“Good, because—”
“For God’s sake!” I rake my fingers through my hair. “Listen. Just listen.”
She nods, her pretty pink lips trembling.
“I didn’t mean to tell you how I feel,” I say, pacing. “I meant to take those words to the grave.”
She opens her mouth, but I dart arrows at her with my eyes. She presses her lips together abruptly.
“I’m going to finish this, Ashley, if it kills me.” And it just may. “I’m not sure when I fell in love, but I swear to God, I feel like there was never a moment of my life when I didn’t love you. That makes no sense, of course, since we just met, but it’s my feeling. You’re going to ask why I wouldn’t tell you. The only answer I can give you is that you deserve better than me. And don’t tell me I’m the best there is. I get that you think that, but it’s just not true. You’re looking through your infatuated glasses. Rose-colored glasses. Syrah-colored glasses, or whatever you want to call it. It’s so fucking far from true.”
I want to say more.
I want to tell her about the demons that live inside me, eating my flesh from the inside out.
I want to tell her how as a young boy I was used and abused, saw things no child—hell, no adult—should ever see. Heard things no one should have heard. How there were times the stench of my own waste made my eyes water, how the cries of my brother made me ache inside as if I were being punched in the stomach again and again with no end in sight.
I want to open up to her, let her see the real me.
I won’t.
I’ve already decided I won’t, because if I do, all hell will be unleashed. I’ll succumb to the chaos inside me, and then I won’t be able to control anything anymore.
But a new reason has dawned. I won’t open up, because if I do, Ashley will run away screaming.
She’ll no longer love me.
And I can’t bear that.
I promised her two months.
I’ll give her two months.
“Take off your clothes,” I say through clenched teeth.
“Dale…”
“Did I tell you to speak?” My voice is darker and more commanding than I mean it to be.
Does she see the red color? Or has it turned black?
I feel black at the moment. Even Ashley, who’s a shining light for me, doesn’t penetrate the dark opacity. I’m going to have her, and it’s not going to be nice.
Or soft.
Or gentle.
Her blue eyes are wide, those dark-brown lashes forming a semicircle on their upper halves.
God, such beauty. Sparkling eyes, full pink lips, rosy cheeks. And a dusty blush over her chest.
She trembles as she fumbles with her T-shirt at the waist.
“I’m waiting,” I say with a growl.
She lifts the shirt over her head, revealing a white lacy bra.
I hold back a gasp and adjust my groin. I’m already hard and aching.
I’m angry. Not at Ashley, but at myself, for thinking I could do this. The darkness drapes over me like a phantom’s cloak.
I’m all in now, and it’s going to happen. I’m giving her two months if it kills me.
“Take off your bra,” I say, raking her over with my hungry gaze.
She complies, more slowly than I’d prefer, but the white lace ends up on the floor where she tosses it.
“Your jeans now.”
She tugs off her sandals first and then unbuttons her jeans. Slowly again.
“Faster,” I say on a low growl.
She stands and shimmies out of them, taking her white bikini panties with them. Then she sits back down on the bed where I planted her in the first place.
Her beauty beguiles me. Those sweet tits that fit in my palm so perfectly, her pink nipples already erect. Her concave abdomen, and then her pussy. Bare tonight. Bare and beautiful and hiding the gems I’ve grown dependent on.
“Are you going to get undressed?” she asks, her voice slightly timid.
I narrow my eyes. My cock is so hard I could slice a brick with it. “Quiet,” I say more harshly than I mean to.
Ashley is flushed all over. She’s responding to my harshness.
Which makes me even harder, if that’s possible.
I unbutton my shirt slowly, determined to make her squirm the way she made me squirm.
One button.
Two.
Three.
I pull it out of my waistband.
Four buttons.
Five.
She sucks in an audible breath and opens her mouth.
I gesture her to be quiet as I finish the shirt, slide it slowly over my shoulders, and let it fall to the floor.
My boots are next. I’ve been wearing cowboy boots for twenty-five years, and I know how to get out of them quickly.
Then my jeans. God, they’re uncomfortable. So much for the slow burn. I shed them rapidly and free my aching dick.
Ashley sucks in another breath. Fuck, she’s beautiful, that warm rosy glow, those sparkling azure eyes, the ashy blond hair falling over her milky shoulders…