29. Twenty-Nine

Twenty-Nine

I 'm on the back foot. Tears swim in my eyes. "What? Why can't you love me? What do you mean?"

Art scrapes a hand across his jaw and walks across the room. He stands in silence for a few seconds, staring out onto the balcony, as if mustering up the right words. "You don't know what it's like to be rejected by the one person in the world who should love you. Who's too busy sucking guys off to even notice that you haven't eaten in two days or that you're naked, cold, and starving. Then, just like that, you're taken away and told everything will be better because you're going to live with some other people who are nice, and you hope they'll want to be your new mum and dad, but it turns out, they don't like your anger. You're angry because you don't know what the fuck's going on. Your world's turned upside down. So, you move on to the next and the next, and each time, you really hope they'll be the ones who love you back, but they're not. You don't understand them, and they don't understand you. They try and make you stick to their rules and behave, but you won't because anger and swearing and fighting are all you've got. So, when they beat you and starve you for misbehaving, you stick with it because it's the only way you know how to survive. Then, when you finally find a mum and dad who love you back, it's too late. You're already fucked up, and it's fucked up your views of sex and relationships. You're pretty sure you're going to stay single forever. Because you don't want to let anyone in. Because that just leads to fucking heartache, which you've already had your share of. So, you just fuck women around, stringing them along, until one day, everything changes. One day, you meet the one who makes you second-guess yourself and think maybe you've got it wrong. She makes you throw caution to the wind and go with your heart because she's so fucking perfect that you'd do anything for her, and you're determined no one else is going to have her. But your entire life has been such a fuck-up to date that you're too scared to tell her all the shit that's happened in case it makes her another one of those people who doesn't understand or want you. Because if she did, there'd be no bouncing back."

Tears run down my cheeks as the weight of his words hit me. I've wanted him to open up to me for so long, and now that he has, I don't even know where to start. I think back to his defensive reaction when Barbara showed me his childhood photos and when he found out I knew about his birth mother. He's not using my past as an excuse to keep things from me. His past is the reason. He's really scared of losing me.

"Is that … is that why you don't like me knowing stuff about your childhood? You're worried I won't understand or … or I'll think less of you in some way and leave you?" I say softly.

He slowly turns to face me. "Why wouldn't you? Everyone I've ever loved has fucked off and left me. My birth mother, Dad, Barbara will at some point, and you … you keep running away. I feel as if I'm cursed. That if I tell you how I feel … how I really feel, then everything will fuck up, and you'll end up leaving me too."

I bring a hand up to my chest to rub the twinge of pain I feel at the thought of my life without him. "Art, people who die don't leave us even if it feels like it." My head's a mess, and there are so many things I want to say. "I won't leave you."

His throat works as he steps towards me. "Say it again."

"I won't leave you. I love you."

His eyes sweep up the length of my body. A shimmering glint of need has replaced the wounded look from seconds earlier. As he strides purposefully towards me, a stab of panic shoots through me. He shows no signs of stopping; he's going to bowl me over. I instinctively step backwards and feel the wall against my back as his hands cradle my head and his mouth crashes against my lips, his body colliding with mine.

He pins me to the wall, kissing me fiercely, our tongues probing. I know what he wants; he's everywhere at once, consuming every part of me with such a force that I'm left trembling with need. All I can think of is him, but the tiny, nagging voice at the back of my head slices through my lust-fuelled state and asks me whether this is the right thing to do right now.

I push my hands against his chest in a half-hearted attempt to get him off me, but his hands determinedly tear my bikini off, exposing my breasts. His lips leave mine and start their molten descent down the curve of my throat, all the way to the base, and I tilt my head, allowing him free rein as he licks my collarbone, hungry for the taste of me.

"I need you, Sophie," he pants between kisses. "Right now."

My brain's short-circuiting, all rational thoughts have fled, and I'm wrestling between what I should do and what I want to do. Without warning, his mouth clamps around my right nipple, and he sucks hard while his hand caresses my breast. I close my eyes as the pleasurable, painful assault sends twinges shooting between my thighs. Hot breath heats my flesh as he presses a scorching kiss to my lips.

"Are you wet?"

My eyes snap open. He's watching me, waiting for a response, confirmation that after all the fighting and after he's finally opened up to me, I still want him.

I lock eyes with his, take his hand, and push it down the front of my bikini bottoms. "I want you. I'll never stop."

He briefly closes his eyes, his chest heaving. He doesn't need to speak for me to know I just told him exactly what he'd wanted to hear.

Before I know what's happening, he unfastens his shorts, tugs one of my legs up to his waist, and yanks my bikini bottoms to the side. He positions himself and slams into me, pushing me up the wall with a shout. I don't get a moment to adjust. He hammers into me with punishing thrusts, and I cling to him.

"My heart beats for you," he rasps, sending my mind and self-control spinning.

My heart soars, and I immediately want him to say those words again.

This is hard and fast, and every thrust drives me further up the wall. I drop my head to his shoulder and sink my fingernails into his back as he carries on, pushing into me with an urgent, desperate need. My legs begin to tremble.

"You feel so good when you're this close," he groans.

My eyes close. "Art …"

"Don't hold back."

I couldn't if I wanted to. I come on a scream. My mind blanks as I shatter around him, a mass of shaking limbs. Art gently kisses my forehead and holds me tight while I come down. I bury my face into his neck and listen to the gallop of his heartbeat in the base of his throat. An overwhelming feeling of sleepy contentedness overtakes me. He waits for my legs to stop shaking and kisses my forehead.

"Come on. Let's get you on the bed," he says. "Wrap your arms around my neck. Hold on."

I do as I was told. He slides his arm beneath my thigh and wraps the other around my back. I'm semi-aware that I'm being carried, but I keep my eyes closed. I'm in his arms, and he's still inside me. Nothing else matters.

He carefully lowers me down on the sheets. I open my eyes to see him tearing his T-shirt over his head and stepping out of his shorts. His cock is deep red and glistening. He didn't come.

"I'm not finished with you."

A flame of desire reignites between my thighs as he crawls up the bed towards me. His legs rest between mine as he braces his forearms on either side of my head and lowers his hot, sticky chest against my breasts. He worships my mouth with his and enters me once more. I entwine my limbs around his back and legs, so I'm wrapped around him as his tongue swirls with mine. This isn't hard make-up fucking any longer. This has crossed over into the realm of something else. We're as close to each other as we can physically be. I can feel the gallop of his heart in his chest, and he stays inside me for a few moments, as if he doesn't want to move. Then, he slowly withdraws before pushing into me at an agonizingly slow pace and pausing once more. He pulls his lips from mine a fraction, and I open my eyes at the loss of contact, to be met by a penetrating stare.

"I love you," he says.

Oh God.

My stomach flips as his eyes hold mine, and my heart misses a beat. He pulls out and repeats the same slow stroke, savouring the moment, and then stills once again.

He brushes the tip of his nose against mine. "I love you, Sophie Ward."

I keep my eyes on him. I can't tear them away. I'm scared to move in case I'm dreaming this and I wake up.

He carries on with a delicious steady thrusts, brushing his lips against mine. "I love you so much."

He places a chaste kiss on my lips, but I can feel his erection pulsating inside me, and I know he's close. He's controlling it because this is our moment in time and he wants it to be special.

My heart's ready to burst with happiness, and out of nowhere, unwanted tears leak from the corners of my eyes and slide down my cheeks. He covers my face with tender kisses – my forehead, my cheeks, and the tears – before he rears back and drives into me. My muscles clamp around him, and he moans, closing his eyes for a few seconds, as if fighting some internal battle, and then opening them to look down at me.

"I love you more than anything." He plants a scorching kiss on my lips as I rake my fingers through his hair, pulling him to me. He lifts his mouth from mine, but I don't want him to stop. Doing what he's doing, saying these words. "Next time, we let go. Together."

He pulls back as we lock eyes before plunging forward deliciously deep, making me yelp and my body arch with tension. I close my eyes, flinging my arms out around him as pleasure courses through my body, and he explodes inside me.

I want this feeling to last forever.

He drops his head to my chest and glides a hand along my arm, interlinking his fingers with mine.

"I love you," he whispers.

I'll never tire of hearing him tell me that.

"I love you too."

He tilts his face upwards. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner. I just don't want anything to jeopardise this."

"As long as we're honest and open with one another, then nothing can come between us."

He pushes himself onto his forearms and kisses me on the forehead. "I swear on my life, there's nothing else. You know all there is to me. You've got all of me."

And I still love him.

"No more running. No more lies. I promise."

I tangle my fingers through his hair. "I promise too."

"Have you ever wondered what your purpose in life is?"

I smile. "That's an awfully serious question."

"I have, ever since I was at college. I thought it was to be successful. To have businesses and loads of money, to live in the nicest apartment in the best postcode, to have an expensive car and wear designer clothes. But it's not because I had all those things, and then I met you." He strokes a fingertip across my jaw. "And I realised you're it. You're my purpose. To love, cherish, protect, worship, and desire you. That's my purpose. That's why you complete me. That's why I'm so scared of losing you."

I press a kiss to his forehead. "You won't ever lose me. I'll be here. Every day when you wake up."

"I'll be here too, brown eyes. I'm yours, and you're mine. And I'm not going anywhere." He lowers himself down and rests his head on my stomach. "I love you."

I close my eyes and stroke his hair, beaming from the inside out.

He does love me. And this time, I haven't dreamt it.