Page 11 of Returning for His Unknown Son

“Yes?”

Fingers clutching her dress to her chest, shoulders bare, long, silky hair touching the upper curves of her breasts, she was the most beautiful thing Christian had ever seen. The one thing that had pulled him through the unrelenting nightmare of the last eight years. And yet, nothing was the same, not her, not him.

He felt like he finally had everything he’d wanted and yet... It didn’t feel like he had it at all.

Chin tilted up, she said, “Will you hold me? Just for a moment?”

An avalanche of want opened up inside him as he took in her face. The flash of vulnerability she was allowing herself. The risk she was taking for both of them. The reward was his—because this need to hold her, to touch her was excruciatingly powerful.

It was a truth he’d always known—that she was the bravest one among all three of them, her, him and Jai. For all she’d been cocooned and cosseted most of her life.

Without another word, he walked to her and gathered her to him. She folded into his arms as if it was exactly what she’d needed all these years. Her face tucked into his neck, the bridge of her nose rubbing against his pulse. Her hands still clutched the dress between their chests, but her thighs leaned against his, trembling.

“I missed this,” she said so softly that for a second he wondered if he was imagining it. “More than anything else in the world.”

His throat closing, all he could manage was a grunt.

It felt like they stood together, shaking and trembling, falling apart but somehow holding on, for an eternity. Yet no more than a few seconds could’ve passed. He made himself let go of her, feeling an ache like nothing else the moment he released her.

He was almost out of the bathroom when it struck him. “Where were you coming back from tonight? When you walked up to the house in the rain? In that dress?” he added, unnecessarily. As if to make sure she didn’t evade the truth.

He saw the realization land in her eyes. Saw the bold tilt of her chin. “A date. I went on a date,” she said, her chin tipping up in pure provocation.

Patience built over eight long years helped him stare back at her, even as her reply landed like another punch. Even as something in him roared like a possessive savage, the savage he’d almost become cut off from everything he held dear. But he held his polite smile, his brow raised in tacit query.

In that moment, he knew himself better than he had in eight long years. In her eyes, in the way the challenge was written all over her body language, in the way every part of him roared to claim her, Christian found himself.

He left the room and closed the door behind him, his heart thundering in his chest, a wide smile curving his mouth. Feeling more alive than he’d felt for a long time. Even the quietly raging frustration in his veins that he might never be the man she’d missed, the man she deserved, was still better than the blankness he’d battled for so long.

“Where were you coming back from tonight? In that dress?”

Just remembering the combative look in Christian’s eyes sent a shiver down Priya’s spine. The spray of water from the shower felt too hot on her skin so she turned the knob off and reached for the towel.

Apparently, chemistry was a thing that roared back to life despite not seeing the other person for eight years. Despite the fact that Christian could’ve changed irrevocably.

And yet, she knew in her heart, that where it mattered he hadn’t changed. She knew it in the irreverent curve of his lips, in the way he watched her, in the way he had...held her.

What she wasn’t sure of yet was if that was a good thing or a bad thing for her heart.

She took forever getting dressed, even knowing that she couldn’t simply escape the ground still rumbling beneath her feet, shoving her this way and that. Escape the six-foot-three-inch man who suddenly once again took center stage in her life.

At least, she’d owned up to the fact that she wouldn’t be sleeping tonight. To not postpone the big truth she still had to tell him. But then, being brave hadn’t been a choice ever since his plane had crashed. It had been a necessity.

She palmed the moisturizer into her skin and pulled on a matching silk top-and-shorts set. Excitement beat through her veins like an incessant siren. Gripping the marble vanity, she forced herself to pull in a few long breaths.

Not more than an hour ago, she’d been railing at the universe, loneliness an ache in her chest. And now that he was back, she couldn’t stop shaking. Couldn’t stop her mind from exploring and weighing a thousand different possibilities.

Yes, she was glad that Christian wasn’t dead. Of course she was.

But she needed to remember that he might not even want this marriage, or her, anymore in his life. Not the woman she’d become. Not when he recovered from the emotional shock of being back in his home, around familiar faces once again.

That’s what she had to be ready for.

CHAPTER FOUR

AFTERTHROWINGONher robe, it took Priya ten minutes to find him. In Jayden’s small bedroom. Surrounded by the dinosaur-covered walls that she’d hand-painted, the tiny bookshelf and the colorful buckets of Lego pieces, this big, broad man looked so incongruously lost that her heart ached.

His knees folded up, he was sitting on the race car bed, still in the same clothes. His dark blond hair looked like he’d ravaged it with his fingers, and his skin was pale under the tan. Grief was etched so deeply into those usually mobile features that she found her own eyes filling up.

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