After hanging up with Kian—who promises to keep me posted on what happens with the King—I go back to pacing the hotel suite and doing a shitty job of not worrying about Lola. Sure, those polling numbers bode well for her safety as people seem to love her, but it takes only one crazy to mess everything up. I know that better than anyone.
I try to wait it out, try to give her the space she so obviously needed when she all but darted from the hotel. But it’s hard, so much harder than it’s been with any other woman I’ve ever dated. Add to that the fact that my realizations about the King are still roiling around inside of me, no matter how hard I try to keep them locked away, and I’m a total mess by the time a knock sounds on the suite door.
At the same time a text comes in from Xavier, telling me that they’ve finally returned. That he’s brought Lola back to me safely.
It takes every ounce of willpower I have not to run for the door. But Lola doesn’t need to see how freaked out her absence made me—she doesn’t need that kind of pressure and neither does our brand-new, still undefined relationship. Or at least that’s what I tell myself as I force myself to walk slowly and deliberately across the suite.
I’ve got my apology all prepared as I open the door, but I never get the chance to deliver it. Because suddenly, Lola is crowding into the room. Slamming the door in Xavier’s face. Throwing her arms around my neck and muttering, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” as she presses her suddenly desperate mouth to mine.
“It’s okay,” I tell her as I pick her up and carry her straight through to the master suite. “It’s okay.”
But she’s too far gone to listen and really, who am I to get in the way of a woman hell-bent on making love to me? I may not be smart enough to have avoided being abducted, but I sure as hell am smart enough to recognize the best thing that’s ever happened to me.
Chapter 24
Lola
“I’m sorry,” I tell Garrett as I push inside his room. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
I feel like such an idiot, panicking because of a few ridiculous stories. We both went into this with our eyes wide open—Garrett even warned me what it was going to be like. Then, the first day I actually have to live up to my end of the agreement, I freak out like a child.
It’s not a good look for me and it sure as hell isn’t a good precedent to set.
“It’s okay,” he tells me as he picks me up and starts carrying me toward the bedroom. It’s something he does a lot, and something I’m more than okay with, I realize as I wrap my arms around his waist.
Normally, I’m not crazy about men manhandling me, even in consensual sex, because it upsets the balance of power. But with Garrett, I don’t care about any of that. The only thing that matters when I’m with him is the reverent way he touches me and the care he always takes of me.
It’s time I start taking that kind of care with him.
Which is why, when he lowers me to the bed, I roll right back off.
“Are you okay?” he asks, and I can see his face close up right in front of me, looking like he’s expecting the worst.
“No,” I answer. Because I’m not. “I was a moron and I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
“You were human,” he disagrees as he reaches for me again. “And it can happen a thousand more times and I won’t care, except that I hate to see you suffer. This life, it’s a lot for me sometimes, let alone for someone who didn’t grow up in the limelight. You think I don’t understand that?”
“Why are you so good to me?” I ask. It’s a real question, not some cute little response that doesn’t mean anything. Because no one in my whole life has ever treated me as well as Garrett does. Not my mother, who was always too busy looking for the next man to take care of her to worry about taking care of her only child. Not my father, who was more concerned with hiding my existence from the world than he was with acknowledging that existence in any but the most basic ways. And definitely none of the (very) few men
I’ve let get close to me since I reached adulthood.
But Garrett does it so effortlessly, giving me what I need before I even have a clue I need it, as if taking care of me is a privilege instead of a burden.
“Because you deserve it. Because I—” He breaks off, eyes going wide as he leaves the rest of his answer unsaid.
I don’t know what he was going to say, but my heart goes wild anyway. Because there’s something in the way he’s looking at me, something in the way his hands are skimming so lightly, so tenderly, down my arms that has emotion burning deep inside of me. I know it’s only been a few days, know this whole relationship thing is just supposed to be pretend. I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours reminding myself that that’s exactly what I want.
Yet now that I’m standing here looking at the concern on Garrett’s face, feeling the exquisite care with which he touches me, I can’t help wondering if there’s more to this thing between us than either of us expected. Can’t help thinking that I’ve fallen for His Royal Hotness—no, for Garrett—even though I promised myself I wouldn’t.
There’s a part of me that wants to run away again. And this time I won’t come back. This time I’ll find someplace to hole up and lick the invisible wounds that are already starting to hurt—at just the idea of walking away from Garrett.
But I can’t do that. Not when he’s looking at me like he’s fallen just as hard. And not when everything inside of me is begging me to touch him, to hold him, to fix whatever those months of torture broke deep inside of him.
“It’s okay,” I tell him, moving closer until my body is pressed up against his and I can feel the burning heat of his skin through our clothes. “I’m right here.”
His hands slide from my arms to my back and from my back to my ass. I know he’s getting ready to pick me up, but I’m not going to let him. Not this time.
This time, it’s my turn to be in control. My turn to walk him toward the bed. My turn to lower him softly upon it. The need to take care of him, to show him some of the same care that he’s always shown me, is an inferno burning within me.