And I Love You the Most (This Love Hurts 3)
It’s painful, thrilling and gratifying all at once. The heat takes over every inch of me as he moves. His thrusts are forceful, but each time he kisses me, peppering them on my skin with a delicacy that doesn’t match his motions, I need more. It’s sweet, agonizing torture as he pushes the impending threat of my orgasm higher and higher.
We’re both out of breath when he finds his release, my nails scratching down his back as I cry out his name.
Smoke billows steadily from the rubble of the barn, and the scent is carried along gusts of wind. The chill returns faster than I thought it would, but then again I’ve never been a few hundred yards from a raging fire of destruction.
You meant it didn’t you, when you said you’d come find me? That you’d stay with me?” I know he didn’t say those exact words; stay was never spoken from his lips, but that’s what I want from him. I don’t want him to leave because I’m afraid he won’t come back. Selfishly, I would sleep better if I knew he was beside me. I would sleep so deeply feeling him lay next to me.
“I think you need time to decide what you want.”
“And if I want you to stay?”
“If you want me to stay, I’ll stay.”
“I want to leave this place. I want—”
“Give it time. You need to know so much more than you do. The only thing I ask is that you don’t tell anyone who I am.”
I almost tell him I’d never tell anyone he was Marcus, but he continues and what he says feels like a knife to the heart.
“I’m not ready to be Christopher. If you have to tell my name to someone, I’d rather be anyone else … I’d rather be Cody. Please,” he whispers, “don’t tell them what really happened. I’d rather be Cody and if you could lie for me, I’ll tell you everything, give you everything and be whoever you need me to be. I’m just not ready to be Christopher again.”
My tears slip down my cheeks silently as I watch him staring at the flames subsiding in the distance. “Please promise me, Delilah. You can call me Christopher, but don’t tell anyone. Please. I’d rather be anyone else to all of them.”
I try to hide the pain in my voice as I whisper, “I promise” and wipe away the tears, as if they were never there.
Delilah
How many times this week will I utter the words “I love you,” and yet it feels like I’m saying goodbye?
“Please tell me what happens,” my sister urges me and my throat feels tight as I stand outside the mahogany wood doors with the phone pressed to my ear. The foreboding doors extend from floor to ceiling in the hall.
It’s not these exact doors that I laid eyes on when I first experienced the awe of what was just behind them. The courtroom and the men who brought justice to those who desperately needed it. But they’re all the same, aren’t they? All these doors.
When I was a child, they intimidated me, as did the men who sat beside my father on the other side of them. Now, though, they’re only doors I don’t wish to ever step through again. They hold no meaning any longer.
“Did you hear me, Delilah?” My sister’s voice brings me back to the present.
“Hmm?”
“Tell me what happens.”
My answer is far too even, far too calm for the lie it is when I say, “Of course I will.”
I could already tell her the outcome, though. I won’t fight it. The accusations aren’t true, but I won’t fight them. With what little I have left, there’s not an ounce of me that gives a damn to fight the charges brought against me.
Ending the call with an honest I love you, I pocket my phone and face the board that will address the charges and my standing in this courtroom.
Their voices drone on with their stern expression reflecting revulsion or concern as my gaze travels down each of the faces I recognize so well. Men and women I strived to earn a position beside.
It feels like that was a lifetime ago.
“Miss Jones, you realize that we are discussing disbarment?”
“I do.”
“Do you have anything at all that you’d like to say?”
“It was an honor,” I say and my tone is respectable, but there’s not a bit of fight in it. All that I was is no longer recognizable in the echoing chamber of this room. “It was an honor to prosecute alongside you all.”
“Do you not deny the unethical nature of your recent actions and the speculation of criminal activity?” The question comes out incredulously.
“You didn’t do this.” My friend, boss, and mentor’s eyes are wide as she makes the statement. Her expression is one of complete shock.