Give Me a Reason (Redemption Hills 1)

Still, I peeked out as he approached. That redness heated to a flashfire, the sheet fully pressed to my face by the time he made it back to me.

A rough chuckle filled the air, and he tugged the silky fabric away, peering down at me through the dusky light. “You hidin’ from me, Kitten? If you run, this time I can’t promise that I won’t go chasing after you.”

The words were a tease, but they were weighed down with a tenderness that had never been there before, the way he gently nudged the sheet down far enough so that he could take in the entirety of my face.

Trent hovered above me.

All that fierce, unyielding intensity staring down like he’d uncovered a treasure.

Darkness that blazed the brightest light.

My teeth clamped down on my bottom lip. I nodded against his pillow, my throat thick when I admitted, “I wouldn’t get very far. I’m pretty sure I would only come running back to you.”

Emotion rippled, and Trent climbed onto the bed, a massive palm splaying across the side of my face. “How did we end up here? How’s it possible the two of us match like this…because that…”

He trailed off, his tongue swiping out across his full bottom lip as if he were trying to process what we’d just shared.

Something different.

Magical.

Extraordinary.

I didn’t need to have been with a bunch of different men to know it. To understand it. This connection that bound us in some intrinsic way.

“Perfect,” I supplied on a whisper.

Trent dropped his forehead to mine. “Want to be that for you, Eden.”

My fingertips scratched into the stubble that covered his strong jaw, urging him back enough so I could meet his eye. “You are perfect, Trent. You’re perfect in your flaws. Perfect in your strengths. Maybe you believe you’re all wrong, that you don’t have anything to offer, but I can’t help but believe you’re perfect for me.”

I guessed it was right then that I finally accepted its truth. When I no longer was afraid of his past, of the pain he could cause, but knew I wanted to stand at his side in spite of it. Hold him the way he was holding me.

I just prayed he would find his way through his guilt to me.

On a needy moan, Trent pressed his mouth to mine in a close-mouthed kiss. His eyes squeezed tight. Like he was savoring. Committing us to memory. Then he curled his arm around me, and a squeak of surprise ripped up my throat when he flipped our positions, rolling us until I was on top.

The two of us were chest to chest, though I was angled, my legs off to the side. The sheet barely covered me where it was twisted around my bottom. Trent pushed his fingers into the fall of my hair. “You really believe that, Eden? That I could be perfect for a girl like you?”

A tease wound its way into his tone.

“You act like I haven’t made a mistake or two.”

“Doubtful.” Affection flitted through his grin.

“Of course, I have.”

He arched a dark brow. “Let’s hear it.”

I chewed at my bottom lip, trying to think of the worst thing I’d ever done.

Tattooed fingers brushed through my hair, and he held back a sound of amusement. “You can’t even think of one thing, can you, Kitten?”

“No, it’s just there are so many I can’t settle on one.”

I hoped right then wasn’t one of them.

“Come on then.” Playfulness ridged his mouth.

“Okay…so when I was a junior in high school, Tessa and I snuck my daddy’s car and went to a concert in Tahoe that we’d been forbidden to go to. I was grounded for four weeks, but it was totally worth it.”

Trent gasped with a mock waggle of his brows. “Scandalous.”

Giggling, I smacked at him, a giddy sensation rippling beneath my skin. “You’re a jerk.”

He softened, his fingers still running through my hair as he sent me a tender smile. “And you’re sweet. Love that about you.”

His gaze darted across my face, and then he moved to tip up my chin. “Guess you aren’t completely innocent, though, going and seducing me like you did. Little Temptress.”

“Seducing you?” I scoffed, my chest pitching in a riot of excitement and need. “I think that was all you.”

I mean, six years and not a flicker of a feeling. And then there was this man.

Potent.

Provocative.

All consuming.

“There was no resisting you.”

This dark, dark defender.

He huffed a breath through his nose. “And I wanted to get you out of your clothes the first time I saw you…see all that sweetness hidden underneath.”

“You felt it then?”

“Didn’t you?”

My nod was wary, a frown pinching my brow as I thought back to the way I’d felt that first night. “Yeah.”

He ran his knuckles along the apple of my cheek. “But you were scared.”

Another nod. “I felt that part of you, too.”