Leave Me Breathless

I bite my bottom lip, assessing him. Everything is telling me not to push further – his expression, his body language. ‘Okay,’ I say, an understanding seeming to pass between us.

‘But it doesn’t mean to say that I wouldn’t.’

‘Kill someone?’

He nods. ‘If I had to, yes.’

My inhale is quick, my eyes nailed to his. Is he trying to tell me something? ‘Okay,’ I say again, and he nods, satisfied.

‘Let’s stop with the fun and games.’ His voice is pure gravel. ‘Come to me.’

I shake my head, and he breathes in. ‘Hannah,’ he warns.

‘Ryan,’ I counter sweetly.

He chuckles, looking down his bare chest and taking the waistband of his boxers, fixing them. Naturally, my eyes follow his hands. His stomach. An artist couldn’t paint a more perfect stomach. His muscles, his physique. He’s a warrior. My warrior.

He’s suddenly moving, and I yelp, bombing off around the cabin. I don’t make it very far, feeling his big arm hook around my waist and lift me from my feet, stopping my escape dead in its tracks. I laugh wildly as he mauls at my neck, walking back around to the front of his cabin with my back pinned to his front, my legs flailing, my hands wrestling with his arm across my stomach. ‘Accept your fate,’ he mumbles into my flesh. The vibrations of him talking against my throat create a heaviness between my thighs, and I immediately quit fighting him, letting my head roll back, giving him better access.

‘What’s my fate?’ I ask, reaching back to his hair and combing through the strands with my fingers. He detaches his mouth from my neck and turns me in his hold.

‘Me,’ he says, cupping my head with both big hands and kissing me into oblivion. I’m instantly short of breath, instantly consumed, instantly all his again. I’m completely and utterly wrapped up in him, in more ways than one. I hum around his mouth, wanting him to hear just how content I am with his conclusion. If Ryan’s my fate, then I wouldn’t dream of challenging it. And if he’s my fate, then surely I am his.

So his fate is to be fooled into falling for someone who isn’t the woman he thinks she is?

His fate is to be deceived and lied to?

I squeeze my eyes closed. I can’t think like that. His fate is me as I am now. I sigh into his mouth despondently and break our kiss, going in for a hug, clinging to him like he’s life. If he senses my sudden melancholy, he doesn’t acknowledge it, but instead picks me up in that easy way he does, just lifting me from my feet with a flex of one arm around my back, and carries me back toward the cabin.

‘Wait,’ I say abruptly, pulling him to a stop. I zero in by the shed and slowly break away from him, rounding his body and wandering over to what’s caught my eye. I approach, if cautiously, and rest my hand on the seat. ‘My bike,’ I murmur, looking up at him.

‘Alex wanted to give it to you,’ Ryan says, completely unperturbed as he joins me, assessing it himself. ‘I found it dumped in the bushes down the road. Alex and I fixed it up for you.’

I just stare at him, and for reasons I’ll probably never know – or maybe I do – I become tearful. I quickly look away from Ryan when he diverts his attention from my bicycle, swallowing down my emotion. It’s sparkling like new. Actually, it wasn’t this sparkly when I bought it from a secondhand shop. It’s positively gleaming.

‘What did you do?’ I ask, circling it, taking in the transformation. New wheels, with fancy little colourful beads on the spindles, a complete paint job in a vibrant, fire-engine red, a new padded floral seat cover, rainbow tassels hanging from the handlebars.

‘We Hannah’d it,’ he says simply, and I dart my eyes to his. He shrugs. ‘Alex’s words, not mine.’

The emotion I managed to beat down comes steaming back to the surface. They Hannah’d it. They made it pretty and bright and colourful. They injected life into my worn-out bicycle.

‘Hey, why the tears?’ Ryan asks, moving in as I cover my face to hide the rivers running down my cheeks. ‘Shit, don’t you like it?’ He takes me in a cuddle, trapping my arms between our chests. ‘If not, that’s cool. I’ll buy you a new one, but can you pretend to like this one? Alex has been so excited to show you it.’

‘No, I love it.’ I shake some sense into myself, forcing our bodies apart and taking another peek at my born-again bike. Now I notice the new basket, too, which is extra deep. There are even lights on the front and back, and I see my name on the cross frame.