The Boy Who Has No Redemption (Soulless 8)

I had no idea what I wanted to do. My reaction was instinctual. He moved away, and I didn’t want him to go…that was all I knew.

His eyes remained on me, his breathing still like he was holding his breath until he knew what I wanted.

I gently pulled him into me, closer and closer, moving until his chest was against mine. My hand left his arm and slid up his chest, feeling his hardness, getting reacquainted with the man who made my toes curl every time he was inside me. My arm moved around his neck, and I brought him into me, my eyes on his lips. Instead of thinking about the women who’d replaced me in his bed, I thought about the man who was in front of me now, the man who loved me today, the man who promised me forever.

He pulled his satchel off his shoulder and set it on the floor beside us before he moved in closer, taking the cue for what I wanted, the permission he’d been waiting for. His big arms surrounded me with masculine tenderness, and he squeezed me as he dropped his mouth to mine and kissed me.

With my eyes closed and the breath taken from my lungs, I was swept away to the past, to the nights where his touch lit me on fire, when he pulled me into his soul with just his kiss. My arms hooked around his neck, and I kissed the man of my dreams, the love of my life, the man who was worth the suffering.

He moaned against my mouth and squeezed me tighter, backing me up into the table as he continued his slow and purposeful kisses, feeling my body in his grasp, touching me the way every woman fantasized about being touched by a man. It was with undeniable strength, like he wasn’t afraid to use his force with me because I wasn’t fragile. He held me with a grip that showed he didn’t want to let go, that I was his forever.

I missed it when he touched me like this.

I missed it when he kissed me like this.

He turned his head the other way and parted my lips with his breath, with his wet kisses, and then his tongue. One hand left my waist then moved into my hair, pulling it from my face as he deepened the kiss, made love to me with his mouth, made me feel like his one and only just the way he did with his intense gaze.

I was the one who pulled away, afraid that if this continued, we would end up naked on top of his workspace, the sweat from my back making all his papers stick to my skin.

He let me end the embrace, but his eyes were still desperate, like the loss of my touch was devastating. His hands stayed firm on my body, keeping me close so I wouldn’t slip away.

“You want to have dinner on Thursday night?”

He stared at me like he didn’t hear the question. There was a long pause even though the question shouldn’t require so much time to form a response. “Yes.”

I was sitting at my computer in the office when I got an email from Derek. The subject line read “Lab Results.” I wasn’t sure if he’d sent this to me by mistake because his health should be confidential, but I opened it anyway to see what was inside.

He had scanned a copy of his STI panel. The date was at the top corner, and all the negative results were listed there. There was no mistake typed into the body of the email. He just wanted me to have this information, but he didn’t want to make it awkward by giving it to me in person.

So, he obviously expected to get laid on Thursday.

Well…he wasn’t wrong about that.

After the shitshow with Paul, I got paranoid about what kind of guy he might be, so I got tested too, especially since I didn’t plan to sleep with anyone else for the foreseeable future. I logged in to my account, took a screenshot of the results, and then replied to his email with my own attachment.

Not a single sentence was exchanged between us.

We just let it be.

“You’re really going back to work?” I sat beside Cleo on the couch. After work, I stopped by and brought her cupcakes, so she had a special treat to enjoy. Her treatments had ended, and now she was starting to look revitalized. It would take a while for her hair to grow back, but she still looked like the beautiful woman I remembered, just a little skinny.

“Girl, I’m so bored. Sitting around and watching TV all day is not my thing. I’ve been helping them downstairs with emails and phone calls, but it’s just not the same. If this was the lifestyle I wanted, I would have retired when I got married.”