But really…I hadn’t.
Yes, Ren had always been forbidden, but at least, he hadn’t been a mortal sin.
Me…on the other hand.
If Ren had felt the slightest tug toward me—a tug that overstepped even the smallest of margins…then I could understand why this room wasn’t just a room.
Because I hadn’t just been a girl he wanted; I had been a child.
A child who meant more to him than anything else in the world.
A living, breathing nightmare.
This room had become his judge and executioner, its very walls, furniture, and windows condemning him for every dream he might have had, for every fanciful wish, for every fleeting thought.
God, I’m sorry.
Pushing off my knees, I let go of my anger. I drowned in apology. I moved toward him as gently and as carefully as I could because he was spooked and hurting, and I’d been the one to do it.
“You truly did love me, didn’t you?” I whispered.
His gorgeous coffee eyes widened, his chest rising and falling. “Of course, I love you.”
“That wasn’t what I said.” Pressing my fingers to his heart, I hated that he flinched. That his sun-bronzed hair shivered as he stayed tight and wound as if he’d bolt at any moment. “You loved me more than you should, even before I kissed you.”
His face contorted. “I-I loved you as a brother.”
“No, you loved me as something more.” Tears trickled down my face at the truth—the exquisite, agonising truth. I wrapped my arms around his waist, not caring he still had his jeans bunched in one hand, hiding his decency. “I’m sorry, Ren.”
He rippled with stress, not hugging me back. “Della, I—”
Those two words were an arrow, shooting from the bow of his mouth, ricocheting around the room until they punctured us through the heart.
In their simplicity, they admitted everything.
His head came down and his lips sought mine with a level of devotion and need that transcended time and logic. His arms banded around me, fierce and possessive. And the ice in his muscles cracked, melted, and cascaded away in a waterfall of released tension.
“I didn’t realise until we’d left.” Burying his face in my hair, his entire body quaked as if this was his true confession. “I didn’t know. You have to believe me. I was a kid. You were mine. There was no other future I could think of that you weren’t there beside me.”
“It’s okay.” I stroked his back, being the rock he’d always been for me.
How had I not seen it? It wasn’t me or my kiss that made him realise there was something more.
There had always been something more.
Our love hadn’t honoured boundaries fashioned by age or circumstance. Our love had thrown us together and told us the truth way too early.
It had laughed in our face and said, ‘This is the person you will adore forever. This is the person designed, crafted, and perfected for you. But you can’t touch them. Not yet. Not for decades. Not until you’re worthy of the gift I’ve given you.’
Time, it seemed, had a nasty sense of humour.
Time had hurt Ren far worse than it had me.
“Being back here makes me wonder if I ever overstepped,” Ren murmured. “It makes me second-guess everything. Every time I touched you, what was I thinking? Every time I kissed you, what did it mean? Every time I saw you naked, was I averting my eyes like I thought, or was I watching you when I shouldn’t?”
He exhaled with a ragged groan. “I don’t know anymore. I don’t know if I did right by you, or if all along I was some perverted—”
“Stop.”
He sucked in a breath, his chest heaving as if he’d run miles.
“Trust me when I say this, Ren Wild, you were and are the most honourable man I’ve ever known. I understand how you could second-guess. I know how time can play tricks and make you remember different things. But I need you to listen now because not once did you make me feel awkward around you. Your touches were strictly brotherly. Your kisses perfectly pure. I grew up so safe and happy because I knew you adored me. I knew we were special. I knew we had something that no one else could ever steal or share. So please, Ren. Please don’t let the past damage what we have or make you fear you did anything wrong. Because you didn’t. Not a single moment was wrong. Not a single—”
He kissed me.
He clutched me close and kissed me deep, shutting me up, telling me he trusted me, assuring me he was okay.
I crumpled in his arms, submitting entirely to his hot mouth and skilful tongue.
His fingers slid into my hair, cradling me as he bowed over me, tucking me into him, doing his best to join us together in all the right ways.
On and on, we kissed.
Heads dancing.
Tongues licking.
Hearts racing.
Ren had always been a masterful kisser, but something was different about this one. Something new and honest and true.
He held nothing back.
He tasted me and let me taste him.
He commanded possession and let me possess in return.
And the entire time we kissed, I didn’t tell him what else I remembered.
How, when he was eighteen, I knew he dreamed of someone he wanted because he’d cry out in his sleep, waking me to see his young face straining with want and misery.
How, when he was nineteen, I knew he pleasured himself in the dark once our beds were separated and we could no longer touch, and I’d hear his soft groan as he came—the same groan I now recognised as a woman.
Ren had kept everything he was going through a secret from me, but it didn’t mean I wasn’t aware.
He was a boy.
He was human.
He was perfect.
My lips tingled from his as I reached for his undone waistband.
He shook his head, rubbing our lips together. “No—”
“Yes.”
His heart pounded harder as I pushed the material down. His face drained of colour as I broke our kiss and looked between us. There, on the bare flesh of his hipbone, with his boxers and jeans pushed low enough to reveal the splattering of hair but not enough to reveal his cock, was his brand.
The same brand I’d kissed before, licked before, pressed my cheek to and cursed my parents for what they’d done to him, all while thanking them because, in a way, they’d bought him for me.
Time had used them, too.
Time had ensured they brought us together.
The oval brand with its Mc97 glinted cruelly in the light. Running my fingertip over the scar tissue, I whispered, “This room is nothing more than a room. The only thing that means anything is you and me.” My fingers drifted to the dark warmth of his underwear, ducking down and fisting his hard length. “You can touch me, Ren. You can kiss me. There’s nothing stopping us. I want you to touch me. I need it…and I think you need it, too.”
He shuddered again, his breath short and fast, eyes wild and black. “You’re pushing me too far, Della Ribbon. I don’t know how much longer I can keep saying no.”
“Good because I want you to say yes.”
“But it’s not right.”
“It is.”
“I can’t stop thinking, ah—”
I squeezed him, making his head tip back, revealing a long, powerful throat with its five o’clock shadow and Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. With his eyes closed, he strangled, “But I nursed you when you had chicken pox in that very bed. I sat in that chair as you learned about sex, and I hid just how much I didn’t know. I watched you sleep when you were still a kid. I had dreams that—”
“None of that matters now.” Pushing firmly, I backed him toward the single bed that used to be his. The one with black sheets and no colour. The one I’d curled into, when he wasn’t looking, to smell his pillow.