Page 21 of Cruel Love

I try to pull away, but he holds me close. “Fox...”

“I’m leaving tomorrow, but I’m coming back, Dani,” he says. “When I do, I’m going to make you my wife.”

He reaches into his pants pocket. I open my mouth to speak but nothing comes out as soon as I see the velvet box in his palm.

“Danielle Roberts, will you marry me?”

Fox opens the box. A ring sits inside. A diamond mounted on a silver-colored band.

It’s beautiful. Everything I imagined it’d be if I ever got married. I picture it instantly. I walk toward Fox in a white dress with flowers in my hands. He smiles, clad in a black suit and tie. We’re surrounded by family and friends.

We’re normal. Just like everyone else.

But that’s not who we are.

We can never be that.

I shake my head. “No,” I answer.

Fox eases back a step but he stands taller. “Dani, I’m—”

I kiss him, cutting him off as I wrap my arms around him. It takes him by surprise, but he embraces me as I lose my balance. He holds me up with ease, returning my kisses until we can barely breathe.

“I won’t say yes,” I whisper, catching my breath. “Not until you come back to me.”

He takes the ring out of the box. “I’ll come back,” he says as he forces it onto my finger. “I promise.”

He lifts me a few inches off the floor, making my toes dangle in the air. I feel weightless and dizzy as if I might pass out at any second, but one look in his eyes centers me again.

We turn and Fox takes a few strides toward the bed.

I tighten my grip on him as a sob shakes me to the core. “I love you, Fox,” I say.

He lays me down. “I love you. Since the moment I saw you, I knew...”

I flash back to that night. Seventy degrees in December. A typical LA Christmas Eve. I thought he hated me.

The next thing I knew, he lived down the hall.

I pull him down to my lips. His tongue laps gently against mine as I feel down his abs toward his belt again. He runs his hands beneath my top, guiding it up and over my head to expose my breasts.

We move quickly with passion and greed. It’s different than before. Before, he touched me as if I were breakable. America’s Sweetheart, he sometimes called me. That might have been true once, but not anymore. Not if I have any say in it.

Fox eases back and pulls my pants off with one quick tug, taking my panties with them. He’s back on me in a second, his lips hungry for a few more long, urgent kisses. I push his pants down over his rear. His hands roam every inch of me as he settles between my thighs. It’s so fast and eager, so different than our first time together.

I tried to stop. I tried to shut it off and ignore it, but I can’t.

It’s always been you, Dani.

He made love to me and I never saw him again. That haunted me for years. I wondered what I’d done wrong. If I wasn’t any good. If I really was nothing more than a silly joke to him.

Eventually, sadness became anger. When they told us he was killed in action, that anger turned cold, but a lingering sadness never left me.

I can’t help but wonder if I’ll be thinking the same thing five years from now.

He made love to me and I never saw him again.

Fox pins my arms above my head. Our lips don’t part for more than a second as he eases between my thighs. His kiss is slow and precise, almost teasing. I feel his tip slip between my folds, but he doesn’t thrust. The tease is unbearable. I feel my insides pulsing for him, growing more enraged by the second.

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