Her jaw shifts as she absorbs my outburst, but I can tell it’s not enough. Her eyes narrow in willful determination. “I need to understand your relationship with Leslie more, Hayden. It hurts me to see you confide in her over me!” she exclaims.
“She stopped the blood!” I roar, billowing over top of my last shred of self-control. “The blood wasn’t just coming from my wrists, Vi. It was coming from my heart and my soul. I hurt everywhere, but Leslie was the one to put pressure on the wound and make it stop. She made it all stop.” Shocked at what I’ve just revealed, my hand grips Vi’s hip as a painful emotion bubbles up from somewhere deep and dark inside of me. “Leslie held my head in her lap and my life in her hands. That is something a person can never forget.”
Tears slide down Vi’s face and my own screws up in pain over what I keep doing to her. God, I keep making her cry…over and fucking over again. But I need her to understand. I need her to keep looking at me. I take my hands and cup her cheeks, wiping away the tears as if that act alone can wipe away her pain.
“I will always have a certain attachment to Leslie. She helped me understand reality. She saw into my soul that night so long ago. A place that I didn’t think anyone else could see…until you.” I look down to try and stifle the fear ripping through my body.
Vi inhales a shaky breath and her head nods in my hands, forcing me to look up in shock at her approval. “I’m sorry, Hayden,” she croaks, her voice thick with emotion. “I can’t understand something like that, but I’ll try. That’s all I can do. I just wish…I wish I could have been there for you.”
I exhale with relief and lift her chin with a gentle nudge of my knuckle. “You have no idea how much I wish the same thing. I’m the one who should be sorry. As much as I’ve shared with you, I struggle to share things that I still don’t fully understand myself.”
She nods woodenly.
“But the thing is,” I start, dropping a needful kiss to her forehead before pressing my own to hers, “I thought I already knew the reason why I was grateful that I hadn’t erased my life forever that night…until you. You, Vi…you make me want to fight even harder to be the man I want to be.”
Her taut, emotional expression softens into a look of lust and desire. She grabs my neck and pulls me down to her lips. The relief. The absolute, ecstasy-encompassing relief I feel with her mouth on mine and the understanding that one simple act proves to my heart right now…is life-changing.
“Take me home,” she whimpers against my lips, sliding her hands down to grip my biceps in her small grasp. “Take me home and show me how strong you are.”
I release a husky laugh against her lips. It’s a laugh that makes everything inside of me lunge for her. Even with all this drama, all this fucked up confusion, she still doesn’t see me as broken. She’s just a woman who wants me to fuck her senseless right here. We’re still us…whatever we are. “Are you asking what I think you’re asking, Bunny?” I grin wickedly down at her, thinking about everything I could to do to her.
She giggles. God, she fucking giggles.
“Show me rude rabbit, pretty please.” Her eyebrows waggle at me suggestively.
I’m instantly hard.
The way this woman can look at me—a frail, weak, broken, and emotional fucking mess of a man—and still want me to take her home and have my way with her. Christ, if she’s not it for me…no one is.
I stand behind Vi as she’s perched on the edge of her large, baroque-style bed. Her blonde hair cascades down her fresh, alabaster skin that is glowing in the dim evening light that pours in from the windows of her flat. Her posture is straight and perfect. Poised and ready for what I’m about to do to her. Vi takes direction really well, I think, smirking to myself as I crawl up behind her on the bed. She’s sitting completely naked except for her cobalt blue thong that I told her to leave on. I kneel behind her. My front to her back. I nudge my erection into her back, shrouded only in a pair of black boxer briefs. She shudders out a quick, shaky breath and it makes me smile. I reach around and stroke my fingertips from her breasts, up the front of her neck, and finally to her chin. I pull her mouth up to meet mine, her head thrown back as I tower over her.
She gasps as I drop a soft kiss to her lips. The anticipation is killing her already. Fuck. This is going to be fun.
“See these lips?” I whisper huskily against her mouth, dragging my thumb across them and watching hungrily as they plop back into place. “They’re mine. Every centimetre down to the little divot right here should only crave my lips. My taste. And my power. This lower lip…is for my teeth to sink into whenever I feel like it. Understand?”
I nip at her bottom lip and she lets out a husky laugh, our breaths intermingling in a heady sexy exhale of happiness. “Yes,” she submissively agrees.