Page 78 of Love Lies Bleeding

“There she is.”

I return his grin, as he reaches for my hand, and lifts my arm, twirling me beneath it like I’m a princess. “What do you think?”

“It’s beautiful, fun, and sexy.”

Bending, he kisses my collarbone. “You’d look sexy in a burlap sack, Blossom. Sexiness is from the inside. It’s not worn, it’s exuded.”

“You been reading Cosmo again, Jake?”

His bark of laughter is like the soft stroke of a finger down my spine. He looks handsome and carefree and shows me the boy I’d adored is still there, inside the man who ties me in knots.

“My guilty secret is out.”

“News flash, Jake, it was never a secret from me.”

He looks at me then, a thousand feelings moving across his face and I want to know every one of them.

“Go try on the last two, Blossom, and then I’ll take you to lunch.”

“I have to get back to work.”

His hand grazed my cheek. “Please?”

If he’d argued, I could’ve held my ground but that one little word is enough to shred any argument I have to dust. “Okay, but I’m choosing where we eat.”

“You got it.” His lips graze mine as if they belong there before he pulls back and gives me a slight push toward the dressing room. “Go.”

“Bossy.”

“Yeah, and you still love it.”

I give him a flirty look over my shoulder. “Lies.” But we both know I’m the one lying.

I try the last two dresses on but they don’t speak to me like the first two did, and although Jake looks like a rabid beast every time I walk out, it’s the first dress he asks me to try on again.

Standing in front of the mirror, Jake steps up behind me, his height dwarfing me even in these ridiculously high heels. His hands cup my upper arms, sending tingles down my skin as he rubs almost absentmindedly, but I feel every neuron respond to him.

“You look like Cleopatra in this dress, Blossom.”

“I’m pretty sure Cleopatra wasn’t a petite shop owner with pink hair.”

His gaze catches mine in the mirror and what I see makes my pulse pound in my throat.

“No, she was a warrior, a leader, a ruler of men.”

“That doesn’t sound like me.”

“Doesn’t it? I’ll follow you anywhere, Blossom. I’ll destroy the world for you if you asked. I need you to see that power, to own that power, and then decide if you can forgive my sins.”

I’m not sure if I understand his words or at least the meaning behind them, but they hold so much potency it’s hard to ignore. He wants my forgiveness, but he won’t give me the truth or the reason why he’d imploded the love we’d shared, the love that had been so real, so pivotal to who I am now. “I’ll try.”

It’s all I can give him now. His eyes drop to my lips and the air crackles around us, all the sexual tension I’d been living with since Saturday slams into me.

“Jake.” It’s neither a question nor a statement, just a plea for something I don’t know how to voice.

“What do you need, Blossom? I can’t think, I can’t focus on anything but the memory of how you feel and taste. I need to slate this hunger inside of me.”

This is the moment, the one where I get to decide how our story evolves. I can keep running away from him or I can run towards whatever this will be and take ownership. I can be the woman he sees when he looks at me. I can control this or I can let it control me.

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