I have to stay.
Like a merry-fucking-go-round.
I am a mess, and I am losing myself more and more… or is he making me wake up?
I’m not sure, but as his tongue continues to merge with mine, I know I need to stop this. I need space. Distance. A moment to just fucking think.
“Stop,” I whisper against his lips, and he complies immediately, his forehead resting against mine.
“You’re not the only one struggling here, Kat,” he says, so quietly, so softly, so unlike Nate.
His words cause tears to sting the backs of my eyes, and I feel like I can’t breathe properly.
I’ve had him inside of me, kissing me, touching me, making me come in ways I never knew possible, but right now, I need him to get off of me and leave me be for a while.
“I need to go,” I tell him, still whispering, still struggling to breathe.
He moves his head back slightly and looks deep into my eyes, and damn if I don’t feel like I can see right inside his soul. A soul that I know is capable of loving me the way I want and how I should be loved.
But I’m scared. Terrified.
And I know I’m falling deeper under his spell despite how I came to be here.
I see his jaw tense before he moves off of me, rising to his full height and holding his hand out for me to take. I do, and I let him pull me up, and then I turn away from him and leave the boxing ring, jumping down and making my way across the floor.
I don’t turn around, I stay facing forward, my eyes fixed on the door––all the while feeling his gaze burning into my back.
And when I get outside, I take a deep breath of fresh air and make my way back to the house, where the thoughts keep swirling on a loop in my mind, driving me crazy.
Could I love Nate?
Could I be the wife that he wants me to be?
Could he be the husband that I always envisioned?
And those thoughts alone are the ones that continue to haunt me, because if I can love him despite him being a crime lord, if I can forgive him for making me part of his life in the way that he did, then I know that he will have the power to crush my heart to nothing but dust if this were ever to end.
And I don’t know if I would be strong enough to get back up again after.
Chapter Seventeen
Nate
“You ready to go?” I ask Kat as I peer around her bedroom door.
After she left me earlier, I stayed in the boxing ring and just sat, thinking, wondering what the hell is going on in her head.
I get it, the way we started out wasn’t ideal, but fuck, I’ve shown her softer sides of me that no one has ever seen before. I don’t know if I still want to break her apart completely, I don’t know if that is still a goal of mine because I am starting to realise that there might not be any point to it.
She has to love me for me.
She has to accept me for me, and at this point, I don’t know if she ever will.
The heat is there, that fire that burns between us is like a goddamn inferno that is at risk of spreading like wildfire, but is that enough?
“I’m ready,” she says as she comes into view and takes my fucking breath away. She’s dressed in a pair of black tailored shorts that come to mid-thigh, a skin-tight white vest top that seems to sparkle against the light when she moves, and a pair of black ankle boots that I would love her to keep on whilst I fucked her into oblivion.
Then there’s her hair, sleeked back into a high ponytail and poker straight. Her makeup is heavy, dramatic, and her lips coated in a deep red like they’re inviting me to stick my cock in her mouth and have her lipstick marks smeared all over my flesh.
