“You’re mine now, Malin,” he repeated the words he’d said earlier when they were leaving the bar. “I’ll do what I want, when I want, and you, my beauty, must wait.”
She shook her head, ready to cry with how on edge she was, how much she longed to feel him inside her, but he didn’t hurry. He slowly made his way down her body with his tongue until finally, finally he moved enough that his hardness was at her core.
He stopped then and looked into her eyes. “How many times have you imagined what this would feel like?”
“Hundreds,” she moaned, grabbing him and trying to push him closer.
“Thousands for me.” He kissed her, thrusting his tongue into her mouth like she wanted him to do with her body.
“Look at me,” he demanded, and when she did, he slowly entered her. “I don’t ever want to forget this moment, finally knowing what it feels like to be inside you.” He thrust harder. “It feels so much better than I dreamed it would.”
As much as Malin longed for him to move inside her, the idea that they were both so focused on how it felt to finally have their bodies joined, brought her to another climax.
She looked up when she heard the microwave’s signal that his food was ready and saw he was studying her. She cleared her throat as she took the hot plate out and set it in front of him.
“Would you like something to drink?” she asked, her voice cracking in the middle of her sentence.
“Nope,” he said, shaking his head. “But, Malin,” he waited until she looked at him, “I think about it all the time too.”
6
“I’ll be right back,” she said, hurrying from the kitchen and up the stairs.
Dutch watched her leave, knowing exactly what she’d been thinking about. Her nipples were pebbled, and the flush in her face had spread down her neck. Even if she didn’t realize it, he did.
Sex between them had been off the charts from the very first time. Her body responded to his like no other woman’s ever had, and maybe because of that, or just because she was so damn hot—his body did the same.
Ten minutes after taking both of them over the edge, he’d find himself ready to take her again, and she’d be ready too.
It wasn’t just the sex, though. It never had been. He liked her. A lot. Whenever Malin would agree to spend the weekend at his place, he felt the loss of her, her company, everything about her, when she had to leave.
He always made her promise to text him when she got home, and each time she did, he’d beg her to come back. More than once, she surprised him and showed up at his door thirty minutes later, making him feel like a man who had just won the lottery.
He rarely went to her place, because there were too many other agents who lived in her building. Dutch wouldn’t have minded if they all knew that he and Malin were together, but she would’ve, and he respected that.
There were times, though, when he longed to just show up at her door, beg her to let him in, and then refuse to ever leave.
Until that horrible, stupid night when Alegria called. It was like the screech of a car in a cartoon, that’s how drastic of an end it represented for his relationship with Malin. When he closed his eyes and thought about it now, playing back the memory felt like watching a train wreck. There wasn’t a single moment in his life he regretted more than that one.
He’d known she was getting dressed, that she’d be out in under five minutes, but he’d left anyway. Not so much because he was in a hurry, but more, he wouldn’t have known what to say to her. Should he have said goodbye? Or maybe tried to tell her something about Alegria? He didn’t know the answer better now than he did then.
He realized that she’d been gone longer than “be right back” would indicate, so Dutch went looking for her. He found her in the same small second-floor bedroom where she’d been earlier, but this time he didn’t knock.
He stalked over to the bed where she sat with her back against the headboard. She was clutching her seagrass angel while tears streamed down her cheeks. Instead of sitting beside her, Dutch put his arm under her legs and around her waist, picked her up, and carried her up one flight of stairs to the master.
Malin didn’t protest, or even speak, she rested her head on his shoulder and wrapped her arms around his neck.
He didn’t let go when they got to the top of the stairs. Instead, he sat down and held her on his lap, his grip around her steadfastly tight.
“Letting you go was the worst mistake of my life,” he murmured into her hair. “As much as you’ll never forgive me for it, is how much I’ll never forgive myself.”
“You hurt me…so bad…” she whispered through her tears.
“I know I did. Believe me, if there were ever a way for me to take that pain away from you, I would.”
“I want to forgive you. I want to forget, but I can’t. I wish so much that I could.”
“I know, baby, and I’m not asking you to. I know what I did is something we can never get past.”