Page 59 of The Finish Line

“We’re leaving Helen out of it.”

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But we didn’t leave her out of it, and it played out as I expected it would once she was brought in. Complete and utter fucking disaster. Despite my role of protecting her, Helen hasn’t stopped punishing me for it.

Eleven days.

Eleven fucking days of flannel pajamas.

And just to pour salt into my weeping dick, she leaves the door open when she showers, when she changes, and when she slathers her insanely toned body in a scent so alluring to me, I get hard when she breezes by.

Well played, queen.

Most days, I wake up alone, and for the majority of them, I’m left hanging in the wind without direction—without any indication of how this will play out between us. Since I’ve been here, I’ve been stuck in a place of reflection, reflection I once managed to suppress with the constant aftermath over the years.

Now, in this silent place, without plans to make and orders to pass out, I’m helpless to the constant surfacing of all I’ve compartmentalized. Especially the most recent years, the agonizing years I forced myself to exist without her.

She wasn’t wrong, but boredom isn’t a word I’d use to describe my current state. It’s more a combination of restlessness edging toward paranoia with every day I willingly forgo being in the know to sort out my relationship with her. She tried to tell me she’s okay with me going back in, but I know that I can’t do it halfway.

I’m an all or nothing man, and I don’t know how to be any other way.

I keep hoping for her emotions to kick in and take over to help bridge the gap, but her sensibilities seem to be winning over her feelings. A skill I taught her—that emotions have no place for an objective player—a lesson she’s clearly taken to heart and has turned against me. There’s a hard edge to her that wasn’t there before; in her scrutiny, in her voice, just throughout her that makes her even more alluring—but that much harder to reach.

When I do manage to catch her before she flees for the café and pin her with my lips, she’s receptive, sometimes playful, but the look of fear I despise is still there. The look that lets me know she’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. Apparently, assuring her that we’ll be looking over our shoulders for the rest of our lives isn’t enough.

And I admire and respect her so much for it considering the carnage she witnessed after living a mostly sheltered life.

Over the years, as I resurrected myself and what was left of my army, she’s reinvented herself as an army of one—armed to the teeth. But I don’t want her smoking gun anywhere near me. What I need is a long drink of her strength, of her love, and a little submission.

Fat fucking chance.

Without trying too hard, she’s been dangling her sweet pussy carrot in front of me since I arrived. It’s been eight hellacious months since I’ve had her, and before that—years, and I’ve never in my life been so hungry.

The last time we were together is not the way I want to remember having her.

I ridiculed her for loving me.

I shamed her that night for being the soldier I no longer was.

I did my best to strip her pride, to save her from this type of life, to selfishly save myself the worry, but she wasn’t having any of it.

I left in awe of her, in awe of who she became without me.

Even more so, guilty for the way I couldn’t step up.

She told me then that love makes the danger worth it.

I’m just going to keep believing her. Even if my biggest fucking fear is seeing it unfold all over again, this time with her as the sacrifice.

It’s only a matter of time until we go head-to-head again, but it has to be the right time. I want no fear in her eyes when I claim my queen for good. I want her fighting back, and more so, I want her certain about me the way she was—of my place in her heart, by her side.

She’s chosen her personal armor in the way of fucking flannel pajamas.

Grabbing my newly delivered dumbbells, I do another set of reps to try and rid myself of restless energy. Facing out her bedroom window, I note the painstaking lengths she’s gone to replicate her father’s garden. Between hedges and rows of empty vines is a reading nook. Above the wooden canopy hangs branches of deadening wisteria.

The sight of it brings me back to the morning in Roman’s garden, where I all but blurted out my love for her. Dropping my dumbbells, I walk over to the window and reflect upon our shared past. It wasn’t the first time I took her in a way that conveyed physically what I was feeling, but it was that morning in particular that I felt it most, that I knew I was irrevocably in love with my enemy’s daughter. With a shared look and with a confession I felt to the depth of my soul, I broke my own creed and gave in to the deepest part of me, and my soul-deep ache for a connection with her. Within seconds of recalling those minutes, I surrender to the heat coursing through me. My arm braced on the window as I grip my cock in my mesh shorts.

Stroke.

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