Page 121 of Sunflower Persona
“Goddamn, woman, inside voice. I didn’t just walk out or anything. Jesus. I figured Nathan was keeping you up to date with how much you two talk.” His hand runs down his face again, but this time it’s an agitated motion. When he pulls it away, his cheeks are tinged with a faint pink. “I’m doing an apprenticeship.”
“Apprenticeship?”
“Electrical work. Started back in March.”
“Gage! That’s awesome! I didn’t even know that was something you wanted to do. Why didn’t you tell me?”
What else have I missed in the months we’ve been apart?
I throw myself at him, and he turns to marble in my embrace. It’s inappropriate, but I can’t find it in me to care. I’m too proud of him.
“It’s not like we’ve been on speaking terms,” he grumbles as he extracts himself from my clinging grasp, setting me on the ground a few inches away from him, still close enough I can feel the heat radiating from his naked chest.
Tension crackles between us again. The air is ripped from my lungs as I meet his stormy gaze and see the hunger there, and for a moment, it’s as if nothing between us ever changed. Unable to resist the magnetic pull any longer, I reach out and cup his cheek in my hand. He tracks my movements with dilated pupils, and he lets out a growl as my fingers make contact.
Why did I ever push him away?
This right here is where I’m supposed to be. That truth resonates to the very bones of me.
“Gage,” I all but whimper.
That’s all it takes for the kindling to finally catch, and every bit of burning passion I’ve tried so hard to repress reignites.
I’m not sure who starts it, me or him, but our lips crash together in a sloppy, desperate kiss. There’s nothing careful about the clash of tongue and teeth, or gentle in the way he nips at my lips with sharp bites.
Fuck, that’s new, and from the wave of molten heat that floods my pussy, I don’t hate this rougher side of him. He traces a hand along my side, not stopping until his fingers are at my throat. His thumb presses in, not enough to restrict my breathing, but in an act of pure possession that pulls a soft moan from my lips.
That small sound yanks him from his lust-filled haze. He pulls his lips from mine, but that’s as far as he goes. Our breaths mingle between us, and his fingers don’t uncurl from around the column of my neck.
“Fuck, that shouldn’t have happened,” he says, still unmoving.
“Like hell, it shouldn’t have. Don’t pretend like we both didn’t need that.”
“I didn’t do this shit with the GED and apprenticeship so I could win you back. I did it because you were right.”
“I know that—”
“Please, just listen to me for a few minutes. It’s important that you know I didn’t do this for you. I did it for me. I’m becoming a man I can be proud of. Losing you was my wake-up call, and it was a long time coming, but I can’t handle having a taste, only to lose you again. I won’t survive it a second time.”
“Who said anything about losing me?”
This man is making me eat every word I said when he came to beg for my forgiveness. He’s made changes and is learning to be happy with himself—for him. It’s all I ever wanted and everything I didn’t know I needed to trust him again. My heart is his wholly and completely. All he has to do is accept it.
Chapter 39
Gage
“Who said anything about losing me?”
The whole fucking world freezes around me as those words pass her beautiful, swollen lips.
She is a vision pulled from my sweetest dreams and my dirtiest fantasies. I didn’t believe my eyes when I opened the door and saw her standing at the threshold, but it’s her. No figment of my imagination could ever taste as sweet.
Her heavy panting as she tries to catch her breath is the only sound that fills the space between us, but the pounding of my heart in my ears nearly drowns it out. My own lungs are locked in iron, the air trapped as the implication of her words bowls through me.
Not lose her…
She can’t mean that. She was the one who said we were done for good. But that doesn’t stop the fucking spark of hope from igniting as she looks at me with so much burning need. It’s the fragile flame that has me petrified. One wrong move and it might go out, taking all the progress I’ve made with it.
