Chapter 66

66

Edward

Her blue gaze holds mine. Her breath mingles with mine. She keeps her mouth on mine, doesn’t back away, and I let her kiss me. She licks my lower lip, and my groin tightens. She nips on my mouth, and it takes everything in me not to throw her over on her back and plant my hips between her thighs and grind into her to show her exactly what she’s doing to me. Instead, I curl my fingers into fists, push them into the mattress, and savor the sensation of her exploring my mouth. She drags her tongue across the seam of my lips, and my blood begins to thud at my temples. She takes small bites of my chin, down the column of my throat, and nudges her nose into the hollow between my collar bones. She draws in a deep breath, and it’s my head that spins. I feel the beat of her heart against mine, the flutter of her fingers as she clutches at my vest, and when she reaches for the button of my waistband, I wrap my fingers around her wrist. She looks up at me, a question in her eyes.

"We need to talk."

A flutter of fear pulses over her features, then she nods. "Okay."

I cup her cheek. "I love you." I bring her forehead to mine and draw in her familiar scent.

"I love you," she whispers against my mouth.

And I want to kiss her. Want to move her on her back and press her into the mattress and show her how much I worship that gorgeous body of hers, but I will not. Not until I’ve come clean with her. And if she decides she never wants to see me again, then I'll have to accept it. I'll have to walk away from her and spend the rest of my life making it up to her. I’d do everything possible to win her back. I have to. I don’t have a choice because without her, I’m nothing.

She brushes her knuckles over my cheekbone. "Eddie?"

"Yeah." I open my eyes. "Let me make you some breakfast."

"That was good." She scoops up the rest of the omelet with her bread and chews on it. "I shouldn’t be eating like this."

"Like what?"

"Like I have a healthy appetite."

"You do have a healthy appetite."

"And everything I eat goes straight to my thighs."

I take in the faded T-shirt and sweatpants she changed into earlier and shrug. "All the more for me to bite on."

She reddens. "I can’t believe you said that."

"And I can’t believe you’d put yourself down. I love your curves, love the thrust of your tits, the swell of your hips, the fleshy spread of your thighs that invites me to park my head between them and close my mouth around your juicy core."

"Oh—" she swallows.

"Not to mention, your peach of an arse which I can barely keep my hands"—I flex my fingers—"and my teeth"—I snap them—"off."

She shifts in the chair. "Okay, fine, I get the picture."

I push away my half-eaten plate. "I threw your contraceptive pills away."

She laughs. "No, you didn’t. I have them in the drawer of my bedstead."

"I replaced them with multi-vitamin tablets that look exactly the same."

"Eh?" She blinks. "You replaced my oral contraceptives with multi-vitamin pills?"

I nod.

"What?" She shakes her head. "Why?" She drags her fingers through her hair. "You’re not making any sense." She swallows.

"I…realized I want to have children with you, after all."

"And you couldn’t have simply told me that?"

"I couldn’t."

"Why not?" She jumps up to her feet and slaps her open palm onto the top of the island where we’re seated. "You knew I wanted them! I would have been happy that you did, too. I"—she shakes her head—"I need time to process this." She turns and begins to walk away.

“I’m sorry. I should have been upfront with you. But I was scared…” There, I’ve said it. Another confession. And, once again, I feel lighter. It took giving up the cloth to understand the power of speaking the truth.

She stops and turns to face me. “Scared?”

“Scared that when I finally tell you what happened to me with the incident, you won’t want to have my child.”

She scoffs. “Nothing that happened to you would ever change my mind about having your child. Since the moment I saw you, all I wanted was to be yours and have a family with you. Do you understand?”

"I was kidnapped when I was twelve."

She freezes.

"So were the rest of the Seven: Sinclair, Saint, Weston, Damian, Arpad, Baron and me. We were in the same school, in the same class, and we were targeted by the same person. We were held for ransom. All except Sinclair, whose family wasn’t as wealthy as the rest of ours. He happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."

“Oh my god, Eddie.” She presses her knuckles into her mouth.

"We were kept blindfolded and tied up. Each of us was abused"—I swallow—"in different ways. Some of us emotionally; others physically. Baron and I—" I grip the edge of the counter. "Baron and I, we"—I squeeze my eyes shut—"we were held together. We were made to do things to each other. We?—"

A soft touch on my cheek makes me snap open my eyes. "—you don’t need to tell me anything more."

"I do." I curl my fingers around her wrist and tug on it. And when she lowers her hand, I weave my fingers through her much daintier ones. She doesn’t resist, thank fuck. "Baron and Ava know what happened, but none of the others know exactly what went down. They suspect, of course, but they’ve never pushed me to open up. Not the way you have."

Her eyes fill with pain and empathy and so much love, and that’s my undoing. This woman—she understands me the way no one has. I've been unfair to her; the way I’ve treated her is all wrong, and yet, she’s here for me. "You should leave; you should walk away from me."

"That would be the easy way out."

"If you stay, it’s going to be harder on you."

"Maybe,"—she squeezes my fingers—"but it'll be worth it."

"It scarred me, what happened. We were held for a month?—"

"A month?" she gasps.

"By the time the cops found us, we had all suffered in different ways. It bonded us together, but it also made us feel different from everyone else. We didn’t feel like we belonged. It made us emotionless, angry men who pursued wealth and power to fill that emptiness inside us."

"Were the perpetrators ever found?"

"Much later, and not by the police. Thanks to the investigators we employed over the years, we tracked down those responsible. But that’s not all.”

I look away then back at her. “The person who provided information about us to the kidnappers, and thanks to whom the perpetrators had enough leads to abduct the seven of us... That person walked into my church for confession when I was a priest.”

She draws in a sharp breath. “What...what did you do?”

I shift my weight from foot to foot. "Turned out, he went to the same school as us, which is how he was able to spy on us. But he was repentant about what he’d done. He needed redemption. He wanted to confess his sins and be forgiven. And I… I couldn’t forgive him."

"Of course, not.”

I look into her eyes and all I see is understanding.

“He asked me for forgiveness, and I... I wrapped my fingers around his throat and squeezed the life out of him.”