Page 43 of Break Me Beautifully
"Or I'd stop denying I'm falling in love with you."
His hands drift away from me. They look funny with one glove on, but the tension between us is anything but. Marshall's eyes are bulging, his lips parted, our silence dangling like raindrops on a leaf taking too long to fall. "You can't love me. You've never been in love before, you wouldn't know what it feels like."
"If this isn't love, I'd never survive the real thing," I say. "Do you think this is easy? Standing here and admitting this? That I pictured saying these words to someone in a filthy alley after some thugs tried to rob me?"
"Leona ..."
"Say it back," I demand, taking a step towards him. "Say it back before it's too late. I won't make you love me, if that's your game. You either do or you don't. But get it over with now before I regret this." I'm already beginning to. In my dreams, it was the hero who fell to his knees, declaring his undying love, saving me from putting myself on the spot.
Heat creeps up the back of my neck. He's staring at me like I'm a ghost. Humiliated tears start to burn behind my eyes. I'm on the verge of sayingforget itand storming out of the alley when he speaks first. "Make me say it?" he whispers. "I've been holding those damn words back with all I have since the moment you opened the bedroom door in your red velvet dress."
Joy blossoms through my body. "Stop resisting. I'm strong enough, so are you."
"I don't know if that's true," he says. "I guess we'll find out, won't we?" There's a hint of regret on his tongue, but when he pulls me against him, kissing me hard, I don't taste it. "I love you, Leona," he whispers along my lips. My skin buzzes sweetly. "I love you, and you're mine."
"I'm yours," I say, thrilling.
"There's no going back from this." He runs his fingers through my hair, making my scalp tingle. "It'd be easier to suck a pomegranate through a straw than end thisthingyou've unleashed."
Picturing the reddish pulp of the brutally destroyed fruit, I shudder. I don't want to think of our new love, this beautiful, burning emotion, as something that could be mutilated.
But my heart warns me he's right.
We'll either grow together in bliss
or be destroyed in the process.
Chapter 13.
"You did all this?"
I smile proudly at Marshall where he stands in the sun beams streaming down from the window. He's holding two paper cups of coffee from a nearby shop and a bag of something that smells sweet.
"Why are you awake?" I ask. "It's only eight."
"Why the hell areyouawake?" he asks with a laugh. "What time did you come down here to work?"
