Page 16 of The Ties That Bind

“I’m not …” She bit her lip and her eye brows furrowed.

“I got you Arabella,” I assured her. “Trust me. I’ve got you.”

As the words left my mouth, I felt the truth of them down to my core. With Arabella back in my arms, I never wanted to let her go. We lived in a fucked up world where custom and tradition dictated we hate each other, but I just couldn’t bring myself to feel anything but love. She was a part of me. We’d lost so much time but I wasn’t going to let things continue on that way. I needed her and I knew she needed me too. Nothing else mattered but making her mine.

Family. Responsibility. Obligation … it was all focused on her.

“Let go,” I urged as the pace and pressure of her hips intensified and her breathing became ragged and then faltered. “Take what you need, baby. Take it all.”

With one last thrust of her hips, she gripped me hard and a strangled moan escaped her lips. “Oh fuck, I’m coming. Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she murmured over and over again as she shuddered against me while wave after wave of her orgasm crashed over her.

Eventually, she stilled, but she continued to tremble in my arms. I was hard as a goddamn pike, but I’d live. All that mattered now was comforting the woman in my arms, easing her back from what I knew had been an epic orgasm. It might have been years, but I knew Arabella’s body and remembered with crystal clarity what it looked like when she came. The tears in her eyes, the flush of her neck and cheeks, and the slack of her lips as she collected herself told me she’d been overwhelmed by how intense she’d come for me.

“That was …” she whispered seconds later. “Holy shit Xander. I haven’t had an orgasm like that in years.”

With a smug, cocky grin, I said, “I figured.” Then, dropping a kiss on her forehead, added, “Watching you come is the single most beautiful thing in the world.”

Uncomfortable with my praise, Arabella tried to ease off my lap but I banded my arm around her waist and held her still. “No, not yet. Stay. Just stay for a second.”

When she looked at me with conflict in her forest green eyes, I did something I hadn’t done for years. I begged. “Please. I just want to hold you a minute longer. I just need to feel you against me.”

Studying my face for a second longer, she finally relented. “Okay,” she said, laying her head on my shoulder as I wrapped my other arm around her and held her tight.

I stroked my hand over her back in circles and whispered words of adoration against the silk of her hair while I fought for composure. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her everything—to tell her I never wanted to let her go—but I held off. We weren’t there … yet.

What had just happened between us had only occurred because we’d never been good at keeping our hands off one another. If Arabella and I were in the same orbit, we were bound to crash together. The physical wasn’t our problem; it was the emotional. And the reality was there was too much between us still for me to say those words. We had almost a decade’s worth of baggage to work through before I could even begin to think of sharing my heart with her again.

Fuck, it wasn’t just the baggage that stood between us. Baggage was one thing. My brother—my twin—was a whole other and he wanted her dead. If I’d been at all conflicted about what I was going to do, there was no more question in my mind. Between Jayce and Arabella, she’d win out every single time. Now my heart just had to get on board. Because killing Jayce? That would surely kill a part of me too.

“Where do we go from here?” she eventually asked, breaking the soothing silence that had settled around us.

Fuck if I had the answer. “I don’t know.”

“Do you ever get the feeling the universe is trying to tell us we’re not supposed to be together?”

I chuckled. “To be honest, I sometimes think it’s the opposite. I don’t have to tell you that we don’t make sense. Shit, we’re legitimate enemies. And yet every time I see you, something inside of me clicks and I feel as if—for just a few moments anyway—that none of that matters. That you’re mine and I’m yours and the rest of the world be damned.”

“Is that what you’re thinking now?” she asked, her voice heavy with uncertainty. “That I’m yours?”

“What do you think, Arabella?” I squeezed her closer and dropped a kiss on the top of her head.

“I think you’ve always been impulsive.”

“Only where you’re concerned,” I reminded her. “In every other facet of my life, I’ve got things planned to the nth degree. But when I’m near you, I can’t help it.”

“It’s like that for me too, you know?”

I loved hearing her say that, and yet …

“I know you didn’t trust me before, that you believed what those dick heads told you about me, but if that’s the way you feel, why’d you stay away?”

She sighed and shrugged out of my embrace. “Honestly? I think it comes down to my age. I was young, Xander. We both were. I wasn’t equipped to deal with everything that was happening to me and because I was hurting, I wanted to hurt you too.”

“And you don’t want to do that anymore?”

She looked away. “I thought I did when I came to find you. I had all these plans about how I’d taunt you and try to humiliate you, but when you talked about … when you said her name, I knew I had to let it all go.”

I nodded. “So I guess that leaves us circling back to your original question. Where does this leave us?”

Arabella placed her hand on my chest, her warm fingers settling over my heartbeat. “I don’t know. But I’d like to find out.”

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