“This is…” I was barely able to choke out words. “Difficult. For me.”
“Me too.” She sighed, placing her hand on my chest, against my heart, it was there, but each thump was painful, as if someone was taking an ice pick and doing some serious damage.
“Sometimes…” I stood, pulling her into my arms so we were chest to chest; her soft breasts pushed against me with every exhale. “Not feeling, feels better.”
“Still feeling.”
“You have smart ass tendencies.”
Sighing, Val kept her right hand pressed against my chest, and her left gripping my shoulder. “Yeah well, normally I don’t vocalize all my thoughts.”
“I think you should.” My hands moved to her hair, digging into the chestnut depths, allowing this weird, foreign sensation of touching another woman to wash over me.
And waiting.
For the pain.
And it was there, oh, it was there.
I co-existed with it.
“That feels good.” Val swayed forward, her forehead replacing where her hand had been.
Her body was small against mine, and different, but not a bad different, just, different.
“I promise I’ll try really hard,” she whispered in a sad voice. “To make you happy. I—” She started shaking. “—I’ll make it my life’s mission, okay?”
And my heart shattered all over again.
“Val, I don’t deserve the honor.”
She pulled back, a cute frown marring her pretty face. “It isn’t about what you deserve.” Her face broke out into a beautiful smile, one that had me sucking in a breath and nearly stumbling backward. “It’s about what you need.”
Never had I been so ashamed of myself.
And I’d done a lot of shitty things.
I couldn’t stop myself.
Someone should burst into the room, someone should stop me from doing what I was about to do.
Then again if they did, I’d probably shoot them.
I’d invited anger into my soul and told it to stay.
And it had.
Until an innocent girl made it her mission to make me smile.
That’s the thing about pain. You live with it, you embrace the rightness of it, until someone finally reaches through the broken glass, and grabs ahold of the real you, the you that had been lost and hurting. Broken and bleeding, they hold on for dear life, refusing to let go.
They join you in your pain.
And as you watch the blood pour down their arm, you realize, the pain is you, you are the pain, you are the master of your own destiny, you built up the shards of glass.
And now, it isn’t just effecting you.
But someone else who isn’t deserving of it.
Which makes you pause and take notice — did I ever deserve the same thing?
“I’m going to kiss you now.”
“But you said you wouldn’t—”
“Because I want to.”
“You want to?”
I nodded. “And you’re going to say yes.”
“I am?” Her eyebrows shot up in surprise as a panicked sound emitted from her mouth.
“Yup.”
“Why am I going to say yes?”
“Because practice makes perfect and… because… we can.”
“True but—”
I didn’t give her a chance to reject me.
This.
Was.
A kiss.
I was going to make her forget all about her regret — and I was going to make it as good as I possibly could.
With a shriek she wrapped her legs around me.
“That’s it.” I sighed. “Hold on.”
Lips trembling, she nearly knocked her head against mine as she clenched my shoulders with her dainty hands, her fingers tugging at my T-shirt like she was getting ready to ride.
Soft legs.
The faint smell of vanilla.
And her erratic breathing.
I stopped trying to pursue her with my kiss and just… listened.
My eyes closed with an inhale as I breathed her in and closed off my mind to the world around me — focusing only on her.
My mouth descended to hers.
Val’s breathing was uneven.
My lips met hers tentatively and then again, coaxing them apart, savoring the very different feel of her, of another woman.
In her arms, I wasn’t a widower. I wasn’t mafia. I wasn’t anything but a guy; she made me feel that way, like nothing else mattered.
It was cheesy.
It was beautiful.
It was like breathing for the first time.
The way her fingers danced up my shoulders, the way she clung to my neck for dear life and, even the way she breathed me in as she kissed me back, her tongue sliding against my bottom lip.
With a moan, I deepened the kiss, tried different angles, and pressed my lips against hers again and again, one more time and then I’d stop.
I lied.
Two more times.
Three.
Seven.
Panting, I slid my hand up her side, my skin sizzling with the contact of her smooth skin.
I walked us toward her bed and fell backward with her on top of me, she paused, chest heaving, her big trusting hazel eyes blinking lazily down at me. “You paused.”
“People need air.” I grinned. “To survive.”