I staggered under her condemnation and the mental image of her tumbling naked on her bed. “Fuck, Della.”

I didn’t know what I cursed at. The brutal honesty of her latest confession or the barbaric, almost primitive need to climb on top of her and force her to believe me. To crawl inside her body and soul and growl into her ear while I took her violently. ‘See? I am telling the truth. I do love you. I love you so much you make me goddamn insane.’

But I shook away the dark brutality, taking my turn to be the sinner with secrets. “Regardless of what you think, I am in love with you, Della. And I stayed away because I-I—”

“What? Tell me!” she screamed, her sudden outburst ratcheting up my temper to uncontrollable levels. She’d successfully threaded lust with rage, and it was a cocktail I no longer had any power over.

“I wasn’t ready, okay?! Fuck, I don’t think I’ll ever be ready to accept that I’ve fallen in love with the child I stole. That even now, I struggle seeing you as Della, grown-up and filled out, an adult in your own right, and not buckle beneath the image of you when you were five years old with your beautiful blonde hair and fascination with your ribbon.”

I dug my hands into my scalp. “It makes me sick, okay? It makes me want to burn out my eyes for ever seeing you naked as a kid or hugging you when you were a teen. It makes me want to cut off my own cock for ever getting hard around you, for all the inappropriate thoughts I had about you, for despising the boys you dated, for wanting to die knowing you let another fuck you when all I ever wanted was the freedom to love you in that way.”

My temper cindered into exhaustion, leaving me breathless. I shrugged brokenly with palms spread in surrender. “How can I admit such things to you, Ribbon? How can I stand here and confess that I’ve jerked off to images of you? That when you were still innocent, still untouched, still so fucking young, I was using other women to somehow find a way to remain honourable and not crawl into your bed? Do you know how many times my willpower almost failed? Do you know how many dreams I’ve had? How many times I’ve had you in my arms and on my lips, only to wake up and find it was all a fantasy?

“It was everything I could do to hide such things from myself, but you…I could never tell you because I couldn’t stand for you to think of me as a monster. For you to see me as others’ would. A paedophile. A beast. A twisted-up son of a bitch who would rather put himself first than the child he’d sworn his life to.”

My breathing came ragged as she took a hesitant step toward me.

However, this time, instead of disbelief, there was a sliver of something, a fledgling hint of hope, an aura of satisfaction of finally, finally hearing my truth. “How long?”

I shook my head. That was one secret I wanted to take to my grave.

But she came closer, her towel slipping farther, her eyes getting softer. “How long, Ren?”

“It seems like forever,” I moaned, shaking my head again, begging her to let it go.

Her fingers fluttered on my overly hot forearm. Sweat covered me from fighting and declaring. My energy was gone. I was more exhausted than I’d ever been in my entire life, but still, she didn’t let it go.

“Please…I need to know.”

I looked up, flinching at just tasting the words. My tongue burned with wanting to lie, to add on a few years, to not make myself such a child-stealing savage. But she’d been honest with me, and now, it was my turn to be honest with her.

Hesitantly, I raised my hand, cupping her cheek for the second time, grazing my thumb once again over the delicate bones that swooped up toward stunning blue eyes. This time, she didn’t jerk away, and I stared so damn long into her that I became lightheaded and terrified.

My voice was barely a whisper as I admitted, “Since you kissed me.”

She tilted her head, biting her lip as if her emotions threatened to drag her under, but not before she got her final answer. “Which time? The kiss that drove you away or the kiss in the stable at Cherry River?”

I closed my eyes.

I’d been given an opportunity to hide the worst of my transgressions. I could say it was the kiss she’d given me when she was seventeen—so close to eighteen that it was no longer illegal to fall in love with a minor.

But…I couldn’t do it.

Tonight had been a truth-tearing hurricane, and I had no choice but to murmur, “When you were thirteen.” I sighed with every sickness and shame I’d carried for five interminably long years. “The night you woke me up kissing me.”

Tags: Pepper Winters The Ribbon Duet Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net