “You want to know why I have been nice to you?”
Her eyes almost glistened like she was about to cry. I could only imagine that there was a wall about to be dropped down. You could probably hear the destruction happen in her mind. Every racing thought that she was trying to shove down in her self-consciousness, to continue to build the wall in her mind. She tried to stand firm, but she knew one thing was for certain. She would know that she could let go.
I wedged my injured leg between her legs, which she was eagerly accepting.
“Like I need motivation behind showing you kindness.” I scoffed. “Pissing you off sometimes is icing on the cake, but that smile is a reward, an honor.”
She rolled her eyes, the little defiance that she had left.
“You want some truth, Amelia?” I asked, also not knowing what would come flying out of my mouth.
She gently nodded.
I leaned in, pressing our foreheads together, breathing her in, her warm scent almost like vanilla and cinnamon. “In the end, I want you.”
A soft whimper was her response. That was the moment that changed the game, she couldn’t lie to me anymore. That whimper was the admission I needed. And yet I kept going, “I want you. I needed you to start trusting me. I already know your body craves me, yet you try to hide it. But it’s that mind of yours that is holding you back. And perhaps your heart.”
I kissed her forehead, so soft and tender, showing her that I could be the sweet and gentle she needed, until she begged me for something more that only I could give her.
“Shooter, you can’t want me,” she protested. The gears in my mind only spun faster. “I’m not the woman for you.”
