Page 23 of Secrets Within Us

“I like how masculine you are.” My response was weak, so I swallowed quickly and sat up further, trying to make myself not seem so meek and pathetic. He waited patiently, standing naked as I continued to look him over. “I like how feminine your masculinity makes me feel. And how confident you are. How big you are,” I paused as I looked down at his waist and raised one eyebrow before looking back up at him, “everywhere, and how strong you are.”

His eyes lit up as he listened silently. He closed the distance between us and slid into the bed next to me, still saying nothing. I waited as patiently as I could, then started second-guessing my answers. What if he wanted only the superficial sexual answers, and I just went all deep and got my feelings all over him?

But he set the fruit down in his lap as he slid down under the blankets before wrapping his arm around me and pulling me in to lie on his chest with my head on his shoulder.

“Your femininity makes me feel strong and masculine. I’ve never been with a woman as small and delicate as you are, but I’m finding it to be like a drug for the alpha inside of me.”

In a very un-lady-like way, I snorted and said, “I think alpha describes you perfectly.” He plucked a grape from the bunch in his lap and pressed it into my lips. When I opened them and sucked it into my mouth, he grunted from under me, making me look up once more.

“Every single thing you do is erotic, Hadley. Literally every single thing.” He finished the apple and put it in the bin next to the bed before popping a few grapes in his own mouth and then offering me another. “I mean it when I tell you that you’re so incredibly beautiful, and I can see that you don’t believe me, but I’ll work on getting you to start some other day. Your eyes are an incredible color of green and they draw me in from across the room every single time I catch your gaze. I could spend an entire day just doing things to get you to look at me.” He paused briefly, “And your body,” he slid his hand down to graze over my curves before settling it on my hip with his big palm resting on my backside, “Your body makes me want to do crazy, beautifully, awful things to it. But more than just physically, your calm and quiet nature soothes me, too. It plays with the alpha in me and makes me want to just protect and listen to you for the rest of my days. And I don’t know the last time I’ve felt that way so instantaneously before. I don’t think I ever have.”

“I won’t ask what this means,” I motioned between our bodies, “but I will ask if this means you’re done treating me like a pariah?” My fingers played across his chest and abdomen, teasing the sensitive flesh there below the ink. He placed his hand over mine before lifting it to his lips, where he placed a gentle kiss on the inside of my wrist.

“I apologize for my attitude the last few days. It’s been a very long time since I’ve had anyone here with me, and I only acted like that because I was trying to fight whatever this draw is between us. This,” he paused, setting my hand back down on his stomach before threading his fingers through mine, “is very uncharted territory for me, okay? I don’t know what it is or what it will be or where it’s going from here, but just know that I’m interested in you for more than just sex. Okay?”

I lifted my head to look at him and could see, for the first time, the vulnerability in his eyes as he looked down at me and waited for me to answer. “I don’t know what it is or what it will be or where it’s going from here, either. But I’m interested in you for more than just sex, too. We can figure it out one day at a time.”

I put a smile on my face and laid my head back down on his chest as he set the grapes on the end table and settled deeper into the bed. When he reached to turn the light off, though, I could decipher a few words from a script tattoo on the inside of his upper arm.

Molly, my one true love, my soulmate amongst imposters.

Chapter 8 - Kip

Good Enough

Iprayed for hours that I wasn’t making a mistake. I laid there with the perfect tiny angel that had fallen into a trap on my property, in my arms after I’d explored her body and found pleasure in it and prayed that I hadn’t just betrayed the only woman I’d ever loved.

Hadley had laid awake for a long time in my arms too, I felt the variance in her breathing the same way I was sure she felt mine as we lay in silence and got lost in our own thoughts.

When she rolled away, to lie on her side facing the wall, I let her go and didn’t follow her. I wanted to, but I needed to wrap my head around how effortlessly I consumed her body with mine earlier. How little thought and effort it took to convince myself to betray Molly and cheat on her with the tiny pixie.

Would she be mad if she knew? Or would she know I was a weak man who couldn’t have said no to such an easy, willing partner when she was lying half naked in my bed?

Shit. Hadley wasn’t fucking easy.

She was the opposite of easy and I knew that. Deep down, she had been struggling with her own inner demons the entire time she had been with me, but especially when I was touching her.

Did she have someone waiting for her at home that she had just betrayed like I had? Or did her reservations and worries stem from what someone did to her? She told me many times that she didn’t have anyone, but how could she not?

She was beautiful, even more beautiful than Molly, and believe me, it pained me to admit that.

Molly had always been the girl next door type of pretty, with easy, low maintenance routines that left her effortlessly pretty. Tall and skinny, with long blond hair and crystal blue eyes. But Hadley was timeless and elegant in an Elizabeth Taylor way. A pin up, goddess type of sex appeal paired with a submissive and gentle personality that left my head spinning and my cock hard constantly.

I didn’t deserve her affection. And I didn’t deserve her kindness, seeing as how I’d barely given her any of my own since she showed up. But I wanted to change that.

I wanted to be nice to her and stop being such a hard ass with her, given that she surely didn’t deserve it. But I couldn’t let my grief and resentment go, it’d been five years, and I was still a pissed off shell of the man I’d been before two men stole everything I ever wanted and needed in my life.

And I didn’t know how to just let someone else in when I’d shut down and shut out everyone I had left five years ago.

But I needed to figure it out because the snow stopped falling earlier, and by the day after next, the roads would be passable and I’d be out of excuses for keeping her locked away with me and not taking her into town like I’d told her I would.

She hadn’t brought it up, and I sure didn’t either, but she would eventually, and I’d then have to shut up and take her to town and give her what she needed to get away from me and back to her life. Or figure out how to convince her to stay here and see what it was becoming with me.

And I didn’t know how to even begin wooing her into staying.

Scratch that.

I did know how to start, and that involved being kind, sweet, and gentle with her. Once upon a time, I was all of those things with Molly; I could figure it out with Hadley.

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