My Heart For Yours (Sinful Secrets 2)

I watch her eyes absorb the words: the way their dark pools seem to deepen.

“Bear…” She steps so close our bodies touch and runs her fingers up my cheek. She strokes my temple. Her eyes flare, demanding things before she even says, “You love me. You said so. And you know what? I love you too.” Her fingers curl against my cheek. Her eyes flash. “I love you too.” Her voice cracks. “It’s scary to say, even though you just said it. Barrett…” She wraps an arm around me, pressing her softness against me, looking up into my face as she speaks softly. “I think I knew I loved you when I brought the wine over that night. I felt scared and kind of…helpless. Like what I was doing was out of control and maybe stupid. And I couldn’t stop.” Her voice goes raspy. “You know why?” She blinks.

I shake my head.

“Because I love you. I love everything about you.” Her hands grasp my wrists. “I like your arms and legs…your hands.” She brings one up to her face, turning my hand so her lips can brush over my palm. “There’s this callous right here—” Her mouth tickles the spot between my left hand thumb and forefinger that used to mark me as an Operator. “I like it,” she murmurs, her eyes burning mine. “I like your long fingers. I even like your little fingernails.” She smiles gently, and squeezes all the fingers with her own.

“You know what I like the most, though?” She sounds breathless.

I swallow.

“The thing you know best, you can’t do it anymore, Barrett. You lost your vision in one eye, you lost basically a life, and what are you doing? Taking time for some random girl next door. Teaching her hand-to-hand. Making her care about you.” She shakes her head as sorrow fills her eyes. “You keep running from me… I knew you were getting up at night.” Her lips press into a thin line as she shakes her head again. “Don’t you think I care?”

“You don’t know me.” The words are hoarse. My jaw aches, referring pain up to my ear. She doesn’t know me. If she did, she’d never love me. She wouldn’t be able to, and in my honest moments, I can see this with terrible clarity.

I feel a clawing sensation deep inside my chest.

“I don’t know you well enough to take care of you?” Her eyes glimmer. She frowns, and I watch her throat move as she swallows. “Barrett—this is when we met. This is how things are right now. I love you because…I do. I want to be here with you. What bothers you about all that?”

I look down at my feet as my eyes throb with building pressure.

“Talk to me, baby.” Her voice is so soft; it makes my chest feel like it’s ripping open.

I look up at her, even open my mouth, but all I see is warm love in her eyes and I just…can’t. I shudder. Gwenna holds me to her, and it’s horrible. It’s wonderful. I want it so much. More than the sum of all the good parts of me.

“All I want is to make you feel better,” she says in her sweet, soft voice, “but I feel like I can’t get to you, if that makes any sense.”

I inhale deeply and let the words inside my head croak out. “I don’t see why you want to.”

The world is still while she looks into my eyes, seeing through my soul. “Bear, because you’re mine. I feel it. You are mine to hold and take care of and check on…and fuck. I want to hold your hand. I want to know about you. Why? Who cares why? I’m not asking. I don’t have an answer, either. Who does? Why’d you say you love me?” Her throat moves as she swallows; her eyes twinkle as she hoarsely asks me, “Did you mean it?”

“Of course.”

“Why do you love me, Barrett? Is it the color of my hair? The baked goods?”

I lick my lips. “I like your smile,” I rasp.

Her face slackens, and I can feel her gaze grow a little more serious under the weight of what I think must be self-consciousness. I run my fingers over her jaw.

“I think it’s sexy… You.” How do I convey to her that there is only one Gwen, only one sweet, kind, sexy, crooked smile. “Your eyes,” I manage. My throat feels full, but she looks somber, so I push past it and give her some of me, whatever I can muster. “Your eyes make me feel…better. About life. The way you look in leggings.” I stroke her ass. “So fucking hot. The lights on the ceiling.” I kiss her temple. “You’re good, Gwen. You’re so good, I can’t help but love you even though I know I shouldn’t.”

“Trust me, baby…” She trails her lips over my cheekbone. “You’re good, too.”

Her breath is warm and sweet. I shut my eyes. “Don’t say that.”

“I’m going to keep saying it,” she warns me in a murmur.

A strange panic burbles in me. I look at her and I feel my heartbeat in my shoulders and my throat. “I gave pain, and I deserve it. That’s the way it works. There’s nothing good about me.”

If she’s going to be with me, she should be warned.

The ache—in my head, my jaw, my chest—fuzzes into numbness as I try to breathe. She melds her soft body around mine.

My hands, on her shoulders, shake. The two of us are locked together, her tethered to me and it’s so wrong. So wrong.

“You seem like a dream…to me.” The words swim in my head; unsteady words. “Rewrite the story…” I clear my throat so my voice isn’t as cracked and get the nerve to look down at her. “You said I have to rewrite what happens… But I can’t. Because I don’t deserve it.”

* * *