“Now? I—”
He smacks my backside, with a firm, flat palm that bites sharply, and a roar of sensations erupts inside me, my sex clenching his cock, air lodging in my lungs. Already another smack comes, and then another. Then Kayden is kissing me, wild, crazy kissing me, and our bodies are melded together, the world falling away. There is this deep burn in my body, in my entire existence, that needs to be closer to him. That needs him to drive harder and faster. I have never been so lost, so explosive, and I lose everything but the sensations. Strokes. Grinds. Touches. Kisses. And then suddenly reality is spinning and fading in and out, my body stiffening. And then I am tumbling into oblivion, quaking from within. Kayden cups my head and leans into me, a low groan escaping his lips, rough and sexy, before he’s shuddering, shaking.
Slowly his body eases, and so does mine, the present returning, and awareness with it. I am limp, completely, utterly sated, my leg resting on his hip, when I don’t even remember it being there. Seconds tick by, our breathing all that fills the air, and everything comes back to me. The slow caresses, the sting of my backside. The absolute lust I felt in the wake of that sting.
Kayden cups my cheek, tilting my face to his. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. I am.”
“Did I—”
“Hurt me? Scare me? No, you did not.”
He studies me, then, “Would you—”
“Do it again? Yes, I would.” My hand flattens on his chest. “I can’t explain it, and I know that was barely anything, but it was intimate in ways that I couldn’t be with anyone else. In ways I thought that I would never be with anyone, after Garner Neuville. You are somehow dangerous and sexy and still safe, and I don’t know how that’s even possible.”
His eyes darken, some emotion I cannot name flashing in their depths, and then he kisses me hard and fast, before he eases my leg down and reaches over to the table. He relaxes beside me again with a tissue that he presses between us, slipping it where he had been. But already he is pulling me closer again, maneuvering to his back, with my head on his chest. We melt into the couch and each other, a blanket of warmth wrapping around us, and I can almost feel our bond growing. This is what safe feels like. But even as I try to revel in this moment, there’s a nagging feeling that when we leave this room, we are no longer safe.
“Ella,” Kayden says, and I wonder if he feels it too.
“Yes?”
He rolls me to my back, one arm bracketing me, light brown hair draping his forehead. Those blue eyes becoming warm in the way they do only for me. “I want you to be my wife.”
I suck in air, shocked when perhaps I should not be. I love him. He loves me. And yet I can’t seem to make myself say the magic word: Yes.
five
sara
Tuesday, February 24th
Writing this entry is rather surreal considering it’s only hours after I spoke to Ella, confirming she’s alive. Alive! I cannot believe it. As silly as it seems as I write this now, I never said it out loud, nor put ink to paper, for fear I’d somehow jeopardize my chance of ever seeing her again. But back to why this is surreal. Well, I guess there are many reasons, but ultimately one. It was Ella who handed me a journal in the first place. Not my journal, but Rebecca’s, a woman I didn’t know then, but now . . . now I feel as if she is a part of me. Rebecca certainly changed my life. Her words touched my heart, my soul. Her words scared me enough for me to look for her, and while I didn’t find her, I did find Chris. And Chris is most certainly a part of me.
And that all came about because Ella became obsessed with Storage Wars, and decided to auction hunt during last summer’s break. She found Rebecca’s journal in a storage unit, obsessing over it before I did, and then leaving it with me the night she abruptly left for Paris to elope with a man she barely knew. And since a journal was the last thing Ella and I shared before our call today, somehow writing in one now that I’ve found her again seems profoundly well timed. That journal changed my life..