I was glad for the silence on the ride back down to Entrance even though it wasn’t enough time to make sense of my chaotic thoughts and emotions. I felt exhausted, my heart on tumble dry in my chest as it struggled to sort through everything that had happened.
Nova didn’t say a word when we pulled up in front of the Booths house for dinner. Instead, he gently unclipped my helmet, cupped my cheeks as he searched my face for answers, then gently tugged me toward the meadow beside the house. We walked through the thigh-length grass to the center of the wildflower strewn field, and then he pulled us both to the ground, keeping me in the circle of his arms as he did.
“I slept with Irina once, years ago before we even knew who she was. It was the biggest mistake of my life, and I didn’t even know it at the time,” he started as if we’d been mid-conversation. “Z knows, Bat and Buck too. Otherwise, it’s somethin’ I keep to myself. Maybe I shoulda told you, but you have this way of lookin’ at me sometimes, like I’m the best thing you’ve ever seen. Not the best looking, ’cause fuck, a helluva lotta people’ve looked at me like that in my life. Nah, you look at me like I’m the fuckin’ worthiest, and honestly, Li, I couldn’t handle it if anythin’ changed that.”
It was a good speech, so endearing because it was so true.
I thought Nova was the best person on the planet. I thought he was even more beautiful on the inside of that god-like form than he was on the outside.
But it hurt to know he thought I would be so easily moved from my admiration, so I told him so. “You sleeping with Irina wouldn’t change that. Nothing short of you disrespecting a loved one would make me think less of you, Jonathon. You’ve been my hero since the day we met, and you’ve only proved to be that again and again over the years.”
He made a noise in the back of his throat, a kind of helpless grunt as if I’d punched him in the solar plexus.
“My moodiness isn’t about you sleeping with Irina, though,” I wrinkled my nose as I rolled onto his chest to look down at him. “I had a…rough day. Irina tried to make me take part in one of her shoots, and then Javier came into Irina’s office just after I sent you that text about the website. He…he totally creeped me out, to be honest.”
“He hit on you?” Nova growled, his body gone to granite beneath me.
“No,” I soothed, running a hand down his chest and thrilling in the fact that I was allowed to do that now––touch him–– to freely be intimate with him. “It was almost…I don’t know. Oddly paternal. I fell and hit my head, he was there holding me when I came to.”
Immediately, Nova surged up, cupped my face in one hand, and gently settled me on my back in the grass with the other. He loomed over me, shadowed in the deepening twilight, as he tenderly touched my face.
I hissed when his fingers pressed into the bruise darkening over my ear. A rumble worked itself loose from his chest, but he was acutely careful as he leaned down to plant a kiss there.
It bloomed beneath my skin like a rose, and I knew I’d wear the sensation of his kiss there as an invisible flower behind my ear for the rest of my life.
“Need to take you to get checked out?” he asked as he dropped kisses down my cheek and across my jaw.
“Mmm, you’re playing doctor pretty well,” I teased as I clutched him tightly to me. “Maybe you should just kiss me better.”
He pressed another kiss to my temple. “Like that?”
“No, the pain’s actually lower now,” I said with mock somberness even though a giggle moved through me.
“Ah, well…” he nodded sagely, but even in the dark I could see the silhouette of his smile. “Why don’t you lay back, spread your legs, and let me apologize to you with my tongue?”
There was so much to think about, so many questions without answers, and worries I had to bear alone, that it threatened to overwhelm me. The secret of Dane’s existence felt like lead on my tongue, poisoning me, weighing me down. I wanted to tell Nova so badly, I almost felt ill, but I knew divulging the truth would only endanger him. And wasn’t keeping Nova safe one of the reasons I’d entered into this situation in the first place?
I sighed deeply, feeling the weight of the day loosen its bonds on my heart and mind as Nova stamped kisses into the skin of my throat, over the peaks of my breasts through the fabric of my dress. He rucked up my skirt to get to my belly, tracing the swirls of my tattoos with his fingers and tongue as he descended farther, to the apex of my thighs.