Another haunting ghost of someone he couldn’t save.
I wonder if I’ve become important enough to deserve a tribute in ink somewhere on his body.
I’m torn between the selfish nature of the thought and the wishful plea—the hope that someone else will carry me in their soul and not let go once I’m gone.
Isn’t that the sum of all human desire—to be remembered, immortal, unforgotten?
But it’s more than that—my mom and sister will keep me in their hearts. It’s him. It’s Ryder who I want to remember me. If I could be kept in his soul and immortalized in his heart, it would feel like a piece of me was still living. Like a part of me survived.
Because his love would make it that way.
I rinse and shut off the water. I dry my body then squeeze the hotel lotion into my hand and smooth the cold cream over my hot skin. It smells good.
It’s fitting that I prepare myself—like a funeral rite.
After I run the comb through my wet tangles, I do something extreme and bold. I step out of the bathroom and into the hotel room completely naked.
Each breath labors through my chest—I’m so scared, so fucking scared.
“Ryder.” My voice is barely audible.
He doesn’t turn, and I steel myself to be braver. “Ryder.”
He turns—beautiful and brilliant. “Farrington.” My name is but a breath on his lips. His eyes widen, and even with all my degrees and knowledge of the human mind, I can’t read what’s behind them.
His expression is full of anguish and distress.
I don’t know what I was expecting, but that wasn’t quite it.
“No. Jesus Christ, Farrington, NO!” Ryder rips the blanket from the bed and quickly wraps me with it. As he covers my naked form, his throat makes a strangled sound and his green glass eyes gloss over. “It’s not going down this way,” he growls angrily.
I don’t understand what he means, but I do understand that for me, the hourglass is almost empty.
“Don’t you find me attractive at all?”
“How could you even ask that, Farrington? Of course I do!” He sounds furious.
“Then make love to me.”
He pulls the blanket tighter. “You’re coming back from this.”
I shake my head. “You don’t know that, Ryder. No one knows when death will take them. And I’ve been too close too many times now to think I can defy the reaper again.”
Ryder crushes his eyes closed as he gathers the edges of the blanket into his fists and pulls me closer towards him until his forehead rests on mine.
It’s our first real intimate physical exchange, and I relish it—a moment of silence that suspends us over the situation and binds us together in the face of our impossible odds.
“I don’t want to feel like I missed something special in this life. And if I die without having kissed you it will be my greatest regret.”
Ryder breaks.
The seam of his thick, full lips presses over mine. I close my eyes—as I’m swept into the raging storm of his passion and his torment.
My eyes fall closed while my mouth opens and my lips part to receive him. His mouth takes my lower lip, slowly, purposefully.
A moan escapes me, a cry of desire, a plea for more.
“Farrington.”
“Rachel.”
Ryder stays tethered to the blanket he has knotted in his hands as a moment of silence slices between us.
But instead of pulling back, he closes the distance.
“Rachel.” The sound of my name spoken in the sexy, rough, resonant gravel of his deep voice with yearning hunger overwhelms me—it was well worth the wait.
His fingers loosen on the fabric twisted over me, and the blanket tumbles from my shoulders, landing in a pile at my feet.
Everything that is Ryder, everything inside of him, everything that has molded and shaped his life looks back at me through the soul of his eyes.
“Oh God, I can’t hold you like this.”
“I want you to.”
“I don’t belong in your arms. I’m not the one you need.”
“I can be the judge of what I need. And I need you, Ryder.”
“My life . . . is cursed. I’m a curse.”
“No, you’re not. You’re my hero, and it doesn’t even matter whether or not you can pull off a daring rescue tonight. What matters is this moment.”
He touches my face. “Rachel.” My name caresses his tongue like an oath.
“Let me touch your ink.”
Without a word he keeps his soulful gaze locked with mine and strips the charcoal fitted t-shirt over his head. Out of the corner of my eye I see the shirt hit the floor behind him.
I allow my right hand to hover mere inches from the heat of his flesh. In another time or place, I would have been shy and timid to reach out and lay my hands over the corded, sculpted muscle. I would have second-guessed what I was doing, if this were the right thing, what he’d think of me tomorrow . . .
I don’t have such luxuries any longer.