Page 113 of The Rogue

Yeah. He didn’t know what the hell you were supposed to do with that.

But he kissed her anyway in their sacred spot. Kissed her like his life depended on it.

Kissed her for all the years he hadn’t. For all the times he hadn’t even let himself want it when deep down he understood now that he had.

He kissed her for every one of those wasted years she had spent kissing Asher.

And he kissed her for all the years after this when... he wouldn’t.

It was getting to be too much. That was the thing. And it tore them apart to recognize that, but it was just the truth of it. He couldn’t.

He would get her house back. He would put her back in her rightful place. He would...

He would send her off with both necklaces. The one he’d made her then, and the one he’d given her at her wedding. For that good life that she was supposed to have. The better one. The future that would involve another man who could give her everything. One who didn’t feel like he was always waiting for the other shoe to drop, then get picked back up so he could be beaten with it.

And as he stripped her bare there in the barn, he realized exactly why he hated thinking of them as kids. It wasn’t because it had been simpler back then. It was because they had a whole life ahead of them. To make different decisions than the one they’d made.

A whole life to figure out how to be okay. For him to figure out how to have her instead of how to give her away.

But he hadn’t taken that path. There had been a fork in the road and he had taken the easy one.

Damn him.

He thought he was indulging that kid, but he was protecting him. From ever having to be afraid.

And Rue didn’t need to wait for that. For him to figure it out. Because God knew it was all still a mess. Jumbled up inside of him.

He was a good friend. Because he could hide partsof himself. Because it didn’t mean staying, because it didn’t mean opening up his house, his life, his whole heart.

He had thought because he was so good in bed that meant it would be easy for him to keep it all about the physical. Because that’s what it had always been about for him before.

But never with her.

Never with her. And as he entered her, as he found himself drowning in desire, he knew that it had never been that. It had been a mistake. Because it had brought all the pieces of them together. Everything that they’d ever held back.

She had taken off everything except the necklaces. The sea glass and the glimmering blue sapphire sat heavily between her breasts. This tangle of everything they were.

Of everything he wanted.

It made him feel like he was being cut into.

His orgasm cost him. Took something from him. Left him raw and ragged as he held her, her own breathing fractured.

She’d come. But for the first time in his memory he hadn’t worked at that. Hadn’t made a performance out of getting her off as many times as he could.

Because he’d been lost.

In this, in her, in a way that he never was.

The way they went over together wasn’t like anything else in his experience. She wasn’t like anything else.

They lay there in the barn, no sound but their own breathing, but the beating of their hearts.

He closed his eyes, and he could see them as kids, sitting in this barn.

But they weren’t those kids anymore. And he was even more determined about what had to happen next.

Rue realized that things had changed when the day of the auction rolled around and she wasn’t upset. In fact, she didn’t even think of it until what would’ve been the middle of the auction.

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