Page 47 of The Forbidden Bride He Stole

She was so beautiful it was painful. And yet, she was Hannah, which was painful in and of itself.

He had no words.

All his resolve, all the lies he’d told himself to this moment didn’t hold. He had no defenses at all. And he’d walked himself right into this place. Where there was nothing but her. Nothing but wanting to be in her arms again.

To find that place of refuge he had been denied all of his life.

To find that pleasure he’d never known.

That connection he’d thought lost to him forever.

He’d laid a snare for himself to be caught in, and he had stepped into it willingly and even now knowing that, he was nothing more than a raw, bleeding mass of feelings. Of desperation. A mastermind of his own destruction.

“Help me,” he said.

They were torn from him, from a place inside of him that he hadn’t known existed. They were horrifying, and yet they were honest.

“I want to help you. With whatever you need.” She put her hands on his face. She looked at him, their eyes meeting. Intense and long. A deep, shared moment that transcended anything he had ever experienced before.

He looked at her. And he could only hope that she could read what he was trying to make her see. She kissed him. He growled, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her up against his body. This was what he wanted. This was what he needed. She had made him feel that night, and he was desperate to do it again, no matter how much he told himself that it was all going to go back to the way it had been before. No matter how much he had told himself that it had to.

He needed her. He needed her like air. He was reminded yet again of the time that he had tried illicit substances to try and change the way that he felt.

She was that.

A drug. A heady hit of something that he had long denied himself. But he had never felt as good as he did that night in her arms. And it really had so little to do with physical pleasure. With orgasms. It was more. It was her.

Because he knew that sex, stripped of its soul, stripped of its intent, could make you feel more alone than anything.

But not her. Not this. Touching her was like holding fire in his arms. And it warmed him, all the way through. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. And he wasn’t certain how he had been blind to that all this time. Something had changed. Well. She had. She had become a woman, and he had been intent on ignoring it. For as long as he could. Perhaps because on some level he had known that it would be dangerous to him. To his redemption arc.

But she wanted this. And he felt... He felt very like he might find salvation in this. Perhaps that was one of those foolish things that men told themselves in order to justify their need for release. He didn’t think so. Because this felt more profound. Because it felt deeper. Because it felt more significant. More important. Or maybe he was just the same. As every client that had ever shelled out money for his time.

But she cared for him. She had said so.

He wanted to touch that. He wanted to taste it.

For just a moment, to know what it was.

To be touched because she liked him. To be kissed because she felt something. He didn’t know how to feel those things. But the temptation to claim all that for himself was deep. Real.

He had made for himself a world where he didn’t need anyone. Not their help, not their money, not their touch. He had made himself a fortress, because before he had to make himself the product. And he had earned that right. That solitude. That ability to stand alone. And yet he felt at seeing now. And perhaps it was inviting the past into the present. Perhaps it had been a mistake to show her all those things. To tell her how the hymns echoed inside his soul.

The way his memories of the two strangers who prayed together lingered.

Maybe it was his own fault for showing her that street he’d once dreamed he might live on. Because it brought her too close to the man he’d been, and that meant it brought him too close to that man.

So he kissed her. Because kissing had always been a game. Because touch had never meant much of anything, but now it did. It did. And what then? What then when he was so consumed by need and desperation, and the kiss did not allow him to retreat?

That’s what he was looking for. Oblivion. This perfect, detached oblivion that he often found during sex and could not find it with her. She was the moment. And she brought him right to it. She was everything. Heat and light and innocence. Glory.

And what was he but a man with dirty hands smoothing them over all of this? He did not deserve it.

Did you think I was using you?

That tender question. He pushed it away. Because it got closer to the heart of what had left him seared after their sexual encounter. The sense that he might’ve been used again. And the shame that he hadn’t been able to put a wall up. That it had been real.

Because did he tell himself that every time?

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